fuegodelalma's Journal

It was really quite impressive to see such a different variety of birds closer to Lake Champlain than at UVM. It was a great change of pace, especially being able to see many of these migratory birds during warm temperatures. Red-winged blackbirds cold be heard practically all over the bay, especially near where the cattails are. Not only that, but I was surprised at the fact there was a Great Blue Heron, three Double-crested Cormorants, and two Canada Geese in total. Not to mention the fact that there were Wood Ducks and Buffleheads near the shore. I guess the closer you get to water, the more impressive birds you get to see.

We did perform a nice exercise in the field of trying to map out the bird calls in order to be able to differentiate the many layers of sounds that all these different species make in the area. It was quite helpful as it helped me distinguish and match some birds to others. To be honest, I wished I could've done it for longer, but we didn't have the time.

Some of the birds that I forgot to document in my sightings were a Red-tailed Hawk, a short distance migratory woodpecker which I forgot the name of, and the Ring-billed Gulls in the area.

Though on thursday when I went out to take a walk to find birds, the weather was extremely pleasant. It was a rainy day, but as far as warm days, this was the only one in the entire week. Lately I've been seeing a ton of Ring-billed Gulls. Not only in the area where I marked, but all over burlington. They seem the least affected by the cold, rain, or snow. Other birds I've been have trouble finding, but recently I've started to hear a lot more birds singing, some of which I couldn't recognize. It must be migratory birds. This is the season where more birds start flying back up north.

Something that I've noticed is that I haven't been hearing a lot of robins lately. Maybe they have already foraged the entire area pretty thoroughly and moved on to another section. Also, chickadees seem to be more prominent around the Centennial Woods area as opposed to a more urban setting.

As far as the Ring-billed Gulls' behavior, I notice that most of the time they are soaring over the soccer fields presumably foraging. I've been starting to think about why they are so noisy. Perhaps they are advertising that there is food in the area.

With Winter finally ending, all the early migratory birds are coming back. Two species I had not seen before, the Winter Wren and the Golden-crowned Kinglet showed up through our walk in the woods. It was a very warm day outside. It had just rained yesterday and I had expected to see a lot of birds foraging, but not as many as i would've liked. Apparently Winter Wrens do stay in Vermont and don't migrate too far, but they are less commonly seen during the cold days.

Unfortunately the only thing I had to go off of was sounds. Birds were being a little shy that day. Of course there were a lot of chickadee calls, and we even got to see a fabled Piliated Woodpecker. I've heard only legends of its existence marked by the holes on the dead trees, but finally one swooped down like a phoenix from the skies. Other than that I've been seeing Ring-billed Gulls all over Burlington, particularly during the foggy muddy gross misty days of the week. Songbirds are finally kicking up their vocal chords for booty calls, so there is a lot of that going on in the forest.

So it was really cold, but productive nonetheless. We managed to catch several robins perched on crab apple trees all fluffed up and bracing from the cold air.

Down in centennial woods, we managed to see several traces of Pileated Woodpecker carvings where they were looking for ants to snack on. Unfortunately we haven't run into a single Pileated Woody, but I'm sure we'll come across one sometime over the course of this semester.

Giving birds heart attacks is still as fun as ever, haha. I might get a panic mobbing bird soundtrack to play in the forest sometime.

Other than that we tried looking a bit further out of the regular path to centennial, but with less luck. We tried playing some owl calls to see if one would swoop down, but again, no luck.

At least we saw a lot of goldenrods with galls on 'em. Some of them were pecked away by birds to get to the scrumptious grubs molting inside. Yum!

Apparently birds are a lot more responsive to their species songs than I thought. Especially if birds are making all kinds of crazy noises. I guess I didn't expect birds to have a mobbing behavior when approached by predators. The recording of the owl getting mobbed played by Shawn brought a ton of birds to the area and they also began to make all sorts of crazy noises.
Also, the american black duck is apparently pretty rare here in vermont, but because it's been a warm winter, they're around the area.
The american robins are active a lot due to the large number of crab apples around the area.
Downy woodpeckers are apparently more territorial than I thought.
Oh, and a lot of crows. Not all flying together but flying in the same direction. South-ish, despite the wind blowing north.