Hop aboard for a whole different kind of garden tour

Historic Garden Week in Virginia has always been about gardens, but this year the Virginia Beach Home and Garden Tour is about gardens and a lot more.

You might say the focus will be not only on flora but also on fauna. Participants on the tour in Birdneck Point will have the opportunity to take a cruise on the Lynnhaven River, guided by some of the best naturalists in the area.

As a special extra, the tour in Birdneck Point - dubbed "Water, Water Everywhere" - is offering garden tour ticket holders a boat cruise on the luxury boat "Virginia's Jewel." The yacht will leave the Cavalier Golf and Yacht Club Marina in Birdneck Point at 9:30 a.m. and 12:15 and 3 p.m. The cost is an additional $10. See tour details in the blurb with this column, labeled "going?" (page 32).

On board for the first two tours will be local raptor expert Reese Lukei and on the third tour, top-notch bird watchers Karen and Tom Beatty. Karen Forgetwith Lynnhaven River Now will be on hand on all the tours to discuss critters closer to the bottom of the food chain, primarily the famous Lynnhaven oysters, and what it takes to maintain a river healthy enough for edible shellfish.

Judging from what was seen on an earlier "warm-up" cruise for guides on the Virginia's Jewel boat tour, participants on Wednesday will probably see everything from living oyster reefs to migrating songbirds on the shoreline, from terns and gulls, to cormorants, herons and egrets.

But it's the big ospreys on their nests that take center stage on the Lynnhaven River this time of year.

Lukei estimates 25 to 30 nests are on the river now. Adults have been settled on their nests for a month or so now, and some tiny young may be in the nests on tour day. Though you might not be able to see the babies, you should see dad arriving at some point with a fish to feed his family.

Lukei knows the osprey on the river well. Over the years, he has banded abound 200 of the youngsters in their nests.

"Several of them are now raising their own osprey families," Lukei said.

Lukei has worked with wildlife rehabilitators to help rescue and release ospreys and to place orphaned osprey in new nest homes. He also has helped homeowners design and place osprey platforms off their property. He even knows personality traits of a few of the longtime nesters.

Take the osprey pair on Channel Marker 23. He is careful when he bands chicks at that nest.

"Ospreys can be very defensive of their chicks," Lukei said. "And the pair on marker 23 were very defensive. I have been struck twice by osprey and the female on that nest was one of them!"

The tour boat will pass right by the channel marker and you should see that protective mama down on the nest warming her eggs or perhaps her young.

In addition to osprey, it might be possible to see an eagle out foraging for food. And, of course, participants will have a waterside view of many of the homes on the tour.

Rain or shine, cold or hot, it will be a good day for a boat cruise. Virginia's Jewel has comfortable seating in heated, air-conditioned cabins with windows all around. Plenty of room is outside on deck, too.

Back on shore, participants will find a bird art show on the yacht club dock. Carvings, birdhouses, sculpture and paintings will be for sale. Lynnhaven Now will have a display and will sell copies of its new book, "The Lynnhaven." Lunch will be sold by the Cavalier club a few steps away.

And on shore, participants will find the florapart of the tour in homes and gardens that give a perspective of the Lynn-haven River from the land.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

- Last week, a pair of ruby throated hummingbirds arrived at Jane Brumley's on Knotts Island, and single males showed up from parts way south at Vicki Hunt's feeder on 71st Street, at Marny Sanders' near Sandbridge, at Jean Broughton's in Morgan's Walke and at Debbie Melton's in Pungo. "I was thrilled to see him; and based on the length of time he drank nectar," Melton said, "I think he was probably thrilled to see the feeder, too."

- Purple martins also have arrived and are in residence at Jane Brumley's on Knotts Island and Mimi Karesh's at the North End.

- Paul Foster in Lake Placid has a robin's nest on his front door light that is elaborately decorated with streamers of grass and straw with a neat rim of mud round the nest edge - and three beautiful blue eggs inside.

- On my blog, look for a great close-up of a jumping spider by Robert Capria in the Great Neck area. One of the spiders is actually spinning silk! You will see also doves feeding from their parents' crop in photos sent by Bill and Donna Herter in Birdneck Lake.

- Julie Coari took a close-up of a great blue heron flying just overheard at Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge. Yellow-crowned night herons were photographed in their nest in Thalia by Woody Stephens and walking together by Katri Twiford in Kings Grant. Stuart McCausland snapped a black-crowned night heron in his Brigadoon neighborhood.

- Harvey Seargeant in Portsmouth sent a photo of smallish white egret with odd red tail feathers that he thinks is a cattle egret. Seargeant also captured an amazing photo of a yellow-crowned night heron in a mating display, wings swept up and head feathers arrayed in a crown, and one of a great egret with its "bridal" plumage sweeping down its back.

- One day Harry Ramsey counted five flickers in his Foxfire yard. Flickers are anteaters, so ants must have been emerging that week.

- Lucky Ray Tranchant put a bluebird house on his fence recently in this Courthouse Woods yard. "To my amazement, a happy couple decided to take up residence in the home," Tranchant said.

- Steve Rosenberg has been photographing a "new found friend," a pileated woodpecker female that has been regularly visited his peanut feeder in Redwood Farm.

- John Fitzpatrick on Regatta Circle photographed a handsome robin with a red breast but with a light gray back and a black and white head. The colorful robin probably was a partial albino.