Seven years ago at WQED, I got a call from the Accounting Office that there was a bird in Payroll. He was full of tricks and a challenge to rescue.
Click to read this vintage post about the bird Inside My Window.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons; click on the caption to see the original)
Last Sunday our Partnership for International Birding tour saw this baby bird near the mouth of the Solomon River east of Nome, Alaska. It took us a while to identify him.
His looks like a sparrow with white outer tail feathers but his back has golden camouflage like a golden plover.
After much debate we decided he was a baby Lapland longspur. Click here to see a male in breeding plumage.
As we pulled out of the parking area his father arrived with food.
Best Baby Bird of our trip. Thanks to Barb Bens for the photo.
(photo by Barbara Bens)
This spring a pair of blue jays nested in my backyard and fledged a single youngster before Memorial Day.
The fledgling was short-tailed, perky and adventuresome, often standing wide-eyed in exposed open places. His parents followed him everywhere and seemed to say, “Be careful! Don’t stand out in the open like that!”
But the fledgling was too naive. By the third day he went missing, undoubtedly dead. His parents started to build a new nest.
They scouted together in my backyard, gathering moss and rootlets. According to the nest description in the Petersen Field Guide to Birds’ Nests blue jay nests are …
Bulky, well hidden in crotch or outer branch of coniferous or deciduous tree, 5-50 ft above ground, commonly 10-25 ft. Built by both sexes of thorny twigs, bark, mosses, string, leaves; lined with rootlets.
The second nest is so well hidden that I didn’t find it, but here’s what it would look like (photo by Henry T. McLin).
The pair has time to raise a second brood, especially if the female laid eggs in the first week of June. From first egg to fledging takes 38 to 45 days:
I hope to see baby blue jays around July 15. I’m wishing them better luck this time! See more news below(*).
p.s. There’s a story behind the blue jay family in the nest above. Click here to read.
(photo credits, Creative Commons non-commercial licenses on Flickr: Gathering nesting material by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren. On nest by Henry T. McLin. Nest with babies by Carol Vinzant)
(*) Unfortunately the second brood failed, too. I saw a nestling on the ground, too young to fly, on July 7. I repeatedly placed it up high in the vicinity of the nest but the nestling kept hopping back down to the ground. Eventually it hid under the lip of our bird bath.
Alaska Birding with PIB: Anchorage to Seward 18 June 2019
Red crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) are conifer specialists that breed across North America and Eurasia, from Alaska to Newfoundland, from Scotland to Japan. They are so tied to spruces, pines and firs that you won’t find them in deciduous forests nor anywhere that the cone crop has failed. That explains why in three decades I’ve seen only one red crossbill in western Pennsylvania.
Red crossbills eat conifer seeds by prying open the cones using their crossed bills. Their beaks have evolved to match the cones they open — and so have the cones. A 2010 study led by C. Benkman showed that it’s a continuous arms race in which the cones evolve to foil the beaks and the beaks evolve to open the cones. The crossbill-cone competition has resulted in 21 subspecies of red crossbills with different beaks and call types. One population in Idaho, the Cassia crossbill (Loxia sinesciuris), was given separate species status in 2017.
Crossbill beaks are such important tools that a bird’s right-handedness or left-handedness is expressed in the crossing of his beak. Individual beaks cross right or left, as shown in the two male crossbills above.
Though red crossbills don’t migrate, they range far and wide in search of food, calling “jip jip” as they fly. Their flocks are usually noisy but fall silent when they’re feeding intensely. In his Essential Field Guide Companion Pete Dunne describes them as Eclectic Parrot-Finches: wide-ranging, social, and parrot-like in behavior.
Red crossbills favor old growth conifer forests because the cone crop is heavier on trees more than 60 years old. If I’m lucky, today I’ll see the “Red Parrot-Finch of the Pines” near Seward, Alaska.
UPDATE: I wasn’t lucky. š
(photo and base map from Wikimedia Commons, breeding range drawn freestyle by Kate St. John; click on the captions to see the originals)
Alaska Birding with PIB: At Tangle River on Denali Highway 17 June 2019
In western Pennsylvania we rarely see longspurs, the sparrow-like birds whose long hind toe gives them their name, but two species of longspurs breed in Alaska.
Lapland longspurs (Calcarius lapponicus) are the most conspicuous songbird on the tundra as they prominently claim territory and a mate. The males flutter and sing above their chosen patch, advertising themselves in loud flight song displays.
Smith’s longspurs (Calcarius pictus) are harder to find partly because of their lifestyle. They don’t claim a territory, they don’t claim one mate, and they don’t use flight song displays. Instead the males sing from the top of a twig, “Hey, ladies! Come here.”
When a female shows up the two go through their courtship displays and copulate. Then they both go off to mate with other birds.
The fancy name for this is polygynandry. Each female and each male pairs and mates with two or three of the opposite sex. These birds are very busy during the breeding season!
Over a period of one week in the early spring, a female longspur will copulate over 350 times on average; this is one of the highest copulation rates of any bird. Males are well-equipped to deliver such large numbers of ejaculatesātheir testes are about double the mass of those of the monogamous and congeneric Lapland Longspur.
Birds of North America, Smith’s longspur account
Every nest contains chicks of mixed parentage — the same mother, various dads. Fathers choose a couple of females and try to insure that most of the chicks are their own.
Males do not defend territories, but instead guard [their] females by following them closely. [Males] compete for fertilizations by copulating frequently in order to dilute or displace sperm from other males.
Birds of North America, Smith’s longspur account
When John James Audubon named Smith’s longspur for his friend Gideon B. Smith he was unaware that these birds had such an unusual social life. It took a long time for humans to figure it out, beginning with pioneering behavioral work in the 1960s and now DNA tests today.
Inside the calm exterior of a Smith’s longspur is a very promiscuous bird.
These European birds resemble a woodpecker that lives in eastern North America. Can you guess which one it is?
Here’s a hint: Black woodpeckers (Dryocopus martius) are in the same genus as the North American bird.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons; click on the caption to see the original)
Now that the catbirds are back, they have something to say to the mourning doves.
Like eastern bluebirds and tree swallows, black-capped and Carolina chickadees are cavity nesters. They place their tiny nests inside woodpecker holes, birdhouses, or in cavities that they excavate on their own.
It takes a week or more for a chickadee pair to make their own nest hole so a suitable birdhouse is a great find for them. Do you have a birdhouse in your yard? Chickadees might have chosen it.
On Throw Back Thursday, here’s what to expect at the Chickadee Nest.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons; click on the caption to see the original)
This is the Biggest Week in American Birding at Magee Marsh, Ohio but it’s a big week for warblers in western Pennsylvania, too.
This 6-minute video from Cornell Lab of Ornithology shows warblers up close and provides tips on how to find them near home. Get some practice online before you go outdoors.
It’s warbler time!
(video from Cornell Lab of Ornithology on YouTube)
I’ve seen the Swainson’s thrush and Swainson’s hawk. My goal last weekend was to hear and see a Swainson’s warbler.
Like the other two birds the Swainson’s warbler (Limnothlypis swainsonii) was named for English ornithologist William J. Swainson (1789-1855) but unlike them he’s hard to find.
To begin with, Swainson’s warblers don’t breed in Pennsylvania. The northernmost corner of their range is a 3.5 hour drive from Pittsburgh. Three of us went to New River Gorge, West Virginia.
We found his breeding habitat …
Breeds in southern forests with thick undergrowth, especially canebrakes and floodplain forests in lowlands and rhododendron-mountain laurel in the Appalachians.
from species account at All About Birds
… and stood quietly in a rhododendron thicket where he’s known to breed. We listened for this.
Listening is important. Swainson’s warblers skulk in shadowy, deep thickets and are rarely seen.
We heard one (“He’s in there!”) but he never came out.
Fortunately listening counts.
(photos and maps from Wikimedia Commons, sound from Xeno Canto; click on the captions to see the originals)
p.s. Here’s how thick the rhododendrons are in West Virginia, in a blog post by Samuel Taylor.