What is that black blob marring the beauty of my ‘Ming Porcelain’ daylily? Could it be a Japanese Beetle munching on the petals?
No, that would be too logical. Instead it’s a sunflower seed cached by a very industrious bird. How do I know that a bird didn’t accidentally drop the seed onto my daylily? Because this is the fourth seed I’ve found in a daylily flower in as many days. And if you look closely, you can see the seed was pushed into place (there’s actually a hole in the flower), it didn’t fall gently from the sky.
This goofy bird is caching seeds in the very early morning when the daylilies have just barely opened. He doesn’t know that the flowers open slowly and will expose his treasure in a matter of hours.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had birds hiding seeds in my daylily plants. Last fall, a chickadee stuffed seeds into all my dried up daylily scapes.
If my backyard birds started caching seeds in early October last year and we had one of the nastiest winters on record with more than 100 inches of snow, what does it mean if they start caching in July?
I wonder if there are any nice houses for sale in Hawaii……