When Auke-Florian Hiemstra published Bird Nests Made From Anti-Bird Spikes on 11 July 2023, the news spread like wildfire. The Guardian and the BBC immediately announced his report that Eurasian magpies and carrion crows incorporated spikes in their nests in the Netherlands and Scotland. The birds’ ironic re-use of our threatening material captured the Internet’s imagination.
Are the birds thumbing their noses (beaks) at us when they use anti-bird spikes? For the most part, no.
In the city it’s pretty common to see plastic in nests. For example this pigeon (nesting on top of anti-bird spikes!) included a length of red plastic wire in its nest. Notice the pigeon’s head behind the bend in the wire.
Hiemstra (@AukeFlorian) explains that Eurasian magpies (Pica pica) look for spiky things, like thorn branches, to protect the top of their dome-shaped nests. But thorn trees are hard to find in the city so …
Bird nests made from anti-bird spikes! ? Even for me as a nest researcher, these are the craziest bird nests I've ever seen. Today my paper came out on this rebellious behaviour. And it's like telling a joke…
So nesting birds aren’t thumbing their noses at us but parrots probably are. In Australia, where cockatoos live in the wild, they show their attitude toward our anti-bird attempts. Take that you nasty spikes! Hah!
Above, two young bobcats explore near a motion detection “camera trap” at Bosque del Apache. Below, a backyard cam caught the moment when a fox found a skunk in the dark.
Trail cam snaps an encounter between a red fox and a skunk (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
At Melissa Crytzer Fry‘s video camera trap in the Sonoran Desert, a mother Gambel’s quail chased away danger. Turn up the sound and find out what upset her.
Fledgling peregrine on the dog park windowsill (only 2 feet up), 5 June 2023 (photo by Leslie Mcilroy via Mark Catalano)
7 June 2023
At 6:30pm on Monday 6 June, Mark Catalano of Wildlife In Need Emergency Response was working dispatch in Central PA, making phone calls and sending texts and emails on behalf of a juvenile peregrine in a tiny dog park in Downtown Pittsburgh. The juvie needed assistance to be placed up high to start over on his first flight. Meanwhile Leslie McIlroy was in the dog park, protecting the bird from the visiting dogs.
Fledgling peregrine at the dog park on Third Avenue, 5 June 2023 (photo by Leslie Mcilroy via Mark Catalano)
Mark called the PA Game Commission but he knew it would be a long wait for a Game Warden. Since Mark is from Northumberland, PA he didn’t know any local peregrine contacts so he asked his wife to search the Internet for “Pittsburgh peregrine.” She found me, Mark sent me photos, and I told him about the Rescue Porch.
The Rescue Porch is a high balcony across the street at Point Park University’s Lawrence Hall. Another juvie had already tried it out this week, as seen by Diane Walkowski and Lori Maggio at 1:30pm on Sunday 4 June. (White arrow points to the bird.)
Juvenile peregrine calls from the Rescue Porch at Third Avenue, 4 June 2023, 1:50pm (photo by Lori Maggio)
Monday’s bird was stuck in a place I’d never heard of. It turns out that this narrow space under construction in 2021 became a tiny dog park with a tiny patch of grass. The yellow arrow points to a 2021 juvie who eventually landed in here. This year’s juvie hopped up to the low windowsill on the righthand wall, only two feet off the ground (photo at top).
Future dog park under construction on Third Ave, June 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
Many thanks to Mark Catalano for starting the rescue and to Leslie McIlroy for guarding the bird until the Game Warden arrived three hours later.
Meanwhile, no news is good news. Sunday’s bird is out and about. Monday’s bird probably flew on Tuesday. Will the third youngster need a rescue too? Time will tell.
Imagine spending a day standing on dunes in cold wet weather and seeing a river of a quarter million warblers fly by. This amazing phenomenon was the perfect storm of location, migration and bad weather.
In late May boreal forest warblers such as Cape May, bay-breasted and Tennessee have reached or surpassed Tadoussac, Quebec on the way to their breeding grounds further north. They aren’t nesting yet, so if the weather turns sour they head back south temporarily to wait it out.
The weather forecast for 24 May looked promising for this perfect storm as Ian Davies (@thebirdsguy) writes in the day’s eBird checklist: “There were southwest winds overnight (tailwinds good for migration), combined with a big cold front arriving right around dawn, bringing rain, strong northwest winds, and colder temperatures — the same setup that has resulted in flights of tens or hundreds of thousands of birds in past Mays.”
Hoping for a river of warblers, Ian and 11 others headed out to the Tadoussac dunes to count birds. In 11.25 hours they saw 263,771 birds in 96 species! Ian writes:
The first couple hours of daylight featured drizzle and strong winds, and not many birds until about 6:45 … then 500 birds/minute by 7:30. The Tadoussac river of warblers had begun. This flight continued at 300-500 birds/minute until about 9:20, at which point the rain dropped significantly, and the flood gates opened, as many as 1345 warblers/minute raging past in a torrent of flight calls and glowing songbirds. Birds were everywhere, below eye level, flying between people, pouring through the bushes, landing on the sand, and one Cape May Warbler even tried to land on my arm. A Red-eyed Vireo flew into someone. It was madness. … For one period of time, the rate of warblers was 80,000/hour.
Here’s just one of the many videos attached to the checklist. See the checklist for amazing photos, videos and counts.
Today we saw a QUARTER MILLION warblers fly past Tadoussac, Quebec. >85,000 Bay-breasted Warblers, and >50,000 each of Cape May and Yellow-rumped Warblers. Full details, photos, and video here: https://t.co/7E1IEM1ouhpic.twitter.com/clkqS1DYAy
— TheBirdsGuy (Ian Davies) (@thebirdsguy) May 25, 2023
The location was key to this phenomenon. Tadoussac is located on the northwest coast of the wide St. Lawrence River which funnels birds heading south. If you look at the videos you’ll see that the cameras are pointed toward the St.Lawrence River — east/southeast — and that all the birds are flying southwest.
These birds had made it further north but when bad weather arrived they changed direction to escape the storm. Flying on the northwest wind they reached the unsheltered coastal dunes at Tadoussac so they headed southwest to the forest.
What a privilege it must have been to witness a quarter million warblers in just one day.
A study seven years ago of bird population trends predicted that climate change would cause most species to decline while a few would increase. In May 2016 I wrote about two species whose fates would be different.
The maps below show population trends during the non-breeding season. The white-throated sparrow’s trend map for 2007-2020 indicates their abundance dropped 30% in the lower Mississippi area and on the East Coast from New York to North Carolina.
I’ve noticed the drop in white-throated sparrows during their peak migration in early October and mid-to-late April. American robins seem the same as ever here in Pittsburgh
Have you seen a change in white-throated sparrows? Let me know.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons, maps from Cornell University eBird Status and Trends; click on the captions to see the originals)
Summary: This month Morela became progressively ill and disappeared on 12 May. She is presumed dead.
Two weeks ago I wrote that there would be no peregrine eggs this year at the Cathedral of Learning because Morela was unable to lay any. She crouched and strained but appeared to be egg bound.
Since then Morela has had days when she looks very ill, then seems to recover a little, then looks ill again. Though she stopped standing over the scrape as shown above, she has not returned to her formerly energetic self. Her bleary eyes indicate she feels unwell.
He does what he can by bringing her food which he prepares more carefully than usual, as if he’s making it easy to eat. Unfortunately it is not enough.
On the morning of 7 May Morela felt bad enough that she left the nest for 36 hours. That day I found her facing the wall in the 38th floor southeast cache area.
She returned to the nest at 5:34pm on 8 May and seemed slightly better but in the next few days her health declined. In this snapshot she is leaning to the side, something she never did when healthy.
During a difficult night on May 11-12 Morela leaned a lot and may have lost her balance a couple of times. On Friday 12 May at 5:51am she left the nest and has not been seen since.
Her long absence and ill health indicate Morela has probably died.
Life goes on in the peregrine world. If Morela is gone a new female will come to the Cathedral of Learning to be Ecco’s mate. This year it’s too late to raise a family but if all goes well there will be peregrine chicks next year.
Hoping for happier times ahead.
UPDATE later on 14 May: Well, that didn’t take long! A new, banded FEMALE peregrine came to the nestbox on 14 May at 2:27 PM.
Here she is at the nest this afternoon. I thought this was Morela but when I looked at the image I can see that SHE’S BANDED! (Morela was unbanded.)
After a cold wet week in Pittsburgh it’s hard to imagine being excited about rain but this little owl (Athene noctua) in Britain is loving it. (Yes, “little owl” is his common name.)
Wild parrots live in flocks and interact with each other all the time but pet parrots often have lonely isolated lives that lead to psychological problems and self-damaging behaviors. We know that video chats help people connect over long distances. Could parrot-to-parrot video chats enrich the pet birds’ lives? The answer “Yes!” was presented at the ACM SIGCHI conference last month.
A research team from Northeastern University, MIT and the University of Glasgow, who study the potential of technology to enrich the lives of pets and zoo animals, enlisted 18 pet parrots and their caregivers in a three-month-long study to connect the parrots to each other online. Even in such a short time the birds became so engaged that they and their caregivers did not want to stop when the study ended.
During the first two weeks, the parrots were taught to ring a bell and touch a screen image of another parrot so that their caregiver would start a video chat with the selected bird.
In the second phase, which lasted two months, the birds were given free reign to request and make calls whenever they wanted. The birds quickly developed favorite video-chat friends with whom they talked, sang and preened. “Parrots who made the most calls also received more calls, suggesting that the study helped the birds become more social. Their caretakers also reported improved bonding with their pets.” — Phys.org.
The results were quite exciting in some households.
“We saw some really encouraging results from the study. The parrots seemed to grasp that they were truly engaging with other birds onscreen and their behavior often mirrored what we would expect from real-life interactions between these types of birds. We saw birds learn to forage for the first time, and one caregiver reported that their bird flew for the first time after making a call,” said co-author Dr. Jennifer Cunha who is co-founder of Parrot Kindergarten, Inc. that helped to recruit and train the parrot caregivers for the study.
Mallards pair up in autumn so they get down to the business of nest site selection as soon as they’ve chosen their breeding home range. The search begins “generally 5-10 days after first Persistent Quacking by hen.” Have you ever noticed first Persistent Quacking? I have not.
The pair searches together by “making low circling flights over the area, usually in the evening.” They land together at likely spots, she walks into cover, he waits outside. Watch for this in the evening at Duck Hollow, Wingfield Pines, North Park, etc.
“Experimental evidence suggests that mallards and several other dabbling ducks may be able to assess predation risk by detecting predators’ urine.” They can smell the snakes and raccoons!
Mallards usually nest on the ground “in upland area near water under overhanging cover or in dense vegetation for maximum concealment.”
Urban mallards get creative. They nest in planters, woodpiles, docks, boats, artificial structures and sometimes on buildings.
Mallard hens do not carry nesting material to the site. Instead they make a bowl and pull at nearby vegetation to line the bowl with plant litter, leaves, etc. They pull tall vegetation to drape over the nest and increase cover.
The first egg is laid 1-4 days after nest site selection. She lays one egg a day usually in the morning. Clutches consist of 1-13 eggs. The larger clutch sizes probably include eggs dumped by other female mallards!
She waits to begin incubation until the clutch is complete.
During incubation she plucks down from her breast to line the nest and cover the eggs.
Recess! “The female usually leaves the nest once in early morning, returning before 9:00 and once in late afternoon, leaving after 16:00. Recess lasts 15–60 minutes.”
If something eats her eggs, a wild mallard won’t renest but an urban mallard will. Some urban mallards raise second broods in unnaturally crowded populations.
Young intruder female challenges Trailblazer at CVNP/I-80 nest site, 5 March 2023 (photo by Chad+Chris Saladin)
9 April 2023
After reporting on the peregrine drama last Wednesday in Downtown Pittsburgh I went there on Thursday 6 April to investigate. There were no peregrines at Gulf Tower but in just 15 minutes of watching at Third Avenue I saw two peregrines and a possible nest exchange. The departing bird was normal adult color (gray & white) and did a territorial flappy flight as it left. The arriving bird was very dark chocolate brown like the bird in Ann Hohn’s photo on 3 April.
Dark plumage peregrine at the Gulf Tower, approx 3 April 2023 (photo by Ann Hohn)
If this pair is on eggs, the arriving bird’s behavior did not match an incubating female. Instead of quietly moving to the nest the arriving bird called loudly for several minutes. It sounded like “Hey, come back!”
When I mentioned this on Pittsburgh Falconuts Facebook page, Jeff Cieslak remarked: “I’d say that’s pretty good news. But it does raise some questions, neither of the birds I saw on 3/3 were brown.” Here’s the peregrine pair Jeff photographed a month ago.
Female at Third Ave nest Downtown 3 Mar 2023 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)Male peregrine at Third Ave Downtown, 3 Mar 2023 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)
Correction as of early June 2023: The dark bird is not immature, just dark, and is the mother bird at Third Avenue. … The Theory below is based on incorrect information.
Aha! So the immature bird is an intruder. The quick exit of the adult bird Downtown is like Terzo’s reaction in 2016 when female intruders visited the Cathedral of Learning. Terzo always left quickly and the intruder female always remained at the nest. Adult females were silent but an immature female called loudly. (See this vintage article: Juvenile Female Intruder at Pitt on 8 April 2016.)
Why didn’t the Downtown adult peregrines attack? Peregrine falcon literature says that immature plumage protects young birds from attacks by territorial adults because they aren’t perceived as a threat. Young peregrines won’t breed until they have adult plumage at two years old(*).
… end of bad theory …
In this attack at CVNP/I-80, photographed by Chad+Chris Saladin, Chris explains that the adult male is not brutal to the one-year-old, partly because she’s female and partly because she’s immature.
Young intruder female challenges Trailblazer at CVNP/I-80 nest site, 5 March 2023 (photo by Chad+Chris Saladin)
Yet these one year-old peregrines are disrupting nests. Are they trying to claim territory? Are they thinking about nesting?
Sara Showers reminded me of an article I wrote in 2020: “A year or two ago, it was pointed out to me that one of the factors that causes falcon populations to plateau at the “carrying capacity” isn’t just a finite food supply. When populations are very high, constant competition over nesting sites can cause those contested sites to not produce chicks in a given year – restricting population growth.”
Read about the Home Wrecker phenomenon in this 2020 article, written when Ecco was the young “intruder” and nesting failed that year.
