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One of the things I find especially interesting about wild creatures is the way they profit by their contact with humans. House sparrows hang around parking lots to "score a meal" of dead bugs from the radiators of cars and trucks; deer learn to make regular visits to suburban backyards to browse on rose bushes and other tasty shrubs; scavenging crows patrol highways for the inevitable roadkill, and so on.

I've recently seen a few less conspicuous examples, right in my yard. There's nothing new about backyard songbirds splashing around in a birdbath or backyard fountain, or hopping along the ground under a shower from your lawn sprinkler. But I had never before seen a bird use a sprinkler to take a shower while still in a tree. It happened when I was watering some shrubs and flowers in a bed under one of our large crabapple trees.

A red-eyed vireo, an olive and buff, sparrow-sized bird, promptly showed up just after I had moved the sprinkler and adjusted its back-and-forth sweep. It took up a station in the lowest branches, about eight feet directly above the sprinkler. Whenever the stream of water was going straight up, it would get doused with water. When that happened, and only then, the bird would fluff and shake its feathers, just as you would expect in a birdbath. This went on for nearly five minutes.

Not more than 20 feet away was a bubbling birdbath fountain, which is used by the robins and many other local birds. But not the vireo. My best guess is that this bird felt more secure concealed in the leafy branches of the tree, rather than in the wide-open space where the fountain stands. But we'll never know for sure.

Another behavior that both my wife and I have noticed this summer involves the local robins. It seems like there is always something being planted or transplanted in our yard. Whether it's new garden space, or deciding that a shrub or flowering plant should be in a different spot, we certainly do our part to keep the shovel makers in business.[[In-content Ad]]

Perhaps the robins have figured out that not only are we harmless, but our presence with a shovel can mean "dinnertime." We can barely turn a shovel's worth of earth before one or more arrives, and sizes up that black soil for its potential. If it's not too near to us, they might hop up on a bucket, sprinkling can, or the 'tool wagon." Perhaps it's for a better vantage point; or maybe it's just to express impatience that we're hanging around when they have some serious worm and insect prospecting to do.



IT'S A BIRD...

NO, WAIT

I was installing some new gutters recently, standing on a rung halfway up a ladder just a short ways from a lilac bush, when I saw a bird-like shape moving in and out of the branches, and hovering near clusters of its pale purple flowers.

My first thought was "hummingbird," but this one seemed to be going at half-speed. Then I realized that it wasn't a bird at all, but a large insect. A hummingbird moth, to be exact, which explains my first reaction. This must be "the time" for hummingbird moths, for just a couple of days later, a nature photographer friend told me that she had just been photographing one that was hanging out in her garden.

Unlike most butterflies and moths, which flutter and dart in their flight, hummingbird moths hover in place with rapid wingbeats, just like their namesake, the hummingbird. Also unlike butterflies and other moths, they do not land on flowers to feed on their nectar; they hover in midair, and uncurl their extremely long, hollow feeding tube, which can reach down into even the deepest flowers.

Hummingbirds, on the other hand, have a long, slender, but rigid bill. Both bird and moth transfer pollen from flower to flower as they feed, an act necessary for the production of fruit or seeds. The moth is smaller, roughly two inches or slightly longer from stem to stern, which is very big for a moth, but small for a hummingbird. Unlike most moths, which are active only at night, hummingbird moths are creatures of broad daylight.

I find such "overlaps" in nature to be great food for thought. Here are two creatures from vastly different branches of the tree of animal life. In 99 examples out of 100, insects are the prey of birds, not "co-equals" in the manner in which they conduct life's first order of business, which is to feed, and thereby to mature and reproduce. Yet these two "make a living" in the very same way.

Whether one believes in natural selection or intelligent design, or some gradation in between, one can't view these two creatures without appreciating how broad, deep and complex Nature is.

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