March Madness & Fowl Shots

March Madness!  While most folks associate that phrase with college basketball playoffs, my March Madness refers to the invasion of starlings at the farm.  These winged pests appeared out of no where last week as February leaped into March.  With their arrival, my husband Mike pulled out the shotgun and began the yearly ritual of waking me up at the crack of dawn with a blast of birdshot from the barn.

He dislikes these unwelcome squatters that sneak into every nook and corner of our nineteenth century stone barn.  Whenever he sees a chance to shoot these elusive targets, he takes it, forgetting that some of us are trying to steal a few extra winks in the morning.  I can only hope the switch to Daylight Savings time and a few more minutes of darkness in the morning, will let me snooze in a few more days of winter hibernation.  I’m not quite ready for the earlier sunrise and gearing up for the long list of chores that springtime brings to the season.

Starlings aren’t the only birds to return to our farm recently.  A familiar Redtail hawk has taken up residence in a nest high in a tree top looking over our pasture.  We think this is the same bird that was hatched here last year.  As a juvenile, he kept a close eye on the activities around our barn, dining on mice and other delicacies that scurried across our fields.

The curious thing about this member of the raptor family, however, is that this Redtail has an appetite for starlings.  At the sound of Mike’s shotgun being fired, this opportunistic bird of prey swoops into a nearby treetop and waits to see if the human hunter’s aim is accurate in knocking down the targeted starling.  It seems the Redtail has been conditioned to scope out and scoop up the “free lunch.”  He drops from treetop to ground, retrieving the easy meal and flying off to his perch to tear into this small morsel of meat.

It has almost become a game between Mike and the Redtail.  I’m not sure who is keeping score to see how many points Mike makes with his fowl shots.  The winner is always the hawk.  The loser is always the starling.

Our barn has become the home for a nesting pair of American kestrels, also known as Sparrow hawks.  I don’t believe I have ever seen one of these members of the falcon family actually eat one of the multitudes of sparrows that inhabit our barns.  And they don’t seem to have the same appetite for starlings as their bird-of-prey brother, the Redtail.  I am glad they have returned to their nest in the peak of our limestone-sided barn because they do enjoy dining on small rodents and various insect pests, like grasshoppers.  Their aerial acrobatics are fascinating to watch as they hover lower and lower in the sky until they finally pounce upon their hapless prey.

I watched in dismay last summer, however, when a baby bunny became lunch for the kestrel and its nest of fledglings.  While I understood this was simply the food chain story playing out, this nest of bunnies was one that I had deliberately tried to save after mowing a field of grass hay.  The nest had survived the haybine and the rake.  As I made my next round flipping windrows to dry, the fur-lined nest of squirming cottontails caught my attention.  I threw hay back over the nest in hopes the mother bunny would return to care for them.  I also wanted to give them some shade cover, and camouflage them from the piercing eyes of our resident hawks.  I asked Mike to avoid that tiny section of the field as he baled hay the next day.  Later in the week, we saw from a distance that the bunnies had not been abandoned and were growing up.

One bunny decided to leave its littermates and venture out into the world.  It had not learned the lesson of nature that defined prey and predator before it left the nest.  Despite several zigs and zags, the courageous cottontail’s adventure was short-lived.  I turned away as the Sparrow hawk lifted off to share its successful hunting trip with its mate and babies.  It is all part of life’s cycle here on the farm.

As winter turns into spring, I welcome the month of March.  It is a time of new chances.  It is a time to deflect what has been disheartening in the past, and look forward to the renewal that the new season brings to the spirit.  It is a time to be uplifted and joyful and to play the game with gusto, whether it’s basketball, farming, or life.

 Lancaster Farming's guidelines for posting comments on the website ask that you follow the Golden Rule, respecting other opinions and being truthful and civil.  Do not post any statements that are illegal, defamatory, obscene, threatening, or plagiarized.