Less than a week ago, we waded through a foot of new powder snow to get out to the river.
Lots of melting and new arrivals on the river this week – and it’s a great time to anticipate warmer and better days ahead.
March Backyard Birds – 1
Tag: Backyard birds
Backyard Birds 1
Living next to a river is great — we paddle on it, ski on it some winters, and have an ever-delightful array of wildlife to watch. On perhaps my last paddle of the year, I flushed these mallards just upstream of the house.
We’ve had a summer-long affair with a Great Blue Heron who shows up for a while, is gone for weeks, and returns and day after day is right out back.
Paddling With Mergs
Until the last few days, we’ve had a small group of Common Mergansers on the river behind our house. In several kayak outings I’ve mixed with them, and when I had my camera onboard, trying to photograph them. With a moving river, skittish birds, and trying to balance the boat and the paddle, it’s an interesting challenge.
The river is pretty barren now, as are the trees, and frost is in the forecast. We’ve had good birding this season on the North Branch of the Winooski.
Baby Monitors for the Birds
Buttoning up windows for winter is great for energy conservation but no longer can you hear the “toot” on the Red-breasted Nuthatch or the chatter of Common Redpolls. Rich Guthrie, who write a great birding blog, discovered a simple solution to this dilemma several years ago. He writes:
By putting a baby-room monitor outside, I can listen to those sounds – even as I sit here at my desk, day, or night.
Now I can hear the distant Pileated Woodpecker calling from the island across the way, or the nuthatch taking another sunflower seed from the porch feeder. What a delight!
The set-up consists of plugging in the “baby” part outside, and the mommy listening device inside. Fortunately, I have a covered porch so I can keep the thing out of the weather.
These monitors are fairly common at yard sales or thrift shops and come cheap. I wouldn’t lay out more than $5.00 for a set.
As a different dimension to my yard list, I should have kept a list of the many different species I’ve heard and identified via the monitor. But I already know that the list is long. I can recall hearing Snow Geese flying over in the dark of night or picking up on the flight calls of flocks of Brant winging up the river. There’s a flock of Canada Geese that comes in to the same beach each evening – usually just before dark. I get to hear them now and then through the night. Other nice nighttime revelations picked-up include Screech or Great-horned Owls hooting, coyotes singing away, or raccoons squabbling in the dark.
It’s so nice to be here in the comfort of home and share the joy of a melodious Song Sparrow welcoming the warmth of sunrise on a frosty morning. Or to learn that a flock of siskins has decided to stop in for a snack.
Cornell Project Feederwatch folks wrote:
Steve Maley, a master Jack-of-all-trades and volunteer at Braddock Bay Bird Observatory, suggests rigging up a baby monitor for a low-cost solution that lets you hear the birds all year long.
Steve writes, “Cold weather has come to Rochester, NY, the windows are closed, and the bird hordes come to the feeders. Your home insulation keeps you warm, but silences the noisy blue jays, the woodpecker calls, and the goldfinch chatter. But you can still enjoy those bird sounds from your warm living room. Pick a window with a good roof overhang, and hang a $20 baby monitor outside near the top of the window. The receiving unit can go inside wherever you want to hear the birds. Plug in the 9 volt DC transformers, turn on both units, and once again enjoy hearing the birds from inside your living room or kitchen. My monitor has been on since last spring, and the receiver gets turned on only when I want to enjoy ‘being outside’ to hear the birds.”
Redpolls — Where Have You Been?
Common Redpolls arrived at our feeders in late November and ate us out of house and home for about a week — and vanished until today. I’ve not seen any Redpolls in the woods or anywhere around central Vermont but suddenly, about a dozen were chowing down on our sunflower and nijer seeds this morning.
It’s great to have them back — they are just great to watch as they chow down. You might remember, from this post, that they have a “pocket” in the neck area to store food. I thought of this today as I watched one grab at least a dozen seeds. I didn’t stick around to see if it could still lift off with that payload.
So, regardless of whether you are a new group passing through, or an old group coming back to where the food is great, welcome Redpolls. You perk us up on these short, short days.
Birding Once Again
I’ve been laid up after last Thursday’s surgery and while I have enjoyed watching birds coming to our feeders, it was nice to get out in the woods early this frosty morning for my first outdoor outing in nearly a week. Mary has done a great job with keeping the dog exercised but I was ready to take back that duty — carefully.
There’s not a lot out and about at daybreak aside from the chickadees, nuthatches, blue jays, and crows but they were nice to hear and see as I trudged up the crusty frozen path. I’ve been reading up on birding by ear and looking into recording and analyzing calls so I brought my iPhone along. Even though we live in the country, the background noises can be loud in the early morning. We have a noisy rooster a mile or so off and there’s always a dog or two barking in the distance. The traffic noise, even though the road is a half-mile off, can get loud and of course, I have the Vizsla tromping back and forth “helping” me bird. I think recording will be a work in progress for a while .. but an interesting aspect of birding to look into.
Since I had to take it easy and pause periodically, it was fun to remember past sightings as I moved along our trail — the trees where three Brown Creepers were calling to one another as they foraged, the dead snag where a hawk sat until the dog spooked it, the little meadow where a couple of Common Yellowthroats drove me nuts as I tried to get them to settle for a photograph. We then flushed a partridge and the dog was off and running again.
I find that this “virtual birding” is enjoyable — recalling specific birds you have seen at given points along a patch that you frequently bird. It’s a diversion on days were there are few birds but it also is a reminder that hey, it won’t be long until we start seeing ______ again.
And sure enough, as I returned and thawed my hands out, I noticed a new bird at the feeder. It was our first Common Redpoll of the season. We’ve been expecting them and it was great to see them again.
The Supply-side Economics of Bird Feeding
Ever watch a Black-capped Chickadee or White-breasted Nuthatch pick away at the feeder, discarding stuff left and right until a sunflower seed pops up?
I have a deck littered with millet and other rejected seeds as Nuthatches, Chickadees, and finches select the good stuff. So why did I buy bags of mixed seeds? It seemed to be an economical way to feed birds but the only folks happy are the chipmunks and red squirrels, and an occasional night-time raccoon who vacuum up the leftovers.
Last week, Mary got sick of sweeping the deck (as did I) so she bought a bag of black oil sunflower seeds — the feed we have used in years past — and the birds no longer have a choice. (Well, they still do because I have to integrate the rest of the mix into the feeder — but of course, even camouflaged with sunflowers, it still gets left there.
When I read this article from BirdWatching Magazine, I thought, “Well, I think we did the right thing.” Here’s an excerpt:
As a result of this year’s drought and high temperatures, agricultural prices are expected to reach record-setting levels. Economizing on bird feeding is a priority. Below are tips that will help you do so while increasing both your enjoyment and your feeding’s value to birds.
Sunflower-seed prices are high, for sure, but switching to cheaper mixes that include a little sunflower seed and more generic “bird seed” is an excellent example of being penny wise but pound foolish. Most birds ignore a lot of the seeds in mixes, especially inexpensive ones, and not only are those filler seeds a waste of money but some attract nuisance wildlife such as rats. Just as bad, seed that doesn’t get eaten rots, exposing your birds to disease-causing bacteria and fungus.
Many of the smaller seeds in mixes are popular with birds that don’t need subsidies from us and cause problems for native birds. Although it’s counterintuitive, in the long run, you’ll spend less by offering sunflower seed alone. You’ll still be providing food for the widest mixture of native birds, including chickadees and nuthatches, finches, small woodpeckers, jays, and doves…
We’ll feed sunflower seed, niger seed for the finches, and suet for the woodpeckers. That should keep our birds, and our farm supply store, happy this winter.
Project Feeder Watch Starts Soon
The 26th season of Project FeederWatch begins November 10, and participants are needed more than ever. By watching your feeders from November through April and submitting what you see, you’re making it possible for scientists to keep track of changing bird populations across the continent. New or returning participants can sign up anytime.
After unusual winter weather in some parts of the country last season, many participants found themselves asking, “Where are the birds?”—but the story might be different this year.
The AccuWeather long-range forecasting service is predicting some big storms in the Northeast this winter, so FeederWatchers in that region may see more birds at their feeders than they did last winter. Forecasts also call for another year of below-normal snowfall for the Midwest, above-normal snowfall and below-normal temperatures for the central and southern Rockies, and a wet winter with above-normal precipitation for the Gulf Coast and Southeast.
“We’ll have to see if those predictions pan out and how they might affect feeder-bird numbers,” says David Bonter, project leader for FeederWatch. “The one number we definitely want to see increase is the number of people taking part in FeederWatch. It’s easy to do, and the information is incredibly valuable in helping us better understand what’s going on in the environment and in the lives of the birds we enjoy so much.”
Other things to look forward to as the season approaches:
- A new photo gallery featuring some of the many photos FeederWatchers sent in during the 2011-12 season.
- This year’s Winter Finch Forecast shows it could be a great winter for birds at feeders—so don’t miss it! Red-breasted Nuthatches, Red Crossbills, Evening Grosbeaks, and other birds are likely to be on the move after a relatively poor summer for cone crops. Read the full forecast for more details.
- Winter Bird Highlights is the annual summary of the previous season’s results. The 2012 issue is being mailed to Canadian FeederWatch participants in their kits and will be mailed to U.S. participants with the fall issue of Living Bird News (late October). You can also get a PDF version online and read it immediately.
To learn more about joining Project FeederWatch and to sign up, visit www.feederwatch.org or call the Cornell Lab toll-free at (866) 989-2473. In return for the $15 fee ($12 for Cornell Lab members), participants receive the FeederWatcher Handbook and Instructions with tips on how to successfully attract birds to your feeders, an identification poster of the most common feeder birds, and a calendar. Participants also receive Winter Bird Highlights, an annual summary of FeederWatch findings, as well as the Cornell Lab’s quarterly newsletter, Living Bird News.
(Project FeederWatch is a joint research and education project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada.
Image: Dick Mansfield
Bird Larders – storing up for winter
I’ve been watching birds cache food this week. The days are shorter, and the birds are preparing for the next season. The nuthatches prefer the hulled sunflower, and they’re choosing the heavier seeds as those are the ones higher in fat content. Their activity begins very early in the day. The titmice are taking one seed at a time and seem to cache higher in the trees than the nuthatches. The chickadees are caching in the middle of the day, and their pantry of seeds is in a knothole in a maple.
This caching behavior has its advantages. They’ll retrieve the larder of seed on days when the weather isn’t suitable for them to for forage. Their warehouses are available when the long winter settles upon them and other sources are no longer abundant, and yes, their memories are sharp!
(written by Sue McGrath of Newburyport Birders)
Brown Creepers Make Me Smile
Walking in the woods yesterday afternoon, I heard a loud “see” call. I thought it might be a White-throated Sparrow or even a Dark-eyed Junco but as I searched, I saw a little brown bird climbing up a White Pine. It flew over to the lower part of another tree and started climbing as I watched.
Some of my friends have lost their upper range and can’t hear Brown Creepers but fortunately, in spite of being around jets and other planes, I can pick them out. It helps because they can be really tough to see. You sometimes can pick them up when they fly or if they expose their white belly.
They seem to be oblivious to birders and once you pick them up, it’s fun to watch them spiral their way up a tree, picking bugs out of the bark with their curved beak. They seem to balance like a woodpecker with their long tail as the work on a stubborn piece of bark. Every so often, I’ve seen one going up as a White-breasted Nuthatch works its way down. We have quite a few Brown Creepers in our woods – they are one of species that hangs around so I look forward to their antics this winter. They are one my favorite birds.
Brown Creeper (top image) by Wildreturn Lower image by David-Mitchell
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