benupton's Journal

Today I got caught up for almost my entire birding trip watching the snowy owl on top of the Terril building

This week's bird was was unfortunately a bit dark, gloomy, and rainy on account of the pretty much constant rain from Thursday-Sunday, but I still ended up finding a few birds who were settled in and singing loudly despite the rain. The first birds that I heard were house sparrows, perched atop some dorm buildings, singing loudly and seemingly surveying the land. The sparrows most likely are nesting somewhere on the room of the building in a hole/crevasse among the structures on the roof. One thing that I noticed about these sparrows was that the larger individuals with larger throat patches seemed to be in more prominent positions and singing louder than the others. These birds, I would assume, have higher fitness. I also observed a white-breasted nuthatch and a chipping sparrow both flitting around their respective trees and singing loudly. As springtime comes around, males are out (even in the rain) all day trying to be heard and find a mate.
Although I wasn't able to get a picture, I also saw a European Starling flying overhead with what appeared to be tall, dead grass hanging from it's mouth, on it's way to build its nest. Dead twigs, grasses, and maybe even inorganic materials, seeing as we are on a college campus, are all structural tools that birds will collect from old fields and forest edges to build their nest.

Overcast skies, snow flurries, 30-35 degrees Fahrenheit. University of Vermont

During my birding adventure for this week I encountered, as I do most days during the spring, a group of Robins hopping around and feeding on the somewhat frozen ground. While some Robins do migrate south for the winter, many individuals choose to stay here and conserve the immense amount of energy it would take to breed. Although the ground freezes during the winter, preventing robins from having access to the earthworms that usually make up their diet, they can switch to a diet of fruits that allows them to have a consistent food source without actually migrating. While overwintering here in Vermont, these birds need to find shelter during periods of cold temperature and high winds. Dense coniferous forests provide birds with significant protection from the elements. Robins also fluff up their breast feathers in an effort to conserve body heat, as well as preening their feathers so that water flows off of them without absorbing into them Robins are able to stand in the snow without their feet getting cold because of the counter-current heat exchange that warms the blood traveling to and from the feet.

During my expedition I also encountered some waterfowl feeding next to and in the Winooski river. Both Canada geese and mallards migrate from their homes here in Vermont down to the southern United States to find food during the winter. Geese primarily eat green vegetation, and mallards eat mostly aquatic vegetation and invertebrates, both of which become unavailable when the grass becomes covered in snow and the water becomes covered with ice. Now that spring has begun, and grass is starting to grow back and the ice is melting and the water is opening up, waterfowl are beginning to come back to Vermont and leave their wintering grounds in the south.

For this week’s bird walk I ventured to the Burlington country club to walk around and observe birds while the course is still closed. On my way over to the course, I heard the song of a House Sparrow coming from the loading dock near Simpson hall. I stopped and waited for awhile to see if he might show himself, and sure enough he hoped up onto the lid of a dumpster, and began to sing perched atop the dumpster lid. He seemed to be alone ( I didn’t see or hear any other sparrows) but he seemed to be trying to communicate something to his peers, wherever they may have been. After a few minutes of him singing, I tried to “pish” at him to see if he would become curious and creep closer to me, but he instead flew off almost immediately.
When I got to the golf course, I was greeted by the song of Robins, and saw several of them feeding and hopping along in the snow, sticking to the edges of the forest and seeming not to venture too far out into the middle of the course. The Robins seemed relatively unbothered by my presence and kept foraging as they had been and seemed not to care. The birds seemed to be communicating with each other as they fed, sending quick chirps that seemed to influence the other bird’s movement. Robins are always some of the first songbirds that I see out on the open hopping around in early spring.
Along with the robins that I saw, I also saw a flock of European Starlings. The Starlings were behaving much differently than the Robins, however. While the Robins seemed to be foraging somewhat independently, the Starlings moved always in unison. When I arrived at the course, the flock was perched high up in a tree soaking in the sunlight. Another group or 3 or 4 Starlings was feeding in the sumacs in a boggy area nearby. The birds feeding in the sumacs called to the birds in the tree, and soon all of the birds had moved into the sumacs and were all feeding there together. Eventually they moved on from the trees and begun feeding on the ground. The starlings seemed to be more wary of my presence than the Robins. I couldn’t get nearly as close, and the “pishing” sounds I made seemed to bother them.

Location: Wallingford, VT
Date: 3/17
Weather: Clear, some snow flurries

For this week’s assignment, I decided to start by watching the bird feeders outside my grandparents’ window so that I could observe feeding habits and take some good pictures with my camera. I saw mostly American Goldfinches and Dark-eyed Juncos, and one lone mourning dove that came to visit as well. The goldfinches fed mostly from the feeders, seldom venturing to the ground, while the juncos fed almost exclusively on the seeds that had fallen to the ground. Neither species appeared to be flitting around too much or making any extraneous movements, which I assume is a way of conserving energy in the cold of the winter.
After watching the feeder for a while and getting some pictures, I decided to leave the camera (it started snowing and I didn’t want to get it wet) and head out on a walk around the property to see if I could identify some other species and maybe find a snag or two. As I started walking out through the backyard I saw a group of 3 crows meandering across the yard, looking for an easy meal that wouldn’t take too much energy to procure. I also saw a flock of sparrows heading into the old barn in the field where we keep the tractors. I imagine that they, and probably many other birds seek refuge in the barn during the night. Although I didn’t see any swallows during this outing, I know that they’re around and that they also like to overnight in the big warm barn.
As I came to the back edge of the property, I found two old snags that were riddled with the large elliptical holes left by a pileated woodpecker. The trees were fairly large, and so were the holes. I assume such large birds wouldn’t waste their time with skinnier, more narrow snags. I picked up a stick and gently tapped on the sides of the snag, but no residents came out to greet me when I did so; granted the cavities were well above head height. Although I couldn’t get any birds to emerge from the cavities, I did see a downy woodpecker hopping up and down among a stand of spruce trees just on the other side of the railroad tracks next to which I was walking. I know that the pileated woodpeckers spend the night in these cavities that they’ve made, but I wonder if other species take advantage of these cozy spaces as well (when the woodpeckers aren’t using them of course).

The birds that reside on or around my grandparents’ property certainly don’t have to search too hard for their next meal, as there are always 10-15 feeders filled with all different types of food at any given time. These birds eat well, but when they aren’t gorging themselves at the feeders I often see them among the sumac that is so prevalent on the property. During the spring and fall, the hardwoods receive much more attention from the songbirds around the house, but during the winter the feeders certainly are a refreshingly simple food source that they can always depend on, no matter how high the snow gets or how low the temperatures drop.

I started my walk at the Living and Learning center, and walked along the edge of campus towards Redstone, around the Redstone green and up towards the golf course, and back around the athletic fields down Spear Street towards the dorms. As I headed towards Redstone along the edge of campus, I saw a group of about 10 Black-capped Chickadees fluttering around among three large white oaks. Each bird was continuously bouncing around the trees, never stopping and staying in one place for more than a couple seconds at a time. I tried to take a picture with my phone, but it died from the cold. Determined to get a picture of what could have easily been the only birds I saw in the heavy snowfall, I went back inside to get my camera.

When I came back out with my camera to take a picture, the birds had disappeared. I could hear their faint "chickadee-dee-dee" calls in the distance, but I had a hard time actually locating them. In the interest of finding more birds to photograph, I ventured up towards Redstone. As I was crossing the green, I saw two crows flying overhead to the west, accompanied by the coarse "caw, caw, caw" as they passed. I wasn't able to get my camera focused on the birds in flight in time to snap a picture, but I was able to observe the flight pattern and compare it to that of a chickadee. The crow's wingstrokes were slow, aggressive, and deliberate, and their wings are large in comparison to their body. Crows have to travel a lot further for food than chickadees do, which is why they appear much more comfortable and smooth in flight. The large broad wings help them to cruise at altitude searching for food, and the slower, more deliberate flaps of the wings require much less energy than those of the chickadee

Chickadees do not have to search as long and hard for each morsel of food, rather they can flit around among the treetops searching for seeds and berries to eat. Chickadees have very rounded wings, with a lot of separation among their primary wing feathers, allowing them to make very precise, sharp movements in the air. Chickadees are a small bird and need to be able to maneuver quickly and precisely not only to navigate dense shrubbery that may contain a surplus of food, but also to be able to quickly avoid predators. I noticed that the chickadees would sort of bounce through the air, flying short distances very quickly around the treetops.

The variation in flight and wing shape between the two birds makes sense,. Large, powerful wings for the crow that is always on the move and traveling looking for food, and smaller, more precision oriented wings for the chickadee who may stay amongst the treetops.

These ten chickadees and two crows were the only birds that I saw on my entire walk, barring the glimpse i caught of a Blue Jay on my way back to the dorms from the golf course. The cold weather and heavy snowfall were surely a deterrent for all the birds in the area, as I usually see a plethora of birds when I walk that path to Redstone. Surely on a sunny day, especially in the spring once the temperatures rise and the snow starts to melt, I would have a much more lucrative birding experience by walking that same route.