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If I visit the Rappahannock Library on a Thursday morning, I am not likely to spend my time researching the information for which I went to the library. Instead, I will have a lively and lengthy conversation with volunteer, Richard Abell, one of the wisest and wittiest men I know. Quite naturally, the conversation centers around birds or some aspect of a feathered life, or, on this particular day, scaled life.
On a recent Thursday, Mr. Abell recounted a snake story that evoked one from me, another from him, and so on. The Abells had erected a nest box they hoped would attract an American Kestrel, the handsome little falcon we used to call Sparrow Hawk.
During the autumn and winter months it is not uncommon to see one of these little falcons perched on a utility wire staring at the ground. He or she is looking for any slight movement that signals a mouse. The kestrel is a fast and ferocious hunter. Any mouse unlucky enough to be moving through short grass when a kestrel is watching is likely to become the little hawk’s next meal.
A kestrel did investigate the nest box, according to Richard Abell, but apparently found it lacking. Instead of a kestrel, the Abells attracted a pair of European Starlings. This is likely to happen with any nest box designed for a bird larger than a wren or bluebird. A five-foot snake, probably a black snake, made his slithery way up the pole and consumed thfe young starlings. For three successive years nestling starlings made a meal for the snake.
Did I say, or just think, “Good for the snake?” That was one pair of European Starlings that didn't populate Virginia with their aggressive progeny to drive native birds from nest cavities.
A snake is a silent and persistent natural predator. If mobbed and driven from a nest by outraged birds, one will return again and again until all contents, whether eggs or young, are consumed.
Native birds have been existing with snake predation for millions of years, and I have accepted the fact. I did lose my scientific objectivity a number of years ago. A pair of bluebirds chose a nest box on a tree outside the kitchen of our home at the Madeira School. I watched courtship, nest building and knew the female was incubating eggs when bluebird visits to the nest box became furtive and infrequent. When the eggs hatched, male and female seemed to be on the roof of the box or at the entrance hole constantly with still squirming insects to fee the young.
On a day late in June I pulled into the parking lot and got out of my car, sensing that all was not right or as I wished it to be. The male bluebird was scolding from his usual perch and the female hovered near the nest box. Something was wrong. I ran to the nest box, unhooked the roof latch, and looked inside. A black snake lay coiled in the nest. Without a thought, I reached inside, grabbed the snake by the tail and yanked him from the box. Four lumps in his sleek black body clearly showed the young bluebirds. I killed the snake and was immediately sorry. I had interfered. I had lost my objectivity. At the time, I was not comforted by the knowledge that the bluebird pair would immediately seek out
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