Author: marlenecondon@aol.com

• Nature News by Marlene A. Condon
• Mar 5, 2024

I feel extremely fortunate that I received my degree from Virginia Tech. For a nature lover, such as I, the campus and the Blacksburg area where Tech is located provided plenty of opportunities to observe wildlife.

I lived a few miles away from the university in a rented trailer that was surrounded by farmland. One morning when I left for class, I forgot to close my bedroom window. Much to my surprise (and delight, to be honest with you), when I returned home later that day and walked into the bedroom, I found a momma opossum with her babies clinging to the fur on her back!

Young opossums accompany their mother in this manner during the final month that they are suckling. I was absolutely thrilled to see such a cute sight, but of course, the opossums weren’t thrilled to see me. The entire family left quickly by way of the same window they’d entered by.

Many folks do not like this mammal because they consider it to be ugly and rat-like in appearance. People tend to be afraid of rats, so they are often afraid of opossums as well. But there’s really no reason to fear either one of these mammals. As a child, I had a black-and-white pet rat named Melvin that I remember fondly to this day.

Wild rats and Virginia Opossums are both members of Mother Nature’s cleanup crew. You are most likely to see rats at farms where spilled grain has been left on the ground where it would become wet and moldy if rodents didn’t feed upon it. Agricultural-supply centers that leave spilled grain on the floor also invite mice and rats to visit, and homeowners shouldn’t leave pet food outside where numerous kinds of wildlife will be attracted to it.

Opossums recycle dead plants and animals, which helps to keep the environment functioning properly. Sadly, this role causes them to get run over when they try to feed upon animals that have been hit by traffic, which is why you see so many dead opossums on the roads.

Opossums are omnivorous, eating just about anything that they find, including insects and other invertebrates (animals without a backbone), small birds and mammals, amphibians (such as frogs and toads), eggs, and fresh fruits and vegetables.

If you drive slowly after dark (opossums are nocturnal, or active mostly at night) on rural back roads or even along city and town roadways, you might spot an opossum and get to watch its ambling gait as it searches for food.

A Virginia Opossum has a small brain, which is supposed to be indicative of low intelligence. However, all animals possess just what they need in brainpower to survive, and that’s what counts.

This species does very well, even though an opossum skull can only hold 26 navy beans, as opposed to a Common Raccoon’s skull that can hold 139. I never would have thought to measure intelligence with navy beans, but yes, a scientist did make this measurement!

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). You can read her blog at https://InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com.

• Nature Notes by Marlene A. Condon
•  January 7, 2025

I’ve had some unusual outdoor experiences over the years.

For example, in spring, I enjoy sitting on my deck to feel the sun’s warmth penetrating my skin and joints, which are painful due to rheumatoid arthritis. One day, I started falling asleep in my chair and heard the flutter of wings near my head, but I was so sleepy that I didn’t look up immediately. I listened to the sound come and go a few times, and I thought that a bird wanted to visit the nearby birdbath but was afraid to do so because I was close to it.

Suddenly, I felt a flutter of wings right at my head. I quickly opened my eyes and saw a tufted titmouse. It apparently had been working up the nerve to grab some of my hair for its nest. I had read that these birds would pluck hair from snoozing animals. Now I know from first-hand experience it’s true.

One winter evening, I was reading in my living room when I heard a sound from the window facing the deck. My deck is attached to my house just outside the kitchen and living room, and tall Chinese Photinias (Photinia serulata, or Red-tips, as they are often called) surround it.

When I looked out, I saw a dark-eyed Junco (a species that visits Virginia from more northern states every fall through spring) fluttering at the glass. It was pitch black and freezing out. I could not imagine what this little bird was doing, flying at night and seemingly trying to get into my house. It was spooky.

I thought about this and remembered that I had sometimes gone by the Photinia bushes at dusk and inadvertently frightened juncos out of them. These visitors to my yard were spending the night in the evergreen Photinia bushes, which provide good shelter from cold and/or wet winter weather.

I concluded the junco at the window must have been frightened out of the bushes, and because its vision was not good in the dark, it had flown to the illuminated window where it could see ahead of it. I wanted to help the junco find its way back into the bushes, so I put on the outside deck light and shut off the indoor living room lights, and indeed, the junco returned to its roosting site.

Since that time many years ago, this situation has happened again a few times, and I’ve learned what scares these birds out of the bushes — raccoons visiting to look for seeds that have fallen from the bird feeders on the deck. If a raccoon climbs to the deck via a Photinia bush with roosting juncos, the birds may be frightened and fly out, immediately heading to an illuminated window.

Now that I understand this phenomenon, it’s no longer eerie, and I know just what to do: put on the deck light, shut off the indoor lights, and peek out the sliding doors to watch the raccoon.

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). She writes a blog at https://InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com/

• Nature News by Marlene A. Condon
• Jun 3, 2024

Just about now, hillsides throughout Virginia are taking on the pink and purple hue of Perennial (or Everlasting) Peas. These plants are also called Wild Peas, and their scientific name is Lathyrus latifolius.

 These non-native vines of southern Europe “escaped” from garden cultivation to grow “wild” (or on their own) throughout the countryside. Although many people plant Perennial Peas solely for the beauty of their blossoms, I enjoy having these vines — which can grow up to 9 feet long — in my yard for wildlife.

 The blooms of Perennial Pea attract many kinds of insects, especially butterflies and bees. The flower petals easily support either kind of insect while it’s making a meal of nectar, thus allowing it a chance to rest instead of hovering while it eats. But what I find most interesting about Perennial Peas is their attraction to American Goldfinches.

 Pick up any book about American birds and you will read that goldfinches eat almost exclusively seeds, even feeding their young regurgitated seeds instead of insects. These birds possess a conical bill to easily crush seed shells, whereas insect-eating birds tend to have thin straight bills for poking into crevices (where insects often hide) and “spearing” them.

 It’s very rare for parent birds to feed their chicks only seeds because developing babies need, as a rule, animal protein to grow properly. However, one day I discovered that American Goldfinches do eat insects — aphids.

 I had planted Perennial Peas around my lamp post so they could cover it with flowers throughout the summer after the clematis growing there had finished its spring blooming. As I looked out the window one afternoon to see if anything interesting was happening in the front yard, I saw some American Goldfinches poking around among the pea vines. They remained there for such a long time that I knew they had to be eating something.

 Yet they were not poking at seed pods as if trying to get seeds, nor were they around the blossoms as if trying to get nectar (finches and orioles feed upon nectar just like hummingbirds do). I was dying of curiosity, but I waited (im?)patiently for the birds to fly away.

 As soon as they did, I rushed out to the lamp post to try to figure out what those birds had been after. What I found were aphids, tiny insects that tend to become numerous on plants suffering from a lack of water, and, indeed, we’d been having a dry spell. I hadn’t watered because I prefer plants in my yard to make it on their own.

 Because I had never read that goldfinches eat aphids, I wondered if that was, indeed, what the birds had been eating or if I was mistaken. However, it’s been many years since that initial observation, and every time I’ve noticed goldfinches poking at leaves on my Perennial Peas or any other kind of plant, I have immediately checked the plant and there are always aphids to be found!

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). She writes a blog at https://InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com/

• Nature News | Marlene A. Condon
• January 2, 2024

The following nature story appeared as a letter to the editor in the fall 1999 issue of Virginia Tech Magazine, and was submitted by Everette M. Prosise, class of ‘68.

“I always wondered why a fighting gobbler was used to depict Hokie [the Virginia Tech mascot] fearlessness. A turkey is a turkey, at least so I thought. Its image as a fighter I accepted on blind faith. But now I have seen the turkey hen fight with a passion that would make the eagle seem tame.

“I was starting a grill at my farm and weekend retreat in Dinwiddie, VA when I saw a turkey coming into the back field. She had about 10 babies about the size of large quail walking with her. I watched with great pleasure the beginning of a new cycle of wildlife.

“Without warning, the hen took off vertically as if she had stepped on a land mine. About 20 feet off the ground, she intercepted a hawk that was coming in for a baby. The hen hit the hawk with its feet first and with its back almost parallel to the ground.

“The hawk flew toward the back of the field with the hen in pursuit; it turned back towards the babies, and the hen hit it again. They both fell about 10 feet and were fighting with their feet, until the hawk headed for the tree line and kept going.

“The hen returned to her babies. When they went back into the pines, the babies were very close to their mother’s feet. It was unbelievable. A mid-air fight between a hawk and a turkey. From now on I’ll be proud of our turkey mascot. Wish you could have seen it.”

So don’t make fun of the Virginia Tech mascot that’s based upon a very courageous creature!

Now for a personal nature story. One day I discovered first-hand the origin of the name “Touch-me-not” for our native orange-flowering Impatiens capensis.

As I sat by my pond observing the wildlife in and around it, I kept feeling tiny impacts upon my face. There were no obvious insects around me, nor were there any clouds in the sky possibly sprinkling upon me. Each time I felt something, I would look around, but the source remained a mystery. Finally, I’d been pelted enough to get serious about finding the answer to this mysterious occurrence.

I scrutinized my surroundings and smiled as I spied the Touch-me-not plants across the way. It was fall and the plants were covered with seed capsules. A slight breeze was blowing, causing the capsules to touch one another or other parts of the plants.

Touch-me-not seed capsules have elastic sides at maturity, and the slightest touch causes the sides to spring apart. As each side twists spirally, seeds are sent flying through the air with enough momentum to take them several feet away, where I interrupted their travels.

The breeze had not heeded the warning of each seed capsule to “touch me not”!

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). You can read her blog at https://InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com.

• Nature News | Marlene A. Condon
• December 5, 2023

I spent my first year of college at a campus in Massachusetts that was perfect for me. The college was situated on a hillside and a great deal of forest had been preserved beyond its buildings. A trail ran through the woods for quite a way, and I walked there often.

Whenever I recall those forays into the forest, I think of all the chipmunks that seemed to keep me company. The habitat was ideal for these adorable little creatures. As a result, they were numerous and seemed to be everywhere. I will always associate chipmunks with my first year of higher education.

I subsequently transferred to Virginia Tech to finish my degree requirements and I never left Virginia. When my “dream home” near the Blue Ridge Mountains was built, I was absolutely delighted to see chipmunks on my property. Now I could cohabit with these furry critters instead of only visiting them as I had as a student in Massachusetts.

I quickly discovered that chipmunks love sunflower seeds, just as many birds do. I therefore saw them often around my bird feeders, even during the winter when chipmunks are less active because they semi-hibernate. In other words, they rouse themselves to eat during the winter whereas true hibernators go into a very deep sleep or torpor and do not eat until spring.

Thus, if you live in an area that has chipmunks, you may well view them at this time of the year, especially if you feed birds. The Eastern Chipmunk is a member of the squirrel family and is known as a ground squirrel because it spends most of its time on the ground. However, it’s capable of climbing trees if it wants to get food or needs to escape a predator.

The characteristic trait that most folks probably think of when they hear the word “chipmunk” is probably the large internal cheek pouches that line a chipmunk’s face. These pouches can each be stuffed with a heaping tablespoon of seeds. One

reference says a chipmunk was found to be carrying more than 3700 blueberry seeds in its cheeks!

A chipmunk places food into its pouches with its forefeet, and uses those same feet to push on the external surface of its cheeks to get the food out when it wants to do so. The inside of its cheeks is not wet like your mouth, but dry like your skin so the food doesn’t get wet.

Chipmunks forage for food during the day, gathering it to store in their underground tunnels. Although chipmunks are primarily vegetarians, they do also eat meat. Earthworms, snails, insects, insect larvae, frogs, salamanders, small snakes, birds, bird eggs, and mice have been reported as chipmunk food. There is even a report from 1939 of a chipmunk robbing a junco nest and of capturing a young robin here in Virginia.

Chipmunks are thought to live from two to four years in the wild, although in captivity, some have lived as long as eight years.

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). You can read her blog at https://InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com.

• Nature News | Marlene A. Condon
• November 7, 2023

Autumn’s the time of year to look for the dried seedpods of Common Milkweed. This food plant of the Monarch Butterfly often comes up along rural roadsides, where it’s likely to get cut by the Virginia Department of Transportation when it performs its fall mowing. However, short plants might get missed by the mower blade, while taller plants might get pushed aside rather than cut.

If you are lucky and find a pod (no need to take home more than one), you can spread its seeds where you’d like the plants to grow next year. And if you are truly lucky, a Monarch will alert you next spring to the new plants in your garden as she lays her eggs.

Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is a flowering plant that often comes up in dry fields where it typically grows 3-5 feet tall. It starts to bloom in early summer, and if you smell the uniquely shaped flowers, you’ll be rewarded with a wonderful scent worthy of expensive perfume.

The overall impression of these plants from a distance is one of ungainliness and coarseness, so many folks don’t like to plant them in manicured gardens. But a close look reveals lovely flowers that attract a great many pollinators.

Blooming sometime in June, they attract numerous species of butterflies to the goblet-shaped flowers that hold a generous amount of nectar. You might catch a glimpse of Silver-spotted Skippers, Great Spangled Fritillaries, Zebra Swallowtails, American Ladies, Tiger Swallowtails, Eastern Tailed Blues, and Spicebush Swallowtails. You could even spot an unfamiliar species! On June 18, 1999, I saw my first-ever Variegated Fritillary feeding at Common Milkweed in my yard. It spent an afternoon in my milkweed patch before disappearing. And, of course, milkweed could bring in the Monarch whose caterpillar prefers this species of milkweed.

Bumblebees love milkweed nectar, although they are sometimes killed when their legs become trapped inside a flower slit. You can see these slits if you look closely at the flowers. Little bags of pollen are within each slit and they become attached to an insect’s leg if it slides into the opening. The insect then carries the pollen to another milkweed plant where it fertilizes a flower if all goes well. If this plan fails, however, you could notice a dead or dying bee caught on a flower head. The fertilization process is so complex in Common Milkweed that very few flowers ever get fertilized. From each cluster of up to 75 flowers only two seed pods will normally develop.

Numerous other kinds of interesting insects can be found on Common Milkweed, including orange aphids! In June, orange-and-black insects appear on the plants. Called Large Milkweed Bugs, they suck the juices of developing seeds, which kills the seeds and thus helps to keep Common Milkweed from overpopulating an area. You could also get to see the Small Milkweed Bug that is black-and-red and serves the same function of limiting plant numbers.

Consider Common Milkweed an insect delicatessen!

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of “The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People” (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). She writes a blog called “In Defense Of Nature.”

• Nature News by Marlene A. Condon
• Apr 5, 2023  

Viburnums are very attractive shrubs often used for landscaping. The name comes from Latin for a plant known as the Wayfaring Tree or Viburnum lantana that is common in European waysides. Travelers — or wayfarers — would see many of these shrubs and hence the origin of the common name.

Viburnums species grow wild in the United States, and if you plant these American relatives in your yard, you’ll provide food for our native critters. Northern Cardinals, Brown Thrashers, American Robins, and Gray Catbirds are some of the kinds of birds that I’ve observed dining on fruits at my “Viburnum Café”, and White-tailed Deer and Eastern Cottontail Rabbits eat viburnum twigs.

The fruits of viburnums are fleshy and berry-like — known as “drupes” — and they come in a variety of colors. Depending upon the species or variety of the plant, its drupes will be red, yellow, blue, or black. The red- and yellow-fruiting forms make for a more-colorful shrub, but these fruits tend to be more acidic and thus not as eagerly consumed by wildlife. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The fruit often remains on these shrubs until late winter and early spring, a time of great hardship for many animals because newly developing seeds and fruits have not yet formed on most plants, and the previous year’s supply is running low.

Viburnum drupes may keep animals from starving or becoming malnourished, so it’s a good idea to grow species that produce red or yellow fruits as well as those

that provide blue or black ones. My viburnum hedge contains a variety of species and thus fruits of different colors ripen from early summer to the end of autumn, depending upon the species.

Gray Squirrels eat the red fruits of the viburnum known as Highbush or American Cranberry — Viburnum trilobum — that is not at all related to the cranberry plant that produces the fruits so popular with humans around Thanksgiving. Highbush Cranberry fruit is tart and edible, though, like the fruit in the grocery stores, and people sometimes make preserves out of it. The squirrels discard the skin and eat only the fleshy insides.

Most viburnums produce attractive clusters of white flowers that, depending upon the species, can be highly fragrant. These blooms lure many kinds of insects that help with pollination so fruits will form. Try to grow at least two of the same species of viburnum for cross-pollination and good fruit set — production of fruit. Viburnums do well in partial shade, but flower better in full sun and produce more fruit for wildlife.

Fragrant Viburnum, or Viburnum carlessi has sweet-smelling flowers that yield blue-black fruits in early summer. Arrowwood, or V. dentatum; Wither Rod, or V. cassinoides —also known as Wild Raisin; Nannyberry, or V. lentago — also known as Sweet Viburnum; Black Haw, or V. prunifolium; and Siebold Viburnum or V. sieboldi; offer fruit from the end of summer through the end of fall. Avoid “snowball” viburnums as they produce sterile flowers not capable of making fruit.

Viburnums — plants that serve wildlife and people wonderfully well!

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). You can read her blog at https://InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com

Daily News-Record, June 9, 2023

At this time of year, you might literally almost step on a baby white-tailed deer. One morning I walked over to my daylily garden to see how it was doing. I stopped at the edge and looked towards the back of the garden before looking at the plants right at my feet. When I did look down, I was shocked to see a baby deer looking up at me! Apparently, it felt well hidden among the tall leaves of the daylily plants, and it was. I never would have seen it if I hadn’t gone over there.

A baby deer is called a fawn while wearing its white-spotted, reddish brown “baby coat” and is unweaned; still suckling its mother’s milk. Fawns are born at the end of May and the early part of June in Virginia.

An adult female deer, called a doe, may give birth to one, two, or three young. Very rarely, four fawns may be born. The number depends upon the mother’s age and physical condition. Usually, a single baby comprises her first birth. In subsequent years, she normally will have twins and sometimes triplets. However, females with an inadequate food supply and in poorer health will have fewer babies than deer in top form.

Fawns can walk soon after birth but they don’t go very far for several weeks. Therefore, if you find a baby deer in your yard, as I did, you can figure that your yard or someplace quite close by served as the maternity ward!

A 1972 study done in Texas found that, on average, white-tailed deer fawns were only active 8% of the time during their first two weeks of life. By the time they reached one month of age, male fawns were active about 16% of the time and females were active about 12% of the time.

Each period of daytime activity tended to last less than 35 minutes, increasing from two periods a day during the first week to five or six periods a day by the age of one month. The duration of the activity periods increased with the increasing age of the fawns, but they weren’t active for two hours at a time until they were more than one month old. Only during their first week of life were the young deer most active during midday hours. After that, they moved around in the morning and evening hours.

People often happen upon a fawn during the day and assume it’s abandoned. They take it home to try to care for it, or they take it to a wildlife rehabilitator. But please resist the urge to “save” one of these cute creatures.

Mothers associate with their fawns very little during the first 8 weeks after giving birth so as not to attract predators to a helpless baby. So, if a fawn looks healthy and isn’t crying as if it’s starving, it’s undoubtedly being cared for, and will fare much better with its mom than with humans.

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). You can read her blog at https://InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com

Daily News-Record, May 5, 2023

Mountain laurel is common in the mountains of Virginia. In May, a plant that is situated in a sunny to partly sunny area will be covered with large and beautiful flower clusters. Thus, it’s not surprising that folks often use mountain laurel as a landscape plant. It can reach 20 feet in height and look like a small tree, but it’s more often a many-stemmed shrub between four and ten feet tall.

Mountain laurel is useful to wildlife. Ruffed grouse and wild turkey sometimes nest in mountain laurel thickets. Some insects are lured to the flowers for nectar, and songbirds, reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals may use the shrub’s evergreen foliage for cover.

Songbirds can penetrate the foliage to hide from predators, such as Sharp-shinned Hawks that are common in Virginia during the winter months. Small mammals, such as short-tailed shrews, often make entrances to their subterranean tunnels in the shadow of mountain laurel so the openings are not so blatantly obvious to predators.

However, I once watched an American crow patiently observe a hole in the woods by my driveway for several minutes. It did, indeed, catch an unwary shrew as it poked its head out to survey the surroundings.

Reptiles (scaly, cold-blooded animals) and amphibians (cold-blooded animals that spend part of their lives in water) also make use of evergreens. Lizards, turtles, snakes and salamanders can’t regulate the internal temperature of their bodies. When they’re in need of warmth, they must lie in the sun to absorb heat from its rays. When they need to cool off, they need to seek the shade of plants.

And sometimes they just need privacy. I once found a pair of Box Turtles mating underneath low branches of mountain laurel. They obviously did not want to be seen by a predator while busily procreating!

The large pinkish-white flower clusters attract insects, such as bees. mountain laurel has an interesting mechanism to ensure pollination by these animals.

The pollen-bearing stamens (the male part of a flower) are tucked into pockets at the base of the petals. When an insect lands on a blossom, at least one stamen (or more) will spring out of its pocket and slap the insect!

Pollen is thus deposited on it, and the insect then carries it to other blooms where the pollen might rub off onto the female part (the pistil) of the flowers. Voila! Fertilization occurs, resulting in seeds.

Each cup-shaped bloom is less than an inch wide and imprinted with faint dots. Colonists gave mountain laurel the common name of “calico-bush”, likening the flowers to polka-dotted calico; a fabric that is heavier than muslin — a course-textured cotton.

Mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) grows naturally in acidic soils, requiring the same growing conditions in your yard as rhododendron and azalea bushes.

Note: All parts of mountain laurel are poisonous to people and livestock. You might want to avoid planting it if you have young children, or you raise bees for honey, which could end up as poisonous, too.

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People; Stackpole Books. She writes a blog at InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com.

Daily News-Record, April 5, 2023

A fun activity during Easter season is to dye the white eggs of domesticated chickens, but some wild birds produce eggs that are already beautifully colored when they are laid. The South American Tinamou — a somewhat fowl-like bird in its habits — lays eggs that are variously colored in brown, yellow, blue, green and purple. If we could get our chickens to do that, we would not have to dye their eggs for the Easter holiday!

Scientists believe the first birds to evolve laid white eggs just as their reptilian “cousins” still lay today. But apparently, pigmentation that occurred by chance through the ages must have helped eggs to survive and therefore became standard coloration for some species of birds.

Most eggs are marked in such a way as to help them blend into their surroundings. An egg may be splotched with brown or reddish-brown spots at one end or colored all over in the hues of the dried twigs and leaves that make up the nest in which it is found. Eggs that are laid in burrows (such as those of kingfishers) or cavities (such as those of woodpeckers) tend to be white because they are not out in the open where a predator could easily spot them.

Some birds, however, lay beautifully-colored eggs that don’t seem to be well camouflaged. For example, robins and other thrushes lay gorgeous blue or greenish-blue eggs.

One of my first memories is of a blue robin’s egg that had somehow fallen — unbroken — into our tiny fenced-in yard when I was probably no more than three or four years old. The little egg fascinated me with its beauty and I felt it was a tiny treasure, the likes of which I had never seen before. I wanted to keep it, being too young to realize that federal law prohibits possession of bird eggs without a permit, but my older brothers insisted upon placing the egg upon the fence. They thought the parent bird might be able to retrieve it. I was heartbroken when I later found the precious blue egg lying broken on the ground where it had again fallen, this time into numerous pieces with its insides spilling out.

Although an eggshell seems to us to break very easily, it’s a prison to the bird enclosed within. The young avian creature needs to have a sharp “instrument” to escape, and that instrument is an egg tooth, a rough hard projection at the tip of the upper mandible of the bird’s beak. The chick’s movements within the shell cause the egg tooth to scratch the inside surface of the shell, weakening it. After the bird breaks out of its “prison,” the egg tooth disappears.

What I’d really love to see is the egg that’s laid by a warbler in Japan; it’s red, my absolute favorite color. A cuckoo that lays its eggs in the nest of this warbler also lays red eggs, matching the host bird’s eggs.

Happy Easter and Happy Spring!

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). You can read her blog at https://InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com