bird watching

If You Fill It, They Will Come

/ kathyhauswirth / 1 Comment

On Thanksgiving Day I dug the bird feeder out of storage and filled it with a fresh mix of seeds. I relished the happy anticipation of visitors to the buffet.

I stopped feeding the birds when the spring came (with the exception of nectar for the hummingbirds—they get the royal treatment). I read that this is a good idea in something by Edwin Way Teale, I think. The premise is that they our avian friends have tons to eat without our help in the warmer months, and it’s best not to encourage too much dependence. But of course, berries, worms, and bugs are much harder to find when the temperature drops. Plus, I want to support the most stalwart of birds—those who stick around and don’t migrate South when the going gets tough. They grace my winter days.

I know some people who keep the feeder stocked all year. Either way, the winter makes birds more noticeable in many ways. We can see them more readily now that the trees are bare, and they may be more apt to come by for breakfast or supper when their natural supplies start to diminish.

Once the feeder was stocked, I waited for the birds to find it. It took a few hours before the word got out. My first visitor of the season was a nuthatch. Always, this bird’s feathers remind me of a grey coat I once had, with handsome black piping. And his/her habit of standing or walking upside down so effortlessly is one that helped me, as an amateur birder, help to identify this species. (My knowledge is not yet sophisticated enough to tell the genders apart, hence the “his/her”).

Not long after the nuthatch came titmice, sparrows, black-capped chickadees, and dark-eyed juncoes, and today I saw two mourning doves on the ground below the feeder. The downy woodpeckers have dominion over the suet cake, although I’ve seen the nuthatches pecking there, too. The same crowd as last winter, except no cardinals yet. I’ve seen them around; just not at the feeder, for some reason.

mourning dove flicker 2.jpg

Mourning Dove courtesy of Harold Neal on Flickr

I’m reminded with a little Internet research that more and more robins are overwintering here and not heading South. But they don’t tend to visit feeders—they don’t eat birdseed. Plus their behavior changes in wintertime and they flock more, working together to watch for danger and look for food.

Robins may have been my first birds, ever. I mean, the first birds I became aware of as a small child. I remember watching them pull worms with great vigor from our front lawn. Their presence thrilled me, as it does today. And they still mean spring for so many of us, because even those that have been here all along seem to “reappear” as the weather warms, hopping about on our softening lawns and starting to contemplate raising a family.

Hal Borland wrote that “birds are independence itself.” He explained: “they live uncluttered lives with no possessions to protect, no homes to maintain, no family responsibilities once the nesting season is ended…” Maybe that is part of their allure for me. I am not sure—all I know is that refilling the feeder also fills my heart, and then my heart is lifted by the visitors that come, again and again.

PS: In my case, there is so much more to learn. I am considering signing up for some of these courses–the most basic, about shape and color, are quite reasonable.

Feeder Census and Fruit-Full Robins

/ kathyhauswirth / 4 Comments

Time moves differently when you are holding binoculars. Or maybe it’s when you are taking a bird census. All I know is that my total of 4 hours watching my feeder (broken up into 4 one-hour sessions) went quickly and amounted to a heartening experience of curiosity and delight.

How welcome and rare, in this day and age, to sit still and be entertained by something that doesn’t plug in or need charging! You can learn a lot by simply watching the birds in the yard, and be completely entertained, too. Some take turns, others take over. Some favor picking through the seeds that fall, others relish the suet cake or commit to a particular feeder hole. There are those who “dine in,” chowing down right on the perch, and those who “take out,” carting their seeds to an undisclosed location. Dimming sunlight looks especially lovely when reflected off of a mourning dove perched nearby.

I started to notice things like beak shape and gorgeous tail feather design and who likes to fly to what branch. Also, that you have to pay close attention to tell sparrows apart! The term “little brown job”  was invented for a reason!

Later on I flipped through the Sibley field guide Tom bought me, poring over details to make sure my identifications were on track. The whole exercise was a great reminder of how much there is to notice, how much there is going in nature that can just (literally) go right over our heads. Here’s a snapshot of my count from one of the sessions:

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This was the second year I committed to report my feeder eaters to Project FeederWatch, and I still have time to do a few more counts before the April 8 cutoff. I am hoping the next count will boast some robins. I swear I saw one fly by me on Route 154, but I’ve seen nary a one in the yard.

In fact, I felt a bit dumb when I had to admit that I had no idea where robins go during the winter. I mean, the consensus seems to be that they are a major sign of spring, but I was pretty sure that they didn’t fly south with the geese. Well, apparently I am not the only one who didn’t realize that robins often remain nearby when it gets cold, simply changing their habits. According to The Cornell Lab of Ornithology , in the fall and winter robins roost in trees and eat fruit, so we are much less like likely to see them. I would however notice if I saw a QUARTER MILLION birds in a roost! Apparently this kind of robinpalooza is a documented occurrence. Here’s some audio of a mere 1000 robins or so chattering in Arizona.

I don’t look at scrappy, scraggly trees tangled in the brush the same way anymore. I look for shriveled apples that have hung on, wondering if they will sustain a robin until he finds the ground soft enough for worms again.

Once Around

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Both this weekend and last, I suffered from painful cases of the Shoulds. My long scroll of a TO DO list seems to be ever lengthening, and at the top are household chores by the dozen.

So I compromised last Sunday. I would walk Molly for 1 hour only. It takes an hour to foot the mile to town and back with this beagle who follows her nose, who strains with vigor and passion at the leash whenever a new smell beckons.

We set out at sunrise, treated to a Hallelujah Chorus from (mostly unseen) birds in the thick pines that line our yard. I admired a garter snake on the asphalt and right after that the prolific leavings from a neighbor’s cottonwood tree (it looked like snow was lining her driveway!). I later learned that “nuisance” cottonwoods have a lot going for them, and a proud history. I also read up on why birds sing at dawn, or at least the latest attempt to explain this mystery. (Science fully respected, but I think I’ll always experience the chorus as the ultimate hymn of joy and praise).

bobwhiteMy compromise morphed into a substantial ramble when I learned that Tom and Gavin were also up early. They met Molly and me at town dock, where we had breakfast and gazed out at the water. We watched a heron and tailed a pair of Northern Bobwhites ambling along Kirtland Street. We climbed the gradual hill to Mount Saint John, a stately fixture of Deep River since 1904. Tom photographed a bluebird peeking from its house on the grounds.

BluebirdHouse

MollyonWall

There were still Shoulds to return home to. In the hours following this happy indulgence, I caught up with the laundry and restored some sanity to our household environs. But I am so glad I took that 1-hour walk that turned into a 2-plus hour walk. And that later, we all took the drive to Middletown so we could learn about caterpillars and gather some phenology (the study of what happens, and when, in nature) data, courtesy of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association. Phenology matters, much more than housekeeping and crossouts on the daily To DO list, and here’s a brief article that gives examples of why.

Nature (and Nests) Laid Bare

/ kathyhauswirth / 1 Comment

TealeCabinSaturday found Gavin and me wandering around the Hampton, CT, Audubon Society at Trail Wood pathways. They encircle the former home and writing cabin of nature writer extraordinaire Edwin Way Teale.

The day was a gift. We relished the balmy 51 degrees of an unseasonably comfortable late December day. We signed in at the information building, musing over the many visitors that have walked these trails over the years. We looked up the day Gavin was born–yes, someone had been hiking there on that very day in 2002! Some guest entries provided great detail–2 beavers at the pond, deer on the path, beautiful autumn colors. Someone had left a large paper wasp nest (now abandoned, of course) on the table, alongside maps, books, and magazines to educate the visitor, including this Connecticut Woodlands issue on the former resident nature writer. Teale wrote A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm at Trail Wood; the book about his time at these 168 acres of ponds, woodlands, and pastures was the Christmas gift to which I treated myself.

TealeCabinLittleBeaver

One of my goals this year is to make myself more hardy, so I am more apt to get out when it is colder than my current set point of 40 degrees. For super frigid days, I have my “Cabinet of Curiosity” to pore over–a box that Gavin decorated into which we’ve deposited egg shells, snake skins, fungi, lichen, nuts, butterfly wings, and all matter of other nature finds.

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A few items from our shoebox collection

Among the collection are several nests, and it occurred to me as we wandered the woodlands that sighting of nests is a big bonus of wintertime, one even the most cold-averse explorers can appreciate. The leaves are gone, and revealed among the bare branches I see large paper wasp nests overhanging the road, squirrel’s nests high up in the forks of trees, and plenty of abandoned bird nurseries. I like to think about when and how they were built. Squirrels’ nests always look like quite a messy affair to me, so I was tickled to read in West Virginia Wildlife Magazine about how much care and planning goes into them:

Construction begins with a platform of twigs roughly woven together, upon which damp leaves and moss are compacted to form a solid base. A spherical skeleton of interwoven twigs and vines is erected around the base. The outer shell is then completed with the addition of leaves, moss, twigs, and even paper.

I have new respect for the squirrels, and great hopes for more outdoor “nest safaris”, even when the temperatures dip a bit lower. Of course, when the weather warms again there will be new nests with new occupants. It will be fun to find those, too, although of course they must be viewed from afar. Here’s some advice on the pursuit from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.