Jeff Kennedy
When one finds themselves several hours into a marathon, weekend mowing session, there is plenty of time to ponder. As you mow row after repetitive row, you have the time to observe your surroundings. To take notice of the landscape and how you have changed it for the better. That row of faltering pears in the orchard that should probably have fell to the axe already… perhaps give them one more season. The vibrant bunting perched upon that invasive seed head, plucking away at it frantically. Doing his part to disperse it onto another area of the farm where I don’t want it growing.
The inebriating belch of the Troy-Bilt’s overworked, two stroke motor in conjunction with its constant hum soon begins to make you feel like Carlos Castaneda on a “spirited” outing with Don Juan. The blistering heat, the occasional sting I endure while trimming around the beehives, and grass coating the right side of my face after shooting from the side of the mower, I have come to embrace this time away from constant brain stimulation. A time where I can get lost in thought and just focus on the world that is unfolding around me within my immediate proximity.
One of the many rewards that comes with land management is witnessing firsthand the wide array of fauna that take up residency once you start improving the landscape. Our farm was severely overgrown and riddled with invasives when we took possession, hence we didn’t see a whole lot in the ways of bird life those first couple of years. This has changed exponentially since and our yard list (birds who frequent our farm) continues to grow annually as we continue to manage the landscape and improve it.
If you build it, they will come.
This has become a popular catchphrase in the restoration and native plant movement, but let’s distill it a smidge more. Ray Kinsella, (played by Kevin Costner) an Iowa corn farmer, while out working his field, hears a voice from up above. “If you build it, he will come.” Spoiler alert. Ray decided after several sleepless nights to mow down his corn, drain his savings and build a ballpark so that he could have one last catch with his dad. Imagine if more of us heard the same voice, yet it prompted us instead to bring back our natural landscapes. Landscapes that are capable of healing the wounds that we have all been personally responsible for inflicting upon the earth.
It has brought me immense pleasure to discover that with each passing year, new species of birds arrive on our farm to take up residency. Being on a riparian corridor with available woodlands, we inherited the incredibly striking Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus), the stream side marauder Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon), and the yellow bandit, Common Yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas). After a few years of active managing, we welcomed several more prized avian tenants such as the Fox Sparrow (Passerella iliaca), Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) and my personal favorite, Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens).
Tyrannus tyrannus
Another one of my favorite Spring/Summer residents, the Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus) or “Bee Martin” as was once referred, accompanies me week after week as I tirelessly trudge the uneven, rolling planes of our land. With each passing cut the “King” swoops down from his convenient, Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacaciaperches) perch and takes a stab at the insects being flushed by my mower’s ever-dulling blade.
The Smithsonian’s first museum curator, Spencer Baird had this to say about the Kingbird in his monumental, three volume, History of North American Birds, published in 1874, “…the audacious boldness with which it will attack any birds larger than itself, the persistent tenacity with which it will continue these attacks and the reckless courage with which it will maintain its unequal warfare, are well-known peculiarities of this interesting and familiar species.”
I have witnessed the Kingbird’s courage firsthand as I toil about on my farm. It has an unmistakable boldness and will present itself confidently, within just a few feet from you and its perceived bounty. During the first year of their residency, I was foolish enough to think that I had forged a bond with one such Kingbird as he waited ever so patiently as I worked the bees. What I soon figured out was that the King was fonder of my thriving apiary and the smorgasbord that it encompassed. Baird continues, “The Kingbird feeds almost exclusively upon winged insects and consumes a vast number. It is on this account one of our most useful birds, but, unfortunately for its popularity, it is no respecter of kinds, and destroys large numbers of bees. In districts where hives of honey bees abound, the Kingbird is not in good repute. Wilson (Alexander) suggests that they only destroy the drones, and rarely, if ever, meddle with the working bees. But this discrimination, even if real, is not appreciated by the raisers of bees, who regard this bird as their enemy.”
I disagree with Wilson’s assessment of them only destroying drones as for the third consecutive season, we are seeing drastically lower rates of return on virgin queens at our Marengo apiary where the Kingbirds frequent. As we have managed this land to accommodate a variety of wildlife and other insectivorous birds, all of the blame can’t fall upon the King’s feathered scapulars (shoulders).
World renowned artist and ornithologist John James Audubon echoed a similar sentiment in one of the finest works of ornithology that was ever created, The Birds of America (1827-1839). “The Tyrant Flycatcher, or, as it is commonly named, the Field Martin, or Kingbird, is one of the most interesting visitors of the United States, where it is to be found during Spring and Summer, and where, were its good qualities appreciated as they deserve to be, it would remain unmolested. But man being generally disposed to consider in his subjects a single fault sufficient to obliterate the remembrance of a thousand good qualities, even when the latter are beneficial to his interest, and tend to promote his comfort, persecutes the Kingbird without mercy, and extends his enmity to its whole progeny. This mortal hatred is occasioned by a propensity which the Tyrant Flycatcher now and then shews to eat a honey bee, which the farmer looks upon as exclusively his own property.”
We are all just trying to get by.
In Langstroth’s The Hive and the Honey-Bee published in 1853, beekeeping pioneer Lorenzo Langstroth said of the Kingbird and of birds in general “That some kinds of birds are fond of bees, every Apiarian knows, to his cost; still, I cannot advise that any should, on this account, be destroyed. It has been stated to me, by an intelligent observer, that the Kingbird, which devours them by scores, confines himself always, in the season of drones, to those fat and lazy gentlemen of leisure. Langstroth continues… “Still, I have never yet been willing to destroy a bird, because of its fondness for bees; and I advise all lovers of bees to have nothing to do with such foolish practices. Unless we can check among our people, the stupid as well as the inhuman custom of destroying so wantonly, on any pretense, and often on none at all, the insectivorous birds, we shall soon, not only be deprived of their aerial melody, among the leafy branches, but shall lament over the ever increasing horde of destructive insects, which ravage our fields and desolate our orchards, and from whose successful inroads, nothing but the birds can ever protect us.”
I couldn’t have said it any better than Lorenzo. Long live the King!!
