[Mnbird] Mulberry Vacant

[DONALD GRUSSING Owner]

As long as I can remember the ripening of the mulberry bushes created a great bird busyness. This year, there are very few interested birds. Usually it is frenetic. Robins. Bluebirds. Bluejays. House Finches. Even an occasional Crow. Others which seldom eat berries. This year hardly anything but four drunken squirrels, chasing one another with great speed and then making 25-30 foot leaps from oak branches to the ground. Not just once. But a lot. Berries just falling to the ground. 

We have a Coopers Hawk hunting the neighborhood and it did get a just fledged robin in the Mulberry bush the other day. But that is not enough to explain this absence. 
For the first time in at least 20 years a Wood Duck abandoned a nest in our Wood Duck house after producing 9 nice eggs. Last year we had two broods, one after the other with a Hooded Merganser investigating in between and perhaps dropping an egg of her own. House Wrens and Phoebes are acting normal as are all the woodpeckers and White Breasted Nuthatches. 

Something is going on but I don't know what. 

Don Grussing 
Minnetonka 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.lists.mnbird.net/pipermail/mnbird_lists.mnbird.net/attachments/20210617/379025c1/attachment.htm>