I looked out in my backyard the other day and saw six blue jays pecking around on the grass. Six! I’d never seen so many all at once.
Fifteen? Wow. Beats my six.
“All my friends that have feeders up, we’ve all noticed it,” Laura said. “My co-worker had like 25 or 30 in her yard at one time.”
Thirty?! That beats Laura’s 15 and my six — combined.
Not that it’s a competition. What it is is spring. And for some reason it’s a really good spring for blue jays, those plucky (pushy?) birds that are found from Texas to Canada, east of the Rockies.
Laura figures blue jays must have had a good year last year, foodwise. I do recall some neighborhoods — mine included — had a bumper crop of acorns, one of their favorite foods.
“They’re kind of a bully in a way,” Laura said. “I don’t mind when they hang around. They’ll scare off some of the less-desirable species, like the starlings or house sparrows.”
Laura said if you like birds, now’s a great time. We’re at peak migration season.
“We’ve all noticed a lot of black-throated blue warblers,” she said. “All the warblers are coming through. Hummingbirds are back.”
Saturday is World Migratory Bird Day. Laura is celebrating by going on a competitive birdathon, seeing how many different species her four-person team — called Two Drakes, a Hen & a Chick — can spot.
“We’ll stay out about 18 to 20 hours,” she said, and hope to identify around 120 species. “We have a route we’ve fine-tuned over the last 10 years in Prince William and Fairfax counties. . . . Believe it or not, the transfer station on I-95 is an awesome birding location.”
Wanna see birds in your backyard?
“The easiest thing is to have a bird feeder up,” Laura said. “Really the most important thing is to have native plants and create a habitat in your yard.”
I counted six blue jays in my backyard, but I lost count of the little red bugs in my front yard, which for some reason have been swarming the exterior of my Kia Soul this week.
Are they aphids?
“Clover mites,” said Mike Raupp, professor of entomology at the University of Maryland. The pinhead-sized insects are in the clover right now — literally and figuratively.
“Clover is a favorite food plant,” Mike said. “There are a number of things they will eat in the landscape: clover, grasses, many different kinds of ornamental plants.”
Mike explained that they overwintered in my yard as eggs, waiting.
“These are the perfect conditions,” he said. “As we transition from a very cool, kind of damp spring and then — bam — into 80 degrees, that’s when we tend to see these guys explode.”
Bugs don’t bother me, though I was a little discomfited by the dozens of crimson mites ambling over my car’s windshield. Fortunately, unless you’re a plant, they won’t bite you.
“The real issue with these is when they move into people’s homes,” Mike said. “And they will.”
Oh, great.
“If you crush them on the curtains or on fabric upholstery, they’re going to stain it,” he said. “That red pigment you see is going to transfer over. The best thing to do is get out the vacuum and hold it a half inch above them and suck them up.”
Mike said you can prevent them getting in in the first place by leaving a plant-free barrier of 18 to 24 inches around the foundation of your house and filling it with mulch or decorative gravel.
“Kind of create a no man’s land — let’s say a no-bug’s land — that these things don’t like to cross,” Mike said.
Just as birders are excited about the spring songbird migration, so buggers are excited by the energy in the insect world.
“The solitary bees are out buzzing,” Mike said.
Solitary bees?
“Some people call them sweat bees,” he said. “These are the guys that make the world go around. The honey bee is a nonnative insect brought over by the colonists to pollinate the nonnative plants we like to eat: apples, cherries, pumpkins. ...”
While honey bees live in colonies, solitary bees are solo-practitioners, pollinating native plants.
“Every female is a queen,” Mike said.
I liked that image.
Spring is in the air. Lots of other things are, too.
Twitter: @johnkelly
For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.