Mouths to Feed

Summer is a slow time at the bird feeders in My Florida Backyard. Many birds change their diets in the summer to focus on the insects that are available in abundance; insects offer high amounts of protein and that's what nesting birds and juveniles need in the summer. When cooler weather arrives, insects are a little more sparse (not that it necessarily feels that way on a mosquito-filled evening) and some birds will drop by feeders for seeds instead. We have two common feeder visitors in My Florida Backyard - northern cardinals and tufted titmice, like the ones shown below.

The titmice are especially fun to watch, as they crack each seed delicately, holding it between their feet and using their beaks to get at the goodness inside. Experiments have shown that titmice will make an especial effort to select the largest seed available, and are also known to take cracked seeds off to store in a separate location for later.

Tufted titmice always seem especially colorful in the fall, most likely because they have one yearly molt sometime in August and are still flaunting their rust-colored and clean white breast feathers. Many birds have a spring molt to prepare for mating and nesting season, but tufted titmice do not.

We'd like to attract some additional feeder birds to My Florida Backyard, but haven't had much luck except for the aforementioned cardinals, mourning doves (in droves), and the occasional woodpecker (though never at the suet feeder - that seems to go untouched). Do you live in Central Florida and have any feeder tips for us? We'd love to know if anyone has any luck drawing finches with a thistle feeder when they're down here for the winter, or any other advice you can offer!

Natural Blues

As you may know, we can't really get enough salvia in My Florida Backyard. We love discovering a new species to add to the collection, so when we found Bi-color Sage (Salvia sinaloensis) a few months ago, we knew we needed it. We bought two and planted them, but before we could get any pictures, they stopped blooming. Last week's rain seems to have brought them back, though, and flower spikes have started to appear again.

This salvia is native to Mexico, as indicated by the botanical name - sinaloensis refers to the Sinaloa district of Mexico where the plant was first identified. The common name refers to the two colors of the blooms, blue with white centers.

The blooms spikes are gorgeous, but the foliage has a lot going for it too. It forms a nice low-growing mat of green and bronze leaves, making great ground-cover. Bicolor sage can be grown in full sun to part shade, and is said to be hardy all the way down to zero degrees, so we expect it to do quite well here even if we have a frost or two.

Nearly all salvias are wonderful in the butterfly garden as nectar plants (with Salvia splendens being a notable exception), so we can never have too much. Easy to grow, easy to love... those are the kinds of plants we love in My Florida Backyard!

We Gather Together

Here in My Florida Backyard, holidays are generally pretty quiet affairs. Our families live many hundreds of miles away, so it's usually just us enjoying our holiday meal out on the back porch. Of course, plenty of wildlife is also around, feasting as well.

Who joined in your Thanksgiving feast? We hope it was as nice as ours was. Happy Thanksgiving!

Mexico Came Here

Fall in Florida is the season of purples. Asters, muhly, beautyberry - so many of fall's fantastic showstoppers here are purple. Another great example is Mexican Sage (Salvia leucantha), which begins blooming in early fall and lasts until first frost.

Though not native to Florida (it hails from Central American and Mexico), Mexican Sage is well-suited to our climate and shows no invasive tendencies. It has silvery green foliage that grows into almost shrub-like proportions by the end of summer (3 feet high and tall), when the flower stalks emerge and add another foot or so to the height. (Ours are still small - we planted them only a month or so ago when we got a great deal on the clearance rack at Lowe's.)

The stalks and calyxes are purple and fuzzy, while the blooms themselves are a soft white color. This late-bloomer is a favorite of pollinators like bees and butterflies, and is very easy to maintain. After the first flush of blooms has finished, cut back to the base (you'll see the new growth beneath) for continued blooming as long as the season permits.

Mexican Sage will likely die back to the ground if we have a hard frost, but will re-grow quickly once warmer weather arrives. We always love adding new salvia species to the butterfly garden in My Florida Backyard - especially those that add to the purple pageant of autumn!

Back Porch

Our screened-in back porch is probably our favorite part of the house here in My Florida Backyard. It gives us a place to sit and watch the wildlife world go by without being eaten alive by mosquitoes or drowned in the rain. In turn, the outside of the screen gives wildlife a place to hang out - lizards spend time there warming up in the sun, squirrels race across it on their way from one feeder to another, and insects rest there before heading back out into the world, like this furry brown moth we found the other day:

The world is full of PBMs - "plain brown moths", most of which are extremely difficult to identify, but the fun furry legs on this one led us to try anyway. We started at DiscoverLife.org's Moth ID guide, which allows lets you check boxes and narrow down your options, but we still got too many possibilities. We tried some Google searches for things like "furry brown moth", but again - no luck. In the end, we found it by dumb luck while browsing brown moth images. It's a Florida Fern Moth (Callopistria floridensis), whose caterpillars feed on many kinds of ferns, and its native to Florida and the tropics.

Small discoveries like this aren't exciting to everyone, but they make days in My Florida Backyard a little more fun for us. Time spent on our back porch is never time wasted!

Mellow Yellow

Fall is the time of purple and gold in My Florida Backyard, and one of the brightest patches of yellow comes from the Winter Cassia (Cassia bicapsularis syn. Senna bicapsularis). This shrub provides a bright burst of color from now through the first frost with its unusual flowers, but that's not the only way it provides gold in the garden. You see, cassia species are host plants for sulphur caterpillars of several varieties. Normally, these caterpillars are the same green shade as the leaves they eat. But when the flowering season arrives, the caterpillars immediately begin to dine on this delicacy, and as a result - they turn bright yellow.

The species above is an Orange-Barred Sulphur caterpillar, but Cloudless Sulphur butterflies (shown below) will lay on cassia as well, along with the smaller Sleepy Orange. They generally lay far more eggs than will ever hatch - Winter Cassia is extremely attractive to ants, and while harvesting nectar the ants will also gobble up any sulphur eggs along the way. Fortunately, sulphur butterflies seem to haunt these bushes, laying eggs from spring to first frost, so their continued success is pretty well-assured.

It should be noted that some organizations place Cassia bicapsularis on invasive species lists, but other groups, like the University of Florida Extension, are not concerned and in fact continue to recommend this bush for planting. To add to the mess, C. bicapsularis is sometimes confused with Senna pendula, a similar and possibly more invasive species. You can use your own judgment on whether to include this non-native in your own landscape, but in My Florida Backyard, we feel comfortable enough with this plant to enjoy the incredible benefits it brings to the butterfly garden, including the bright yellow caterpillars of fall.

P.S. Nov. 7: A quick update - here's a good article from FloridaGardener.com with more info about the differences between C. bicapsularis and S. pendula.

Have a Feast Here Tonight

Regular readers may remember that back in the spring, we installed a "squirrel feeder" in My Florida Backyard. This cleverly designed feeder looks like a corn stalk, and you just add dried corn on the cob to the stakes. Well, as much as we liked it, the squirrels spent the summer ignoring it, and we were getting ready to chalk it up to another "oh, well, we tried" situation.

But then a few weeks ago, the squirrels seemed to suddenly realize this feast of plenty of was free for the taking, and they quickly began to strip the cobs of the tasty little kernels. One squirrel loves to perch atop the fence nearby as he nibbles his dinner, while this little guy prefers to use the corncobs themselves for his seat (sorry for the poor image quality - we snapped this through the window so as not to scare him off):

It's nice to know this fun feeder is finally working out. Most likely, the squirrels spent the summer feasting on insects that were readily available, and as those populations began to dwindle, they looked around for easier food sources. While this doesn't necessarily keep them off the bird feeders nearby when there's sunflower seed to be had, it does at least provide ridiculously cute photo opportunities as they enjoy their tasty corn snacks in My Florida Backyard.