Category Archives: Songbirds

Remarkable Journeys

May 15, 2014Migration, Schenley Park, SongbirdsKate St. John

Swainson's thrush (photo by Steve Gosser)

In the middle of May, Schenley Park’s bird population bursts at the seams as migrants stopover on their way to Canada. Early this week one of the most numerous visitors was the Swainson’s thrush.

We tend to take their migration for granted, knowing the birds make long journeys from South to North America, but we’re unable to visualize it. How far do they go? How long do they live?

Last December in the Columbian highlands a bird banding station captured a previously banded Swainson’s thrush. Its bands revealed the bird was captured more than five years earlier while on its journey north.

The thrush was banded near Unadilla, Nebraska in May 2008, heading home to breed in central Canada. At that time it was at least one year old. In December 2013 it was recaptured near Las Margaritas, Columbia 2,700 miles away, probably at its winter home. It was more than six years old and had made the journey at least 13 times.

From Canada to Columbia, read about this bird’s journey and see the map at Klamath Call Note.

(photo of a Swainson’s thrush on migration in Pennsylvania by Steve Gosser)

Fun Facts About Cigars With Wings

May 14, 2014Bird Behavior, SongbirdsKate St. John

Chimney swift flying in Austin, Texas (photo by Jim McCullough, Creative Commons license, Wikimedia Commons) — Chimney swift in flight (photo by Jim McCullough via Wikimedia Commons)

14 May 2014

Chimney swifts (Chaetura pelagica) return in April from their winter homes in South America.

Chimney swift range map (image from Wikimedia Commons)

In this week’s hot weather they’re zooming high above the rooftops eating insects and courting. In flight they look like cigars with wings. Here are some fun facts about them.

Chimney swifts are small. Stretch out your fingers as wide as you can. The wingspan of a chimney swift is the distance from the tip of your thumb to the tip of your pinky finger. If you have big hands, your hand is wider than the bird.

Outside of the swift family (Apodidae) hummingbirds (Trochilidae) are their closest relatives.

Chimney swifts “sing” a dry chittering song that is loudest when they’re courting.

Though most mating occurs at the nest chimney swifts can mate in flight!

Swifts cannot perch horizontally. Their legs+feet are shaped like garden claws so they can only cling upright to the inside of a chimney or hollow tree.

They nest in chimneys, constructing a half-moon cup of dead twigs glued with their sticky saliva.

To build a nest they grab dead twigs with their feet as they fly past trees, then transfer them to their bills to carry home. I have never seen a swift gathering or carrying twigs. It’s something to look forward to.

The female lays 4-5 eggs which both parents incubate for 19 days. Because they delay incubation until the next-to-last egg, most of the eggs hatch on the same day. The young fledge at 28-30 days.

Sometimes one or two non-mated swifts will help a pair incubate, brood and feed their young.

Chimney swifts can live an amazingly long time, averaging 4.6 to 5.5 years. Some have lived to be 15.

In flight they sometimes look as if their wings are out of synch, one wing up and the other down. This illusion is caused by their very rapid side-to-side turns.

(photo by Jim McCullough, Creative Commons license on Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)

A Last Look?

May 13, 2014Musings & News, SongbirdsKate St. John

On Sunday afternoon I saw an olive-sided flycatcher above the Sand Dunes Trail at Oak Openings Preserve, Swanton, Ohio. I mention these specifics because he was only the second olive-sided flycatcher I’ve ever seen. The first was 11 years ago at Raccoon Creek State Park on May 18, 2003.

Olive-sided flycatchers were always uncommon and now are increasingly rare. In the past 40 years they’ve declined 3.3% per year, especially in western North America. Where there used to be 100 individuals there are only 27 now. They used to nest in Pennsylvania but no more.

Though he isn’t a flashy color he’s the peregrine falcon of flycatchers. Perched high on a dead snag he scans the air for large flying insects, dives to catch them, and chases them down if they try to escape. This bird is fast! I watched him chase down bees or wasps, return to the perch and swallow each catch in a single gulp. He rarely missed. Then, just like a bird of prey, he ejected a pellet.

Olive-sided flycatchers breed at coniferous and boreal forest edges in the western U.S. and Canada and spend the winter in northwestern South America. They happen to prefer burned or logged areas because the openings make for better flycatching. The bird I found was in a location that had burned several years ago.

Pesticides, loss of bees and wasps, and habitat loss in North and South America have all contributed to the olive-sided flycatcher’s decline. A reintroduction program like the one that restored the peregrine falcon can’t save this bird. Instead we have to cooperate to preserve large tracts of his habitat. Unfortunately, human cooperation on this scale is notoriously difficult to achieve.

This was my second look at an olive-sided flycatcher. Will it be my last?

(photo by Dominic Sherony, Creative Commons license on Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original.)

Which One Should I Choose?

May 8, 2014Bird Behavior, Songbirds, VocalizationsKate St. John

Two male & one female brown-headed cowbirds (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

8 May 2014

Brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) are courting now because their victims are nesting. The males sing a bubbly whistling song to attract a favored female. After she’s chosen a mate, Mrs. Cowbird lays her eggs in the nests of smaller birds. Her victims raise her chick while their own eggs and nestlings die, partly at the hands of her aggressive cowbird chick.

Cowbirds never build nests nor do they incubate so their pair bond is cemented by courtship songs and postures. Amazingly, the quality of the male’s song really matters. That’s how the female decides who to accept and who to ignore.

What happens if a female can’t tell the difference between good and bad songs? What happens within the flock when one lady doesn’t follow the rules? Last year scientists learned that a single tone-deaf female can upset cowbird society.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania led by Sarah Maguire inactivated the song-control centers of some female cowbirds’ brains so they could no longer distinguish between high and low quality songs. When placed in a mixed-sex flock these ladies reacted to all songs and did not stay with a chosen male for long.

Since male dominance among cowbirds is based on song quality the best guys usually get the best gals. However, when a tone-deaf female appeared in the flock she listened to all males equally and the minor males got a boost. The dominant males courted the altered female more vigorously. The other ladies were left in the cold.

Which guy will she choose? One tone-deaf female can mess up an entire social structure.

On A Silk Foundation

May 6, 2014Nesting & Courtship, SongbirdsKate St. John

Blue-gray gnatcatchers returned to Pennsylvania in April and set up shop immediately. As one of the earliest nesting insectivores they began courtship and site selection right away.

Nest-building is part of blue-gray courtship. Both the male and female build the nest and they make a lot of noise and exaggerated bows when they begin. Meredith Lombard trained her camera on a nearby nest and filmed this pair’s efforts. (Click on the image to watch the video on Meredith’s Flickr site.)

As you can see in the video, the nest is slightly expandable because it’s built on an elastic skeleton of spider webs and tentworm silk. In the early stages of construction I’ve seen gnatcatchers chatter near decayed fall webworm tents, grab the silk and anchor it to their chosen site. Later they poke the sides of the nest and stick in new bits of lichen and bark. They also drag the silk upward to make the nest cup.

All of this activity makes them easy to find and watch. Cowbirds watch them, too. On Sunday I saw a pair of gnatcatchers harassing a female cowbird. I hope they’re able to keep her away from their silky nest.

(video by Meredith Lombard)

Let Them Eat Eggs

April 18, 2014Bird Behavior, SongbirdsKate St. John

This week’s weather was like a yo-yo — summer last weekend, winter mid-week, spring today. The cold was annoying to us but potentially fatal to purple martins who migrated from Brazil and arrived in western Pennsylvania 2-3 weeks ago.

Purple martins feed exclusively on flying insects but when temperatures stay below 50F or it’s extremely windy, constantly raining, or dense fog, insects don’t fly. After more than two days of this, purple martins weaken and starve.

Members of the Purple Martin Conservation Association remember the awful purple martin die-off when Hurricane Agnes lingered over western Pennsylvania in August 1972. It took more than 30 years for purple martins to come back to our area.

In the past purple martin landlords felt helpless as they watched their colonies weaken and die. In the 1990’s Ed Donath trained his martins to eat non-traditional food but that required training time during good weather. Then during a cold spell in April 2000 Ken Kostka and Andy Troyer figured out an emergency feeding strategy: toss live crickets in the air. At first the purple martins idly watched the airborne objects. Then they recognized the crickets as insects and made the connection “flying+insects”=food. The martins feasted and the colony was saved.

The home video above by Larry Melcher shows how it’s done. After the martins have learned to recognize the crickets as food, the bugs can be placed on a high tray on the colony and the martins will eat them even though they’re not flying.

Landlords have experimented with other foods. Years ago Bird Man Mel in Missouri tossed live mealworms so his colony now recognizes mealworms as food and will eat them from the front porch trays (click here for his video).

On Wednesday birders Dick Nugent and Debbie Kalbfleisch visited a purple martin colony in Butler County where the landlord was feeding his colony scrambled eggs! Here’s a video with the scrambled egg recipe.

Purple martin landlords love their birds. They start feeding crickets, then let them eat eggs.

(videos from YouTube)

A Well Developed Sense Of Taste

March 13, 2014Bird Behavior, SongbirdsKate St. John

This month the starling flocks will break up when the visitors head north and the locals begin to nest. In the meantime this informational tidbit may be useful in controlling their roosting habits … or it might not.

On a random search about starlings I found this statement on Wild Birds Unlimited’s Chipper Woods website: “Starlings have a well developed sense of taste, and are repelled by grape flavoring. Fogging with grape flavoring is an effective and environmentally safe method to discourage these birds from roosting.”

I know that starlings will eat just about anything, including grapes, so I wonder: What is grape flavoring made of? Do starlings detect something unnatural and dangerous in it that we cannot?

This starling, photographed in Toulouse, France, knows the answer. You can tell by his look that he has a well developed sense of taste.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license. Click on the image to see the original.)

Bluebird Fight

February 25, 2014Bird Behavior, SongbirdsKate St. John

25 February 2014

We think of eastern bluebirds as gentle birds. They seem to be poor fighters and often lose battles with house sparrows and starlings, so I was surprised to learn from Karen DeSantis that she witnessed two male eastern bluebirds in a long ferocious fight in late February a few years ago.

Karen described on PABIRDS how the fight began with chasing, then escalated into periodic knock downs and grim combat on the ground. The males fluttered and rolled over a distance of about 30 feet while the female followed every move, twittering as she watched. The birds were so oblivious that Karen was able to take photographs of the 15-minute battle. Karen wrote, “It was the long duration of the fight that interested me the most.”

Though we might not realize it, these battles are consistent with bluebird behavior.

During the winter bluebirds flock in family groups and huddle together to stay warm. In early spring their togetherness ends as the fathers eject their sons from the group before ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ nest again.

But the battle Karen witnessed was not a mild family squabble. Its intensity indicates the guys were fighting over the lady.

Bluebirds are usually monogamous but about 20% of the young come from extra-pair copulations. The males seem to know if their ladies’ eyes are wandering and guard their mates more closely if they’ve been messing around. According to Birds of North America Online, “Experimental evaluations (Gowaty 1980) indicate male-male aggression most likely serves to protect threatened paternity. Males are aggressive to males usually in defense of paternity.” These battles can be so intense that they end in the crippling or death of one of the birds.

Bluebirds may seem gentle but don’t mess with their mates! Watch a slideshow of the fight below.

(photos by Karen DeSantis)

Intrepid Minnesotan

February 17, 2014Bird Behavior, Songbirds, TravelKate St. John

Gray jay in Minnesota (photo by Jessica Botzan)

I’m back in the ‘Burgh with a fond look back at my time in Minnesota at the Sax Zim Bog Birding Festival.

Though I never found a great gray owl I saw seven Life Birds(*) and learned a lot about cold and snow.

Cold… was not a problem. I didn’t have to cope with the worst of this winter in Minnesota but -13F was a typical morning in the bog. Three to four layers of clothes are indispensable. Toe warmer heat packets inside Sorel boots are the key to warm feet. I was never cold.

Snow… is a way of life. If you’re afraid to drive in snow in Minnesota you’re homebound for half the year. So you just do it.

Minnesota snowplows are awesome, huge, coordinated. I arrived during a Winter Weather Advisory (4”-6”) and left during a Winter Storm Warning (5”-7”). No problem. All the roads and parking lots were plowed, not to bare pavement but quite passable. The Duluth airport was plowed down to bare pavement. My flight home was delayed only by de-icing. Check out this video of clearing the runway.

Birds … are intrepid in Minnesota’s winters. The easiest to find are ravens and black-capped chickadees. The rarest are Carolina wrens and robins. The gray jay is the cutest and the most intrepid.

Gray jays (Perisoreus canadensis) look like oversized chickadees but have the typical corvid attitude. They’re bold and curious and willing to eat anything including berries, insects, fungi, other species’ nestlings and small mammals.

Jess Botzan saw this one at Sax Zim Bog during the coldest of the cold weather last month and the bird wasn’t phased by it. Gray jays are so intrepid that they lay eggs in March while temperatures are still below freezing and snow is on the ground. They don’t even bother to nest again in May and June when the weather is easy.

Like everyone else in Minnesota, the gray jay is intrepid in snow and cold.

(photo by Jessica Botzan)

(*) Life Birds seen: Pine grosbeak, black-billed magpie, boreal chickadee, gray jay, northern hawk owl, black-backed woodpecker, Bohemian waxwing.

Boreal Birding

February 16, 2014Songbirds, TravelKate St. John

Boreal chickadee (photo by Jessica Botzan)

After two days of birding in northern Minnesota I’ve seen seven Life Birds. This species is one of them.

I’ve tried to find boreal chickadees in Maine in September and come up empty, perhaps because the weather was too pleasant. In Minnesota in the depths of winter they come to the peanut butter feeders at Sax Zim Bog. Life bird at last!

This is one bird you must visit at his home if you want to see him. Boreal chickadees (Poecile hudsonicus) never migrate so you won’t see one passing through in spring or fall. They live exclusively in the “spruce moose” forest where they survive the winter by stashing food at every opportunity.

It’s a harsh landscape in winter. As I have learned from personal experience, a typical birding day may yield only 10 species. The only boreal species I’m missing, and probably won’t see on this trip, is the great gray owl.

Sandy Komito, record holder of the North American Big Year since 1998(*), spoke at the Sax Zim Bog Festival on Friday night. What bird did he miss in northern Minnesota during his Big Year? Great gray owl. So I don’t feel so bad.

To make up for it, I saw a moose.