SCORES & OUTDOORS

by Roland D. Hallee

It has already been a month since my wife and I moved to camp for the summer. With the annual trek comes the installation of the bird feeding stations that are all around us. We get the usual local congregations of chickadees, nuthatches, gold finches, blue jays, woodpeckers and occasional wanderers like the house finches, purple finches and grosbeaks.

However, this year, we have observed a noticeable influx of another species of bird that would, in the past, and at home also, be occasional visitors. That would be the Tufted Titmouse.

They have dominated the feeders, and we can hear their unmistakable calls from the cover of the woods. It is a resounding peter-peter-peter.

What has caused this increase in their numbers? Populations have boomed between 1966 and 2015, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. Partners in Flight estimate a global breeding population of 8 million with 100 percent living in the U.S. They are not on the 2016 State of North America’s Birds Watch List. The most probable reasons for the range expansion include a warming climate, reversion of farmlands to forests, and the growing popularity of backyard bird feeders. It’s a story we have heard over and over about these different species of birds that are migrating further north.

It is generally thought that tufted titmice, as of late, have become year-round residents of their range rather than migrating south.

The Tufted titmouse is a small bird with gray upper-parts and white underparts with a white face, a gray crest, a dark forehead and a short stout bill, with reddish-brown flanks.

Tufted titmice, Baeolophus bicolor, live in deciduous woods or mixed evergreen-deciduous woods, typically in areas with a dense canopy and many tree species. According to this, our camp is a haven for this species of bird. They are indiscriminate eaters. They eat mainly insects in the summer, and include seeds nuts and berries in their diet. Experiments with tufted titmice indicate they always choose the largest seeds they can when foraging. They typically hold the seed with their feet and hammer it open with their beaks. In fall and winter, they often hoard these shelled seeds in bark crevices.

tufted
titmouse

Like the chickadee, they can only take one seed per trip and usually shell the seeds before storing them.

While foraging, they hop among branches and twigs of trees, often hanging upside down, sometimes hovering momentarily.

The female will lay from five to six eggs, with sometimes as many as nine. The eggs are under an inch long and are white or cream-colored with brownish or purplish spots. The incubation is done by the female only. They will hatch is 12-14 days. The male will feed the young during the early days, but both parents will feed the chicks as they get older. The young will leave the nest in 15-16 days following their hatching.

Tufted titmice nest in a hole in a tree, either a natural cavity, a manmade nest box, or sometimes an old woodpecker nest.

The oldest known wild Tufted Titmouse was at least 13 years, three months old. It was banded in Virginia in 1962, and found in the same state in 1974.

There is always something going on with Mother Nature.
CHICKADEE UPDATE

If you recall, a couple of weeks back I told of a chickadee that had taken up residence in a long-abandoned bird house behind our camp. We hadn’t seen it in a couple of weeks, thinking the worse, after seeing a blue jay in the area. Well, she was spotted this weekend, in the bird house. We didn’t want to approach the house causing a disturbance. We can only assume there are eggs in there. We will continue to monitor the situation.

SCORES & OUTDOORS

by Roland D. Hallee

Back around 1954, when I was seven years old, I became aware of a game called baseball. I loved it. I grew up in an era where I watched some of the greatest baseball players in history: Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays, etc. The list goes on.

I watched on television when Roger Maris hit his 61st home run of the season in 1961, at Yankee Stadium against Red Sox pitcher Tracy Stallard, breaking Babe Ruth’s legendary record; I was at Fenway Park when Detroit’s Jim Bunning pitched a no-hitter against the Red Sox; I was also at Fenway Park when Ted Williams hit his 521st, and last home run in his final at-bat before retirement in 1962. I’ve seen many games, watched many players who are now enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

But, my two main idols in those formative years were Red Sox third baseman Frank Malzone, whom I think I gravitated to because that was the position I played in Little League, high school, and during my softball playing days. But my favorite in the 1950s and early 1960s, was Red Sox centerfielder Jim Piersall.

Jim Piersall

What brings this up is that Piersall passed away on June 3, at the age of 87. But the story doesn’t end there.

Back in the early 1990s, a friend of mine was in the business of promoting sports memorabilia shows in Augusta. My job was to drive to Portland and rendezvous with professional athletes with whom he had contracted to come to the shows for autograph sessions. Among the many I drove from Portland to Augusta and back were former Red Sox stars Jody Reed, George Scott, Jim Rice, Jim Lonborg, Bill “The Spaceman” Lee, etc.; New England Patriots linebacker Steve Nelson; Celtics star Robert Parrish and Bruins players Cam Neely, Bobby Carpenter, Ken Hodge, just to name a few.

Well, one day, my buddy says to me, “I’m putting on a show next week, and I need you to go to Portland and pick up George Foster and Jim Piersall.”

I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. A week later, I was driving a car to Augusta with Jim Piersall sitting in the back seat. I was hoping he would sit next to me up front, but Foster claimed that spot. My conversation with Foster is a story for another day. But Piersall did not disappoint me in his storytelling.

Unfortunately, Piersall suffered from bipolar disorder during his playing days, in a time when the disease was not fully understood (early in his career he was diagnosed with “nervous exhaustion” and spent seven weeks in a mental facility in Massachusetts), and everyone said he was crazy. The film Fear Strikes Out, starring Anthony Perkins as Piersall, was the story of Piersall’s 17-year major league career and the mental challenges he faced.

But that day, in the car, on our round trip from the airport to the Augusta Civic Center, he displayed no signs of the disorder. Most of his topics were up and coming players at the time and some banter with Foster, who was a feared slugger who played in the National League for the Cincinnati Reds’ “Big Red Machine” in the 1970s. He once held the National League record for most home runs in a season with 52.

Piersall’s stories are legendary. He once stepped up to bat wearing a Beatles wig and playing “air guitar” with his bat; led cheers for himself in the outfield during breaks, and “talked” to Babe Ruth behind the centerfield monuments at Yankee Stadium. In 1963, while playing with the New York Mets, he hit the 100th home run of his career and ran around the bases backwards.

He was ejected from the game a countless number of times for the shenanigans he performed on the field.

In his autobiography, Piersall commented, “Probably the best thing that ever happened to me was going nuts. Whoever heard of Jim Piersall, until that happened?”

The list of his antics are endless, but one memorable one was when he was ejected from a game, while playing for the Cleveland Indians, for running back and forth in the outfield, waiving his arms frantically, trying to distract Ted Williams during an at bat.

He heckled umpires, threw baseballs at scoreboards, and charged the mound when hit by a pitch.

He was a colorful character that is missing from the game today. When Jim Piersall stepped on a baseball field, you never knew what was going to happen.

But with all these incidents, playing for five different teams, Piersall was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame on September 17, 2010.

To this day, I really can’t explain why I idolized that baseball player.