It’s easy and fun to participate. Just count birds for at least 15 minutes during the four-day period. (You can count for much longer than that if you wish.) Keep track of the highest number of each species you see. Record your count here. Ta dah!
You can count birds anywhere — in your backyard, in a park, at the shore, or on a hike. Don’t like the weather? Stay indoors and count the birds at your feeders.
Someone, somewhere, will be lucky to count this uncommon bird in their backyard this weekend. Though the range map indicates that red-headed woodpeckers live in Pennsylvania year-round, they’re unusual in southwestern Pennsylvania in the winter. Marcy Cunkelman was lucky to see this one at her suet feeders in the spring.
Last April I wrote about the Best Birds on my trip to Nevada. Now I’m back from Florida and happy to report many Best Birds there too.
Most beautiful: Painted buntings at Merritt Island Visitor Center. Last Sunday it was very cold and windy so three male painted buntings stayed close to the feeders. Their blue, red and green colors (shown above) glowed in the nearby bushes.
Best raptor was a peregrine falcon at Daytona Beach Shores who hazed the gulls loafing on the sand, then flew to the tallest building to wait and watch for another opportunity. By focusing on the peregrine I missed seeing the jaegers. Oh well.
Most amazing flock: The 30+ American white pelicans who herded fish at Merritt Island. They swam in tight formation stirring the water with their feet, drove the fish ahead of them, and gulped them up. Overhead a flock of gulls kited in the wind, hoping for an easy catch. From a distance the gulls looked like flags waving above a grandstand.
Crowd Pleaser: Without a doubt the vermilion flycatcher at Orlando Wetlands Park was a crowd pleaser. It was a life bird for me in Nevada last year but this time I had a much better look at it. What a cooperative bird! Like all flycatchers he perched on a branch, made forays to catch bugs, and often returned to the same branch. Everyone on the Halifax River Audubon outing got good looks at him.
Thanks to Chuck and Joan Tague for showing me so many wonderful birds!
American sycamore in Schenley Park, winter 2012 (photo by Kate St. John)
15 February 2012
From a distance this massive white tree looks like a ghost in the valley.
It’s an American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis), also called buttonwood or American planetree. In Pittsburgh we call it a sycamore but in other countries this name can be confusing because it refers to other trees. In Europe the “sycamore” is a maple.
American sycamores are native to eastern North America from Maine to Texas, from Ontario to Florida. You’ll find them along creeks and rivers, in bottom land but not in swamps. They like to be near water, but not in it, because they’ll die if their roots are submerged continuously during the growing season.
Sycamores are easily identified by their bark which flakes off in big chunks to reveal the pale new bark beneath. They do this because their bark cannot expand as the tree grows. Look up the tree trunk and you’ll see the characteristic ghostly white color.
In rural settings you can safely identify the flaky bark as a sycamore but in town we’ve planted London planetrees, a hybrid of the American sycamore and Oriental plane tree. The new bark on London planetrees is greenish-beige where the sycamore is white.
The seed balls of both species stay on the tree through the winter, breaking up in early spring. Each seed has a bit of fluff attached to help it disperse by wind or water.
One way to tell the difference between American sycamores and London planetrees is to look at the seed ball stems. On sycamores there is generally one seed ball per stem. On London planetrees two or three hang from the same stem.
Sycamore twigs zigzag from bud to bud. The buds form underneath the petioles (leaf stems) during the growing season and don’t appear until the leaves fall off. Each bud is encased in a single scale and surrounded by the leaf scar.
Sycamores (and London planetrees) are both noted for their very large trunks which often become hollow with age. Champion trees have been measured at 167 feet tall with trunks 13 feet in diameter. The oldest trees are the largest. They can live for several hundred years.
(photos by Kate St. John)
Reminder: Meet me at Schenley Park Cafe & Visitors’ Center at 1:00pm this Saturday for a Winter Tree Walk to practice your winter tree identification skills. So far the weather looks good (above freezing with no precipitation!). Click here for more information.
p.s. The tree pictured at top was cut down in July 2023.
“For this was Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”
In 1382 Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem to celebrate the king’s engagement. Years later this one line from the Parlement of Foules (The Parliament of Birds) caused Valentine’s Day to be associated with romantic love.
Chaucer didn’t mean the Saint Valentine of February 14. He would have known that most birds don’t court in February. But they certainly court on May 2, the date of the king’s engagement, the feast day of a lesser known Valentine.
The rest of Europe celebrated a more famous Saint Valentine in February, so by a series of mistakes we celebrate love today and save May 2 for birding.
Like all the males, this bird chose a nest platform and collected some sticks. Then for a couple of days he stood on the platform and bowed and croaked and displayed his beautiful feathers to attract an unattached female.
Finally she landed but it took another couple of days for them to confirm, “You’re the one! Let’s finish the nest.”
Now he collects sticks and brings them back with a flourish, “For you, my dear.”
Spring has come to Florida and with it a loud, insistent sound.
KEE-aah! KEE-aah! KEE-aah! KEE-aah! KEE-aah!
The bird shouts 5-12 times, waits about five minutes and shouts again. It’s a red-shouldered hawk.
Not for them the silent territorial circling of the peregrine falcon. Red-shouldered hawks have to tell the world, “I’m here!” When a pair displays together they lengthen their calls and repeat them 15-25 times before a pause.
The only thing that seems to shut them up is the need to hunt and to hide the nest. But if something threatens the nest all bets are off. They circle and dive on the intruder, calling excitedly. So much for hiding!
My field guide calls red-shouldered hawks “noisy, often heard before seen.” Some say red-shouldered hawks are the noisiest hawks in North America.
Don’t these terns look spiffy with their coal-black crests, clean white throats and gray backs!
This is what sandwich terns look like in April as they enter the breeding season. Handsome and sleek, these two are engaged in a threat display to decide who’s more powerful, but this is all for show. Compared to other terns, sandwich terns aren’t aggressive. They’re extremely social.
According to Birds of North America Online sandwich terns are one of the most gregarious and colonial of all terns. In the U.S. they nest in dense colonies with royal terns and laughing gulls and are highly tolerant of near neighbors. They benefit from the protection of their colony compatriots who are more aggressive toward predators, while the sandwich terns keep danger at bay by settling as close as possible to each other — as close as a bill-length away.
Right now, they aren’t ready to breed. In fact they look rather dull because their crests are still white.
They may be thinking about spring, but they aren’t showing it yet.
