To the Editor: 

I thought I knew/ a thing or two/ about the birds and bees/ but there’s more to find/ than the common kinds/ of wasps and chickadees.

I’ve always loved bird watching but it wasn’t often that they would treat me to the entertainment I’ve enjoyed this summer.

Years ago, I built a very large martin house high up on a pole but never got a purple martin to inhabit it. More recently, I researched building some bluebird nest boxes. The plans called for very specific dimensions in order to attract them. I gave that up before I started because most everyone I knew who put the effort into building them was getting sparrows instead.

So imagine my surprise when bluebirds began nesting in my mailbox. I have a pretty nice mailbox by any standard but it is wholly unsuitable for bluebirds. It’s made of cedar and has a large compartment with a door for mail alongside a smaller open compartment for flyers and non-postal junk.

Well, I got some flyers all right! That’s where the bluebirds have been nesting. It’s the wrong height and depth and the hole that simply has to be an inch and an eighth? Well, there is no hole.

That entire end is open, and it faces south, which is also wrong, according to the experts. And when it’s time for the chicks to fledge, the mother coaxes them into the road for their first attempt at flight!

But the bluebirds have been successfully raising clutch after clutch there for the past few years even though my neighbor has an always-vacant nest box set up for them a stone’s throw away.

This year, I decided to mark their growth, each time I got my mail from the right compartment, I would take a peek into the left and snap a picture with my camera phone. Then I would post them on Facebook for friends and family to see

It quickly became an enjoyable aspect of my day, but it didn’t last long because they grow up quickly — hatched to fledged in about two weeks. So, when the second batch had flown the coop, and they hadn’t started a new nest after several days, I thought my bird watching was over for the year.

But I was in for an even better treat. I was up on a ladder painting the house the last week of August when I realized that a bird was quietly making regular visits into the crabapple tree an arm’s length away.

It looked like nothing I’d ever seen before so I began noting its features: black beak, black mask across the eyes, a head crest, shiny red tips of wing feathers, and a bright yellow tip of the tail. Have you guessed it yet?

A fairly quick search through my Audubon Field Guide and I found I was watching a cedar waxwing, and not just one. The female was sitting on a nest of blind and bald hatchlings while the male was retrieving berries and bugs to feed to her as well as the chicks.

The waxwings didn’t seem to mind my presence all that much and I managed to get some terrific photos of them.

They grow so fast! After one week, they had all their feathers. After two weeks, I went to check on their progress and they had already fledged

I was disappointed that I didn't get to see them one more time, until I walked around the other side of the house and found them all high up in one of our elm trees. They were accompanied by at least one other family of recent fledglings, about a dozen altogether.

I was fortunate to watch them for a good 10 minutes before they flew off to their next neighborhood of residence. They fly in flocks but do not migrate.

They are nomadic and will appear wherever their food is in season. They eat berries mostly. That's why they were nesting around here so late in the season, hatching in the last week of August.

Birds were not the only critters I learned something new about this year. I found out that what I thought were bumble bees burrowing into my house the past few years were actually carpenter bees.

I didn’t like their presence at first because I feared being stung but then I learned that the males have no stingers and, while the females do, they don’t sting unless really provoked. And the little holes they drill into the underside of my soffit and rake boards can hardly be seen.

Another benefit I didn’t realize I was enjoying, until a letter-writer here wrote that they are pollinators and chase other bees away, was that there haven’t been any hornets’ nests around the house lately.

But their presence became a nuisance this year once the woodpeckers discovered them and pecked our soffits apart to get at the big juicy bee larvae. That left me with a lot of repair work that I don’t wish to repeat every year.

With a little searching on the Internet I found instructions on how to make an attractive bee nest house that with a little luck might keep them out of our soffits. I don’t know if it will save the bees from the woodpeckers but that will be something new to address next year.

David Crawmer
North Greenbush