For the real devout followers of The Wanderer as well as The Presto Press, our cover and this story may seem familiar as it was created by Anne Stowell of Mattapoisett. This week, I learned that Anne had passed away and I feel it is important to share a bit about Anne and her work with our readers.
Having worked with Anne at The Presto Press in 1990 and 1991, I learned quite a bit about how a small town newspaper should be run. She knew everything and spent quite a bit of time making sure I learned the ropes.
When The Wanderer was started in 1992, Anne was quick to help out and spent two years as our proofreader and copy editor. All this was done for the reasonable price of transitioning out her patio furniture in the spring and returning it to storage again in the fall – quite a bargain.
I think it’s fair to say that without Anne, The Wanderer would probably not be here today, as her help and guidance helped shape us. Thank you, Anne, and we will miss you.
Paul Lopes, Editor of The Wanderer
(The following story first ran in The Wanderer on January 22, 1993)
Hole Sweet Hole
By Anne H. Stowell
(The amateur birder strikes again.)
Available on a short-term basis: cozy home in a nice neighborhood, solid wood construction throughout. Can be furnished to suit tenant. Exceptional views; many amenities.
A “nice neighborhood” from a bird’s-eye point of view isn’t that of over-achieving property owners whose grounds are apt to have all the charm of parking lots. Birds and other wildlife prefer the interesting flora featured in the yards of those of us who simply don’t get around to things.
Brush piles that are “temporarily” left behind the evergreens are rewarding places to find insects and cover; rampant bittersweet vines entangled with thorny undergrowth (which we’ll get to “next year”) not only provide good winter snacking but the perfect spot for surveillance before flying in to the feeders.
Once you have been messy enough to attract your wildlife, they enthusiastically join in, contributing ever-burgeoning species of vines and berrying bushes to a scene now out of control. A 30-foot privet, planted by the birds many years ago near the back door, now has sufficient superstructure to support all the feeders as well as its own abundant crop of dark blue berries – relished by all kinds of finches and wintering bands of robins.
Some people object to the smell of the tiny white blossoms, but the bees think it’s divine. It’s hard to imagine that this umbrella-like specimen with its gracefully cascading branches is the same bush which, hard-pruned, forms other people’s hedges.
The privet thus has acquired the constantly reinforced stranglehold on perpetuity enjoyed so lustily by the red-berried tartarian honeysuckle, blackberries, the wild white-flowering rose (which even we attack, in spite of its glorious scent) and the sweet autumn clematis, which reacts to a spring cutdown by producing masses of blossoms just in time for migrating butterflies and then a winter of happy seed-eating by the white-throated sparrows.
So this “nice neighborhood” has natural food, feeders, and a scattering of ground feed. Add a few evergreens including berry-rich junipers for cover and your friends may escape the hawk. Now this is a problem that more scientifically-oriented birders don’t have, but to those of us who regard our visiting birds as individuals, a hawk attack is a revolting development! I try to keep in mind the thinking of Pulitzer Prize-winning naturalist Edwin Way Teale in “A Walk Through the Year”: these aren’t murderous assaults designed to end lives; the hawk is motivated only by the desire to prolong life – his own. If he could eat his prey without killing it, he would. This is, however, not the first thing I say when I see a pile of feathers on the lawn.
Another amenity, as advertised, is water. Our birdbaths are all on the ground, a safe enough location if the birds have a clear line of vision in all directions or if one side backs up to an impenetrable thorny barrier. A scattering of baths is a good idea because of territorial lines and because on hot days at least one will be filled with a snoozing pigeon.
Ours include a Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds size and – because we never get around to baking either – an enameled Corning pie plate which is unaffected by weather. On the Day of Reckoning, something extraordinary is awaiting those who have garden-gracing ornamental birdbaths – and no water.
By now you are thinking we live in a jungle and that we would have been the first to embrace the meadow concept. No, an unbroken expanse of lawn is, personally, both visually and mentally restful, so I’ve come up with a battery of excuses for being a lawn mower freak. Robins and flickers much prefer short turf, and many are the close calls I’ve had with catbirds racing alongside the mower to grab in midflight the moths and other small insects fleeing in my path. If the mower is set high enough, as ours is because we haven’t repaired the one wheel that won’t budge, the small ground-flowering weeds are left intact for finches, woodchucks and rabbits. Mowing keeps the jungle at bay, leaving a yard encircling necklace whose jewels vary from season to season, from year to year, always with new gifts: the brilliant red of barberries and hollies, the surprising debut of mock orange, a capricious carpet of lilies-of-the-valley.
So much for the amenities! The prime real estate is a magnificent hole in an old oak close by the house. Never mind that the tree top left town in the clutches of Hurricane Bob, leaving twisted wreckage that looks like a punk haircut. How deep is the hole? Only the tenants know for sure, but spring turn-outs add up to quite an accumulation of debris, particularly eye-catching as it sails past our windows. Three young squirrels plus their mother, or three flicker offspring plus a parent, can all pop down totally out of sight. No wonder the little nuthatches change their minds about moving in – their kids would never see the light of day. Mother squirrels really have a handle on housekeeping.
We’ve seen them carrying their babies from the woods to this new home – when the children have messed up the first nursery, just move! Which is something we don’t plan to do – it’s too interesting right here. (Besides, we’d probably never get around to it.)
