California Towhee Nest

Feeding the Babies

For several weeks now, we've been watching a pair of California Towhees hop up on our garden wall and then disappear into the dense Star Jasmine shrub along the side of the garage.

Eventually it dawned on us that they probably had a nest inside the shrub and were going in and out to feed the babies.  

We've called this bird the "Squeaky Wheel Bird" for years because of its persistent high-pitched chirp; it can be kind of annoying at times because it just doesn't stop.  We've also watched them scratching around in the vegetable garden for seeds, insects and worms and even seen them hop up under the rose bushes in the front yard to dislodge aphids from the underside of the rose leaves; they're welcome to all the aphids they can eat.

However, it's been fun watching this pair of birds take care of their nest.  The parent birds seem to vary the diet they're feeding the young ones; they seem to be alternating between seed they pick up under the bird feeder, worms scavenged from Cindy's raised beds and suet from the suet feeder.  Cindy also left the last few blueberries on one of the blueberry bushes and left it outside the bird netting for the birds, so maybe they're getting a few of those as well.  

No Caterpillars

A few days after my post about the Anise Swallowtail caterpillars we found devouring the parsley leaves, they all disappeared.

One of the caterpillars was huge; he was obviously just about ready to find a place to attach and form a chrysalis, but the other two were smaller.  Since it looked like they prefer to attach to an upright twig or branch, we put a garden stake in the ground among the parsley, but it doesn't look like any have attached to it.

So the pack of boisterous Scrub Jays that were hanging around the suet feeder, or one of the brown California Towhees probably got all the caterpillars.

Too bad, we were looking forward to trying to watch them hatch.

Slug Trails

Slug Rampant

The slugs that damaged the potato plants a few weeks ago are not too difficult to manage.  If there are just a few, they can be picked off by hand.  If there are more, a product like Sluggo, which is biodegradable and safe to use around pets, can get rid of them.

Cindy harvested a head of lettuce the other day and found three slugs on the leaves.  Ugh.

We took those lettuce leaves out and put them under the bird feeder to provide a little treat for the ground feeder birds, especially the Brown Towhees, the Spotted Towhees and the California Thrashers.  We don't know who got the slugs, but the next morning both the slugs and the lettuce leaves were completely gone, so somebody cleaned it up for us.

One of the old traditional methods of getting rid of slugs and snails is to put some beer out in a shallow dish; the slugs crawl in, drink the beer and drown.  End of slugs.

However, we won't be using that method for two reasons:  first, we prefer to drink the beer ourselves, and second, we don't even want to think how much damage a pack of drunken California Ground Squirrels could do to the garden.

UC Integrated Pest Management Pest Notes--Slugs and Snails

Screen Project Completed

Raised Bed With Screens

We've now completed the enclosures for all three of the raised vegetable beds, and they're looking pretty good.  The two smaller beds, including the one with the tomatoes, are completely enclosed by the screens and the larger bed is about two-thirds enclosed.  

We didn't enclose one end of the large bed because so far the neighborhood critters haven't displayed any interest in eating the leeks, chives or basil planted there.  However, that meant that Cindy had to install some additional hardware cloth down in the dirt to keep the varmints from simply digging under the screens at that end of the bed and getting into the good stuff in the rest of the bed.  

Tomatoes Are Growing!

The tomatoes have almost doubled in size since Cindy planted them last week, so it was time for the tomato cages to come out before they get any bigger.  We're hoping it will be a good year for tomatoes and a shutout year for varmints.  

Unfortunately, one type of predator we can't keep out with the screens is the birds we've been encouraging to visit our yard with the bird feeders.  This morning we watched as a California Towhee flew over the screen to invade the vegetable bed, pulled up one of Cindy's earthworms, and then hopped up the bean trellis before he flew off.  

Later a Spotted Towhee made a serious attempt to get at the ripening blueberries.  The Towhees are beneficial in many ways; Cindy leaves any slugs she finds in the garden under the bird feeder for the Towhees to dispose of, and she's even seen them fly up and knock aphids off the roses in the front yard, but dammit, they'd better leave our blueberries alone.