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.
On Saturday before the storms I saw my First Of Year eastern phoebes (Sayornis phoebe) in Schenley Park while Kathy Saunders found a first Louisiana waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla) at Tom’s Run Nature Reserve. Two tail-waggers are back in town.
Few birds wag their tails side to side but we do call it “wagging” when they bob or pump their tails up and down. Eastern phoebes are subtle about it but the movement is almost constant and it draws our attention.
What makes phoebes wag their tails faster? Predators! Sibley describes a 2011 study of black phoebes:
Avellis concludes that tail pumping is a signal meant to send a message to the predator. It tells the predator that the phoebe has seen it, and therefore the phoebe is not worth pursuing.
Louisiana waterthrushes don’t just wag their tails. They continuously bob the entire back end of their bodies by moving their ankle joints. Birds’ ankles are the backward “knees,” the middle joint on their legs, hidden by this waterthrush while he dips his butt.
Louisiana waterthrush, April 2020 (photo by Steve Gosser)
Louisiana waterthrushes have a different reason for tail wagging than eastern phoebes and they hold their technique in common with another April migrant, spotted sandpipers.
In case you missed it, here’s why they “wag” their tails.
Lek: an assembly area where animals (such as the prairie chicken) carry on display and courtship behavior. Also an aggregation of animals assembled on a lek for courtship.
Male prairie chickens hold a lek to attract females and according to this diagram so do “grackles.” It was exciting to think that the puff and “skrinnk” of male common grackles in Pittsburgh was a lek. But it’s not! The three species of grackles in North America lead very different lives.
Bill Up is a male-to-male threat display. The puff and skrinnk is Song during courtship.
Boat-tailed grackles (Quiscalus major), found in Florida and along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, nest in harems. The males gather in leks to attract the females.
[Their] mating system can be described as non-faithful female frank polygyny, in which a territorial male has one or more social mates, each female has one social mate, and both sexes employ extra-pair copulation as a conditional mating tactic. Territorial males defend a small territory including from 1 to several trees, where one or more females nest. The male protects nestlings hatched on his territory, but not nestlings from other territories. He copulates with his social mates and may attempt to copulate with other females.
The guys are back in town! Male red-winged blackbirds returned to western Pennsylvania early this month to get a jump on the breeding season. Males arrive 2-4 weeks before the females in order to shake down who owns what territory before the ladies get here.
The best territories are in the middle of a marsh and claiming a good one is extremely important. When the females arrive they chose a mate based in part on the quality of his territory. If the male and his territory are exceptional, up to 15 females join his harem.
According to Birds of the World, experiments have shown that females prefer a harem on good territory to being the lone mate of a male on poor territory. Female red-winged blackbirds would rather be one of many wives than alone with one male in a lousy home. With that in mind the males are getting ready to set up their harems.
Watch for the arrival of female red-winged blackbirds in late March or early April. You’ll hear the boisterous clamor of males when they see the flocks of females.
This 3-minute video shows red-winged blackbird behavior in the spring.
“Tame” ruffed grouse at Moraine State Park, 13 Nov 2020 (photo by Dave Brooke)
13 March 2023
In November 2020 the ruffed grouse pictured above caused a sensation among birders by coming very close to us at Moraine State Park. He even chased my car!
The “tame” ruffed grouse looks at me, Moraine State Park, 13 Nov 2020 (photo by Kate St. John taken on my cellphone)
“Tame” ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) are not common in Pennsylvania but where they occur they are quite noticeable. They aren’t afraid of humans and they sometimes act aggressively. Why do they do this?
The Game Commission is encouraging Pennsylvanians to report the location of any “tame” grouse they see this spring by sending an email to grousecomments@pa.gov. That email should include the person’s name and phone number, date of the sighting, location of the encounter and a description of the grouse’s behavior. Ideally, those sending in a report should also include GPS coordinates for the encounter site.
According to the press release, “The study aims to determine whether the Commonwealth’s grouse population shows signs of splitting up into distinct subpopulations and if “tame” behavior is linked to genetics.”
If you know of a tame grouse in PA please report it.
Meanwhile here’s a video that shows the “tame” grouse behavior.
Egrets and herons are known for standing completely still and waiting for a fish or frog to swim toward them until they stab and grab it from the water.
Reddish egrets (Egretta rufescens) seem manic by comparison, “dancing” so much that they look crazy. Their hunting techniques include:
Foot wiggle
Umbrella wings
Stab the water
Prance and dance
Hover-fly with dragging legs
Watch for these antics below.
This immature bird’s umbrella wings look like a victory pose:
This morning we may be two weeks away from the first Pitt peregrine egg of 2023. Morela’s first egg in 2021 was March 17, last year it was March 18. But who knows? She could be early or late this year.
Yesterday the pair had three bowing sessions at the nest. The first was brief and initiated by Ecco. The second was longer and Morela stuck around to dig the scrape. The third was unusual: Morela spent the entire time on the nestbox roof while Ecco bowed below. Did you see her yell at him from the roof? Check out this photo.
When the pair is not together one of them may be on the green perch, stepping in a sideways sashay. (This sashay video repeats the steps for emphasis.)
While you watch the falconcam get some practice identifying the birds with the two-photo slideshow at top. Notice that Ecco is small, has brighter-white and darker-gray feathers (more contrast), and has bright orange skin on this face and legs. Morela’s feathers are duller with less contrast, she’s bigger, and she has a peachy chest.
