DID YOU HAVE an abnormally dry growing season this year—one where it felt like you just couldn’t keep up with the watering, maybe? Today’s guest, naturalist and artist Julie Zickefoose, and I both did in our otherwise different garden locations—places that usually have plenty of rain.
Besides prompting frustration and some plant failures, the dry times also had us making observations about the impact of drought on various forms of wildlife.
Julie Zickefoose lives and gardens in the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio. You probably know her from one of the books she’s written and illustrated like my favorite, “Saving Jemima: Life and Love With a Hard Luck Jay,” and besides being an author and artist, Julie is a wildlife rehabilitator and a keen gardener, too. I’m glad to welcome her back to the show to commiserate about a season that really threw us both—and what we learned from it and its impact on gardeners, plants, and birds and other wildlife.
Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of “Saving Jemima.”
Read along as you listen to the Dec. 16, 2024 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
a dry year, with julie zickefoose
Margaret Roach: Hi, Julie. How are you?
Julie Zickefoose: Hey, Margaret. It is so nice not to feel alone in our drought despair.
Margaret: Well, yeah, we got to catching up on the phone the other day and the topic quickly shifted to drought. And before we go there, I just wanted to say, because I think of you as “Bird Lady” [laughter], that two Saturdays ago, I think it was finally cold enough here in the Hudson Valley of New York to put out my bird feeders. Because of bears, I can’t do so otherwise. Feeder season always makes me think of you. And do you want to guess like clockwork, who showed up first? What species showed up first within about 15 minutes?
Julie: Oh, it’s not a Wilson’s warbler [laughter]?
Margaret: No. Chickadees are the ones who always find the feeders first here, the black-capped chickadees. It’s hilarious. They’re like the little messengers that tell everybody then.
Julie: Yeah. So cute. That role is taken by tufted titmice here. They are our policemen [laughter]; they do not miss a thing, and I love them dearly.
Margaret: Yes. Well, and the tuffies, as I like to think of them, the tuffies came in within about two minutes and within 24 hours they were like 15 species feeding. So it’s like if you build it, they will come. Huh?
Julie: Exactly. And it also speaks to the fact that birds are forever watching each other and taking each other’s leads. And when I was doing a lot of rehab, when I’d have a very frightened wild individual come in, I would cage it right next to some long-term clients who had permanent injuries and things like that. And that bird would settle down right away,
Margaret: Take the signals from the old-timers. Huh.
Julie: If this orchard oriole and this house finch are eating out of their cups, why I’m going to eat out of a cup, too. Interesting. Interesting. It was magic. Yeah. There’s a lot to be said for having role models in bird world,
Margaret: So everybody followed the chickadees here to the sustenance. And on the other end of things, if you’re lacking in some form of sustenance, like, well, most of the country frankly was this last year, and is. There’s a lot of drought in a lot of places, or abnormally dry conditions. But I’m kind of a newcomer, and I think you and I both were saying that the other day on the phone that we feel like we’re a little bit of newcomers to drought usually. Is your soil kind of moist enough usually to sort of get along and garden?
Julie: Oh yeah. We have a pretty deep loam here, sandy loam. And really the last five summers have been wet enough that I haven’t had to pull out the hose much; not at all summer before this last one. And I don’t take it for granted when you don’t have to water; it’s like magic. It’s like gardening ought to be, right? Yeah. And then last summer was just the heartbreaker. I am still heartbroken from it. [Below, a brown thrasher enjoys Julie’s WarblerFall birdbath. More on the WarblerFall here.]
Margaret: Yeah. I think both of our areas, like I said, you’re in southeast Ohio and I’m in sort of the Hudson Valley of New York, and I think both of our normal rainfall is in the 40-something inches, 42, 43, 44 inches a year, something like that. And we were down, I think in this area we were down 6 or 8 inches below normal at one point, and the last few weeks we’ve started to have some precipitation, but it’s going to take a lot of time to get back. And the soil was unfamiliar. I mean, the texture of the soil and the way the soil just was like concrete in some places, like cracking open.
Julie: Yes. Yeah, I had wide cracks open in my yard, and I think the most shocking thing for me was seeing the streams run dry, and just going down in the woods and saying, my God, there’s nothing here for anything to drink. And that just frightened me. And what little pools remained in the larger streams would be full of minnows, just darting frantically. And you know that predators were cleaning those up. So it was very, very hard. And being an amphibian fan just to watch everything just dry up and with no hope was very difficult.
Margaret: When I look at the U.S. Drought Monitor map [below], and it’s definitely improved the last month because as I said, in some areas like mine, we’ve started to have some rain, but I think it was maybe 48 of the 50 states. I think it was only Alaska and maybe Kentucky or something that weren’t color-coded as having some degree of abnormal dryness or drought. Do you know what I mean? It was really almost everywhere.
Julie: Yes, I was. I was absolutely riveted by drought.gov, which I would go every couple days and say, “Yup, extreme. Oh, moving on toward exceptional. Great, wonderful.” My area was right on the edge of a dark-maroon blob that included Charleston, West Virginia. That was the exceptional drought. We may be there now. I don’t know. I haven’t had the heart to look since it got cold, since I’m kidding myself that it’s now not in a drought, but it still is.
Margaret: Yeah. Farmer friends and neighbors—I mean, we’re both in rural areas, and there’s a lot of farmers where I am. And they had crop losses in some cases, or definitely under-performance in a lot of their crops. And I mean, I have to acknowledge, I pulled out my vegetable starts. When I saw the stream nearby go dry, the brook down the road, go dry or almost dry. I just thought to myself—I’m on a well. I have a private well because we don’t have public water—and I just thought to myself, “You know what, Margaret, you’re not going to run your well dry. You’re not going to use water for things other than the most essential.” I’m not going to indulge myself in annuals and vegetables and so forth. I can buy those from my farmer neighbors. You know what I mean? I just had to prioritize, to triage, I guess is what I’m trying to say.
Julie: Yes. Having lived with a shallow well in Connecticut, I know very well that math, I am stupid [laughter]. I have town water, and I’m also really stubborn and giving up my ‘Sugar Snap’ peas was not something I was ready to do. So I watered all summer long,
Margaret: And I have to say that when you say ‘Sugar Snap’ peas and the peas and also green beans were the two things I really missed the most, because there’s nothing just pulling those right off the vine and eating them barely before you even turn around and walk a foot. You know what I mean?
Julie: Exactly.
Margaret: They’re just so fabulous. Yeah, so animals, so we can talk a little bit more about strategies for next time around and so forth later, but animal-wise, you said you’re an amphibian lover as I’m a frog nut and especially, and lots of salamanders around here and so forth. And I have a couple of in-ground decent-sized pools that I made years ago that I keep water available year-round to everybody, but had I remember, I think it was on Instagram or on your blog, I can’t remember, maybe both. Some of the sort of ruts in the road [top of page and below], almost like they ended up having I think, tadpoles in them. Is that right? Am I making that up?
Julie: I had three species: mountain chorus frog, which is a regional specialty; Cope’s gray tree frog; and American toad. No, I don’t think I actually wound up succeeding with American toad, but those two species were in there in great numbers and like a moron, I committed to keeping the water in the puddles. I had no idea, of course, that it would be an historic drought.
Margaret: Right.
Julie: So in June, when it stopped raining at the end of May… and in June, I started hauling water with 5-gallon jugs using my tractor with a little trailer behind it, my lawn tractor. I started hauling water, and by the end of August, I was putting 40 gallons in every other day.
Margaret: Oh my.
Julie: Oh my God. You have no idea what that does to your back.
Margaret: Yeah. Well, I mean, I’m just visualizing.
Julie: Lifting those things. I got smart. I worked smarter. I filled them with the hose while they were in the trailer, so I wouldn’t be lifting a loaded
Margaret: Right. One less lift. Right, right.
Julie: Exactly. And then I could tip them from the trailer into the puddle, but it was still awful, and I just wouldn’t give up because I’d had such poor success trying to raise them in containers. Well, by the end of August, I said, this is stupid; this is ridiculous. So I made some palatial containers for them with live plants and silt on the bottom and brought them up to the house and started trying to rear ’em, and they did a lot better.
But what hit me was that it had been 11 weeks and these things had not metamorphosed, which is abnormal. So I knew that they were not getting some stimulus from the environment to tell them it’s safe to go.
Margaret: Right. It’s safe to resorb or absorb that tail and get legs and stuff like that.
Julie: So whether it’s raindrops sluicing into the puddle, whether it’s something in the temperature, I don’t know what it is, but they weren’t getting that signal. So I said to myself, I could be doing this into the winter. I have no idea. I threw up the white flag and I took them to a beaver pond nearby, and I just said, “You guys are on your own. I can’t do this anymore.” And I was just out there and I looked at that puddle, which has formed since we got 0.7 inches of rain last night, and I’m going to fill it in, otherwise my stupid heart will make me do that again.
Margaret: Because in an abnormally dry situation, an animal like a female amphibian is going to look for any amount of water to lay her eggs in. So you’re going to end up with a repeat of the situation.
Julie: Yes. And it’ll be mine to worry about. She’s danced back off into the forest and gone into estivation, and I’m raising her babies [laughter].
Margaret: Right, right, right.
Julie: It’s not right.
Margaret: What’s wrong with this picture?
Julie: Right, right. What’s wrong with this picture is I’m an idiot. The other thing that happened was the deer keyed into that puddle, and they were the ones who drank it dry in two days.
Margaret: Oh! So it became a watering hole.
Julie: Oh, exactly. It was the only watering hole on my ridge. They were taking 40 gallons every two days, and what I wound up doing was putting out great big tubs of water in my yard for the deer. It hit me that they were either going to have to leave the area or they were going to die, and I didn’t want that to happen. So now I have deer who come still every day and every night to these tubs that I’m keeping out for them, and now I’m going to put heaters in the tubs because there’s still no water out there for them.
Margaret: And we should explain to people, you live on a preserve kind of, I mean, it’s a sanctuary, a private sanctuary. So it’s not a conventional yard where oh my goodness, to have deer would mean no garden at all. It is a very different type of environment, and so deer are part of the ecosystem and so forth, so you’re not completely nutty.
Julie: Well, I’m a nut, and the deer are beginning, the ones that have gotten very tamed since the drought have begun, they ate my asparagus. Who knew they would?
Margaret: Well, they do habituate, too. If we give them an inch, they take a mile. They certainly do habituate. That’s right.
Julie: That’s exactly right. So I’m kind of watching it right now. It’s just these three, the mother and her two fawns, and she had brought her fawns last year. So I get attached. I like ’em. I dig these animals, and I don’t want ’em to suffer. I don’t want any animal to suffer, so I do offer them water.
Margaret: Yeah. So did you also see, I think with your bluebirds you also saw some impact. I mean, obviously there was impact of the drought on everybody, every living creature, plant or animal. But what about with the bluebirds? Because I mean, you’ve written books about bluebirds; bluebirds have been almost like a signature of your work for a long time. So what about them?
Julie: Well, this was crazy. I went into this expecting it to be an awful year for bluebirds, because by my magic logic, if there no rain, there were no bugs.
Margaret: Right. No insects for them to feed the parent to eat or to feed to the babies. Yeah,
Julie: Right. That’s what I was thinking. I was thinking, this is going to be a crash. And what happened was they had a banner year, and I have been dissecting the data and looking at it, and here’s what’s crazy. Out of 28 clutches of eggs laid in my boxes, 10 of them were five-egg clutches, which is a much higher proportion of five-egg clutches than I usually get. I usually get four-egg clutches here. So first off, they were laying more eggs. But then they raised more babies successfully. And so I had 106 bluebirds hatch in 15 boxes in 2024, and I tried to get around and sex the babies, determine the sex by the color of their plumage, but I was traveling a bit, so I didn’t get to them all. But of the 74 nestlings that I was here to sex in 2024, I got 51 females to 23 males.
Margaret: Oh. Girls rule! [Laughter.]
Julie: Yeah, girls rule. So females comprised 69 percent of all the nestlings. So I’ve got to think since the sex ratio is usually nearly even in my birds, that the drought had something to do with it. It was the only obvious anomaly. So yeah, it was hot this summer, but ambient temperature hasn’t been shown to determine the sex of any bird embryo, except those of the Australian malleefowl, which lays its eggs in rotting compost.
Margaret: And you don’t have in Ohio that bird [laughter].
Julie: Yeah, yeah. I haven’t seen a malleefowl lately. So here’s this crazy thing. There’s this sex allocation theory that was developed by Trivers and Willard in 1973. It’s often presented to explain extreme sex ratio deviations. And by this theory, a female of whatever organism is going to, if she is in poor condition, she will benefit from producing more female offspring. And that’s because female offspring, even low-quality female offspring, are much more likely to be successful in obtaining mates than would low-quality males. So producing females would represent a bigger fitness gain to the mother. So we don’t know by what mechanism sex in bird eggs is determined, and it doesn’t really jive with my findings, because a female bluebird in poor condition is not going to lay five eggs.
Margaret: Right. So maybe more females, but not more eggs.
Julie: Maybe more females, but not more eggs. Right. When I think about this, what I’ve kind of settled on is almost all of my bluebird boxes are on the edge of hayfields.
And when the hay is cut, and the grass is short, they can see crickets and grasshoppers and spiders, and they can hear them rattle. As soon as the hay gets high and thick, they stop nesting in those boxes because they no longer have foraging habitat. Then when the hay is cut again, they can forage there. Now, this year, the hay was so poor and thin that they could see the crickets and grasshoppers even when the hay was high. So they continued nesting in those hayfields, whereas they normally would have to stop.
Margaret: Alright. So that was the other variable. That was the other difference. I see.
Julie: Right. So no rain meant thin hay meant bluebirds. We’re like, “Hey, the grass is long, but I can still see the ground.”
Margaret: Right. And I could find my prey, right, and feed my babies and myself.
Julie: That’s right. So I had triple-brooding, whereas normally they would get one or maybe two broods and they’d be done. So I had triple-brooding, larger clutches, more eggs, and weirdly more way more females than males.
Margaret: And I guess for me, this story is—and obviously you’re a complete bird nerd [laughter] and lots of people listening… But this is the thing about, as I have been saying recently since I read a book called “Slow Birding” by Joan Strassman a couple of years ago, is that in the phrase bird watching, we need to emphasize the watching. Right? The watching, because what you’re doing is really observing. You’re not just naming, oh, it’s this species, it’s that species. Check, check, check. You’re really watching. You really know these birds, and you’re doing your homework.
Julie: You’re living with them, and you’re moving through their reproductive biology with them, their phenology, the onset, the end. You’re there for everything when you run bluebird boxes. You know what’s going on, and that’s so valuable about that, is that you get an intimate look at their daily life that you could not get any other way.
Margaret: So I want to make sure we have time to sort of double back from our animal neighbors and companions to, as gardeners, what this was like. And as a sort of a transition, I guess I think it’s key for everyone to have water available 365 days a year. You were just saying you’re going to keep your buckets or cattle tanks or whatever they are for the deer, you’re going to keep them defrosted, so to speak, de-iced. I think that’s a really important point for every gardener to have access to water for all the creatures of the garden.
But as far as plants, and I said I pulled out my vegetables and so forth. Are you going to do anything differently after running around a maniac watering like crazy this last year? Was there any resolve or whatever? [Laughter.] Yeah, because really thinking frankly of, I’d really like to have a few things, like we talked about the peas and so forth, and I’d really like to have some salad greens and some herbs. I’m thinking of putting some manageable-sized containers near the house, where I can manage it.
Julie: I think that’s brilliant. If the drought forces us all to live like we just have an apartment balcony to garden then that’s what might need to happen. Being, as I’ve mentioned, kind of slow, I’m actually going to redo my big raised garden bed this winter, and raise the sides, make the soil deeper, and just mulch like crazy so I don’t have to deal with weeds.
I have quit using straw mulch because all it is is seeds, just a nightmare. In the spring last year, I used huge sheets of cardboard and newspaper, and I covered every surface that didn’t have a plant in it. I literally cut a hole for the plant and I would water directly into those holes. I think I saved a lot of water that way just by heavy, heavy, heavy mulching, and I intend to do that again next year.
Margaret: Yeah, I definitely, I mean, I see pictures online and whatever, I see pictures of almost like big window boxes on legs like footed, you know what I mean, the containers that are on a stand. It’s like a bookshelf, but instead of a shelf on top, it’s a box. Yes. And I’m sort of thinking, O.K., certain things, that’s all the space they need. I mean, I’m talking about a good size, not 2 feet, but a bigger, longer one. I mean, that’s manageable, and if it’s deep as you’re pointing out, you’re going to even deepen your in-ground beds so that it has enough insulation and can hold enough moisture. Yeah. I think that sort of is appealing to me at the moment.
Julie: I think it’s brilliant, and I’ve never grown lettuce in anything but containers because it water requirements are simply too high. If I can keep it moist by growing it on my front porch and water it with wastewater from the faucet, it’s going to do great with the added bonus that if I elevate it, the rabbits can’t get it.
Margaret: Right, and you just said wastewater from the faucet, so when you first turn on the water, say you’re going to wash your dishes or something, there’s a lot of lost water waiting for the hot to come on. Right. Are you saving that?
Julie: I have a 2-1/2-gallon watering can by every single faucet in the house, and I always run the startup water into the can, and you would not believe it gives me enough water to water my greenhouse and then some. So I actually do not run water to water my greenhouse. I just use startup water. Yeah.
Margaret: So you have a can near each. That’s a great idea. Near each sink. Yeah.
Julie: Yeah. It drove my late husband nuts. He was forever running into the cans, tripping over them, cursing, taking them, and I step around them. I know they’re there [laughter].
Margaret: Right. I’ll fill something, whatever vessel is nearest to the sink when I first turn on the dishes, then I’ll go water a house plant right then with it, like the tea kettle.
Julie: Sometimes a spaghetti pot, whatever’s there.
Margaret: I just wanted to say the other thing that we have in common, besides trying to figure our way through facing potential dry seasons that may be to come, we’re both on a tirade against woody invasives, yes? Is that your other big priority at the moment, because that’s been mine?
Julie: [Laughter.] Yeah. I make these giant eagle nests of invasive carcasses all around my place, and that’s actually my, I call it cross-training. I do it all winter long. I go out with my electric chainsaw and cut autumn olive, Japanese honeysuckle, Amur honeysuckle, privet, multiflora rose, and I’m actually winning, Margaret. I’m winning. And it is unbelievable to see dogwoods that you’ve peeled off multiflora rose and Japanese honeysuckle, and they have these huge deep scars in their trunks, and they bloom and they say, thank you, thank you, thank you. It’s so wonderful. [At right in the above photo, one brushpile of invasive debris at Julie’s.]
Margaret: So you’re rescuing the native woody plants by taking away all these invaders.
Julie: Right.
Margaret: Yeah. Well, I’m always glad to talk to you, Bird Lady [laughter]. Thank you, and again, thanks especially for your reminder with your anecdote about the bluebird and the reproduction this year, the differences to really watch that we can look more closely. I think that’s what it’s all about, really.
Julie: Yes, that and preparing to be surprised.
Margaret: Ah, yes.
Julie: Just keeping your mind completely open and say, “Wait, why did we have a banner year? What was going on here?”
Margaret: Yes.
Julie: Yeah. Preparing to be surprised, I think is great.
enter to win a copy of ‘saving jemima’
I’LL BUY A COPY of “Saving Jemima: Life and Love With a Hard Luck Jay,” by Julie Zickefoose, for one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is answer this question in the comments box below:
Was low rainfall or some other challenge the toughest part of your 2024 season for you and the wildlife in your garden? Tell us where you are located.
No answer, or feeling shy? Just say something like “count me in” and I will, but a reply is even better. I’ll pick a random winner after entries close at midnight Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2024. Good luck to all.
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prefer the podcast version of the show?
MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 15th year in March 2024. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the Dec. 16, 2024 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
