Audubon Center notebook

Stinky ladybugs

Last week we experienced a rite of fall – the annual invasion of the ladybugs! These familiar little beetles are searching for a place to hibernate and spend the winter. They come in the cracks under the doors.

We now have quite a few ladybugs who want to spend the winter in this nice warm building. Unfortunately, this is not the best place for them. Being inside our nice dry building over the winter will in fact be a death sentence. They will die of dessication from the warm dry inside air.

Where they should hibernate is outside under tree bark, under shingles of the building, or between rocks. Anywhere but inside!

Periodically we scoop up clusters of ladybugs that we can reach, and send them back outside. When you do this, be careful! They won’t bite or sting, but they do stink!

Prying nuthatch

A regular volunteer recently brought a three-foot tall stump to the Fields Pond Audubon Center. It had a round, three-inch hole in it. It had interesting fungi and lichen growing on it. Now it is on our cement entry. Children love to measure the width of the hole and identify what woodpecker made it.

Two weeks ago a white breasted nuthatch perched on the stump to pry open a sunflower seed from our feeder. “Isn’t that cute” we said, and went about our business. And the nuthatch went about its business, and stayed and stayed. The bird apparently had such great success opening the sunflower seed, it decided that this was the perfect location. Traveling upside down on the stump as only nuthatches can do, it looked for insect food in cracks in the bark. It traveled sideways and poked under the fungi and lichens for a snack.

We watched as it peeked into the woodpecker hole, we laughed, and then it disappeared into the hole! Thinking it would emerge immediately, we watched some more. Well, some 60 seconds later (an eternity when you are waiting for a bird to perform) the nuthatch emerged. It proceeded to poke and explore the stump some more, just as it would on a tree in the forest.

Was this nuthatch looking for a roosting hole where it can find shelter from upcoming storms? Did it not notice that this stump is chained to a mailbox on a cement slab attached to a building? Maybe it didn’t care. In any case we are hoping that the little nuthatch will be a regular visitor in the days and months to come.

Send sightings, comments or questions to fieldspond@maineaudubon.org