Geek out with me about critters and plants on a mountaintop in Virginia. I’ll share what I’m learning as I try to bring native plants back on 200 acres of old farmland and tell stories from my encounters on the mountain.

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In this issue

• Book update

• Field notes: American kestrel boxes

• Signs of life: ladybug, ladybug

• Recommended reading

• Questions for YOU

• The Official Mountain Poodle

Speaking of my book: a preorder discount!

As you may have noticed, authors are always pushing preorders because they can be an early indicator about the life of the book in the world! If you’ve waited on preordering so far, you might want to do it now, while there’s a 25% discount offer happening. Here’s the special discount link.

Field notes: American kestrel boxes are here

Thanks to the folks with the Virginia Grassland Bird Initiative, a collaboration among the Smithsonian’s Virginia Working Landscapes, Quail Forever, American Farmland Trust, and Piedmont Environmental Council, there are now two American kestrel nest boxes on the mountain.

Grassland birds, the birds that live and eat in grassland communities, are declining fast and are at greater risk than any other group of birds. The Grassland Bird Initiative is out to help save birds like the American kestrel, a raptor that hunts in grasslands. The kestrel is declining in Virginia for reasons that are still unknown, but a likely culprit is pesticide use.

Now is the time to install kestrel boxes because in the winter, the kestrels will start scouting for good nesting places. The birds naturally nest in tree cavities, and they don’t build a physical nest out of grass or twigs like other birds. So right before the nest box is installed, a few handfuls of wood shavings are dropped inside to mimic the conditions in those cavities. When the bird is preparing to lay eggs, it will start to scrape the shavings aside to the corners, leaving a bare spot in the middle. The boxes will be monitored every couple of weeks in season, and when scientists see this occurring, they’ll know that eggs will be laid soon.

The nest boxes are assembled on site and installed at the top of a tall pole in the ground. Here on the mountain, the hard part is digging that hole—there is rock everywhere, often just beneath the topsoil.

The boxes needed to be out in the open, not too close to trees, and at least ¼ mile apart, because the birds like to be able to see all around. The mountaintop is an ideal place for these boxes, because if you’re in the right spot, the views go on for miles. Each box sits about 10 feet above the ground.

Unlike the bluebird boxes, which I opened periodically to peek in and see whether eggs had been laid or had hatched, it’s not advisable to open a kestrel box and look inside during the nesting season. Instead, a small scope is inserted through the hole in the front of the box that allows researchers to see what’s happening inside.

For now, I’ll watch for kestrels flying and perching near the boxes or even on the boxes, and checking them out. That’s a sign of interest. Not all boxes get occupied the first year, so here’s hoping!

Signs of Life

Ladybug, ladybug…ladybug, ladybug, ladybug, ladybug

You know the rhyme: Ladybug ladybug fly away home/your house is on fire/and your children all gone.

Why, I always wondered, is the ladybug’s house on fire? What an upsetting rhyme to teach children! Why are nursery rhymes always so disturbing? I’ve revised this one as follows: “Ladybug ladybug, fly away home. Please! Just go!”

At this time of year when a nice sunny warm day breaks up a cool spell, you might see ladybugs massing outside your house, especially around your windows. And inside your windows. And on the ceiling and on the floor. And perhaps one of them lands on your face while you’re absorbed in an old episode of Gray’s Anatomy and you shriek and jump up from the sofa and then feel silly and relieved that it’s not a tick.

My point is, there are a lot of ladybugs on the mountain right now. And while I used to think ladybugs were a good thing—they eat the aphids that kill plants!—you can have too much, way, way too much, of a good thing. And these are not the ladybugs I was looking for, to paraphrase what Obi Wan Kenobi surely would have said, if anyone had asked him before intentionally introducing these nonnative ladybugs with the idea that they would manage insect pests in the state of California. Instead, they became pests themselves all over the U.S. and into Canada. Because isn’t that how it usually works?

The invasive ladybugs do eat insects pests, but they will also eat the eggs and larvae of native ladybugs. They can quickly overpopulate and push out the native insects that are better at supporting the local ecosystem. Chances are the ladybugs you’re seeing are a nonnative species of ladybug and not a native North American variety.

The nonnative ladybug that’s most common around here and in most of the country is the harlequin or Asian ladybug, or Harmonia axyridis. It’s often more orange than red and has a lot more spots, and the spots sometimes run into each other. But the best way to distinguish the nonnative ladybug is by a white marking behind its head that looks like a letter W. (Actually, in my experience, the best way to distinguish this nonnative ladybug is that it’s swarming my house trying to use it as a winter AirBnB.) The harlequin ladybug was introduced in California by the USDA in 1916, but it didn’t establish wild populations until many years later and after additional introductions.

The harlequin will not only try to overwinter in your home, when you crush it, it stains and it leaves an odor, and, unlike native ladybugs, it will bite. It’s not an especially painful bite, but who needs it? On top of that, the harlequin can infest grapes and foul the flavor of wine. Ladybug, fly AWAY.

Recommended Reading

Maybe you don’t want to directly experience sharing your home with an influx of ladybugs or other critters, but you’d enjoy reading about someone else’s experience living in a remote, wild place? I recently started reading The Way of the Hermit: My Incredible 40 Years Living in the Wilderness, a memoir by Ken Smith, and I’m finding it thought-provoking and absorbing. I marked this passage, where the author has just explained that a critter stole a bun that he had been looking forward to eating: “You have to surrender to the fact that you’re not going to be master of the land if you choose to live in a place like this. A bit of your food is a peppercorn rent to pay to be a part of the natural order.” That resonates.

What’s happening in your neck of the woods?

Tell me where you are and what you see growing or flying or crawling this month, in a park near where you live, or in your own yard or window box. (I hope you don’t have invasive ladybugs moving into your home.) Send me a photo, if you like.

And don’t forget to tell me about your favorite nature-related book or podcast.

The Official Mountain Poodle Gets a Haircut

It was inevitable. Fall is seed season, and Cleo had become a 4-legged seed-collector. I gave her an extreme haircut, known as a modified “retriever cut” in poodle grooming lingo. Now, it’s a lot easier to brush out the seeds (and the occasional tiny deer tick).

Now’s a good time to subscribe for more mountain discoveries, book news, and the requisite poodle photos.

Thanks for joining me on the mountain!

Until next month—

Paula W.

Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop

Coming January 7, 2025 from Timber Press/Hachette Book Group

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