Birders and plant-ers: What are these things?

[mckitterick]

I don't know if I've mentioned before that my house is regularly assaulted by woodpeckers. My chimney has a steel UFO-thingy on top of it to keep birds from nesting in the chimney proper. One particular bird finds this to be a wonderful tool for enhancing his mating call. Here he is, roosting on top of the chimney:

What you can't tell from this peaceful photo is that, just a minute before I took this shot, I was working inside when RAT-A-TATATATAT! Like a machine-gun's bullets pummeling a lightly armored vehicle, his beak assaulted my chimney. This was not the first time. No, pretty-boy here:

regularly pounds out a wake-up call in the morning, a "calling all female woodpeckers!" message in the afternoons, and pretty much every time in between. I decided that today I'd catch him in the act, because today was special: I had two competing woodpeckers pounding away on my roof's sheet-metal. Here's the second one on the vent out back:

Duelling machine-gun fire. Note the war-wounds my house has sustained: Those dents aren't from hail.

Moving on. Does anyone know what this alien growth is?

It's growing beside my house from that leafy mass on the bottom. I have three such leafy masses around the house; the leaves are long and sharp and very fibrous, but never before have they sprouted giant green pillars. It's about six feet tall! What comes out of the top? The invasion force? Or will it one day just open its eyes, stretch its legs, and walk away?

Houses: endless entertainment.

Chris

Comments

[pointoforigin.livejournal.com]

I think that bird is a flicker. I miss them! They were all over the place in Kansas, but I rarely see them here. I don't know what it is with woodpeckers and sheet metal. We had a woodpecker last year who was madly in love with our dryer vent and prone to vent his emotion way early in the morning. Quite the wakeup call!

I think that thing growing by your house is a yucca plant. I think the podlets on top will bloom harmlessly, but keep the flamethrower handy, just in case it gets uppity.

[pointoforigin.livejournal.com]

Yes, here we go.

And all who saw should cry "beware!"

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's pretty! Mine looks pretty feeble by comparison.

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

The leafy thing looks like a yucca, but if the stalk thing gets purple flowers, likely it's not.

:)

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Gosh, you have a good eye! So would these be both the boy and girl as in this Wikipedia shot?

Click the image to see the Wikipedia article on Northern Flicker.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Yep, I zoomed in as much as possible and increased brightness to the max, and the Flicker on the back chimney has no red: A girl! So a couple was calling back-and-forth on my roof, using metal to magnify their love-poetry. Aw!

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

If it's purple, what is it? Or should I just keep the flamethrower handy?

[stuology.livejournal.com]

If it's purple, what is it?

Asparagus ;)

[stuology.livejournal.com]

We have the same problem with the birds and our chimney. It sounds exactly the same too.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

That would be some amazing asparagus! Or is that how it grows? Huge and unruly?

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Ah, the joys of urban wildlife.

[astein142.livejournal.com]

I think the plant might be yucca. The leaves are too wide for it to be pampas grass.

[verminiusrex.livejournal.com]

The plant looks like yukka, we have them around our place. I dig them up and they keep coming back, as relentless as the Borg. But the blooms are quite lovely.

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

My parents had something that got purple flowers, but the leaves were more shiny and not what I'd call fibrous. Yours sounds more like yucca, and it's not uncommon around here -- the folks across the street have some with those Real Tall Stalks.

[renegade500.livejournal.com]

Love the war wounds on your chimney. I'm not so certain I wouldn't be tempted to go out with a shot gun to such a loving wake up call, though (and I'm all anti-gun and love animals, but I love sleep more).

BTW, if you ever get a chance to talk to Joe Lansdale (who's a whoot to talk to), ask him about his experiences with the woodpeckers tearing up the siding on his house. It's one of the funniest stories I've ever heard (although doesn't end well for the woodpecker).

BTW, love the plant! Should bloom nicely.

To flamethow or not the flamethrow , that is the question

[justaqt.livejournal.com]

To me it doesn't look like a yucca because of it's leaves, though I guess one like the
http://www.smmtc.org/plant_of_the_month_200606_Yucca.htm
or an YUCCA filamentosa "Adams Needle"
would be pretty close.

The only thing I could find on the internet was a guy with a journal entry, like yours. hehe
http://www.jasoncoleman.com/BlogArchives/2006/05/a_little_help_n.html#comments
He only got a couple answers too.

the plant

[roya-spirit.livejournal.com]

Contact the Douglas County Extension Office. They'd know for sure.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mowed over the back ones one year, but to no avail.

Re: To flamethow or not the flamethrow , that is the question

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Good references, thanks!

[fireguarder.livejournal.com]

`Tis a yucca, my parents have them around their house. There are many varieties, but the ones in this area tend to be mostly one or two. Interesting trivia about yuccas: it takes one particular species of moth to pollinate them, and if that moth isn't around, they won't bloom. It took several years for my parent's plants to bloom - at the time they had the only yuccas in the neighborhood. So you must now have those moths in the area. (This trivia courtesy of my botanist dad, who told me about it when I was a wee lass.) More moth info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodoxidae

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating. I bet that the tiny black moths around my house are the little pollinators! They are shaped the same, but not green.