Assignment 1: Flight Physiology

For my first field observation, I decided to set up camp near my neighbor's bird feeders around 3:00 on Sunday afternoon (Feb. 11th). He put out the feeders last summer and whenever I take my dog for a walk past them, I always see lots of different birds. Luckily it wasn't too cold or windy outside. Over the summer, he had positioned the feeders next to a bush on the side of his yard, but after realizing that this gave the neighborhood squirrels limited access to the bird feed, he moved the feeders into an open area of his yard without any trees or bushes too close.

Within the 90 minutes that I spent watching the birds that landed on the feeders (or ones that I saw in the general vicinity) I saw 4 different species total. I noted 1 Northern Cardinal, 3 American Goldfinches, 4 Black-capped Chickadees and 4 Blue Jays. The Blue Jays were the birds most often landing on the feeders.

In terms of the prompt for this assignment, I paid close attention to the Jays and the Chickadees since they differ in size and shape. Plus, they were the birds I saw the most of. The chickadees would flap their wings quickly during takeoff, then continue to flap in midair, and then tuck their wings into their bodies (they looked like little bullets) and then once they dropped a little in the air, they would start flapping again. This all happened in very quick succession. Before landing, they would lean their bodies back a little and beat their wings forward to slow themselves down. I liked watching the blue jays more because of how they hop around. They had a slightly similar flight pattern to the chickadees, where they tuck their wings in, but they would lose altitude quicker than the chickadees, which I'm guessing is due to their size. They also used their legs to push off for flight and started beating their wings. I didn't see the chickadees doing that, but maybe I wasn't watching closely enough.

Posted on February 21, 2018 06:34 PM by jnpearce