Social Behavior and Phenology

Observations for this field journal were between 5:00 and 7:00pm at Woodside Park. I had the chance to observe a flock of crows which are incredibly social species and quite interesting to watch. They constantly do their “caw-caw” call to communicate with one another. They feed together in groups and have individuals looking out for any threats. They will sound an alarm if anything spooks them and then they all will fly away in unison. Individual crows also may fly around and scout areas for potential food and notify the flock that they have found something.

I also observed a red winged blackbird and a few white-breasted nuthatches. Red winged blackbirds have distinct red shoulder patches to attract mates and will puff them out to catch the eye of a female. White-breasted nuthatches on the other hand are a little more drab in coloration which may help in camouflage and likely makes it harder to see them hopping along on trees. Birds will develop different coloration depending on the pressures they face, in the case of red-winged blackbirds it may be sexual selective pressures and by comparison, white breasted nuthatches may have more pressure of predation.

There was also a group of european starlings sitting high up in the trees. They were all resting which fits into the context of their circadian rhythm with getting ready for the sun to go down and to sleep. Birds like starlings are generally more active in the morning so it was not surprising to see them all resting in the trees.

I did not come across any chickadees this time but I have done “pishing” to try and attract them before. This sound may be so enticing to small birds because the noise emits a very wide range of frequencies. Some think it could be related to it sounding like an alarm call and often birds exhibit a mobbing behavior to drive way predators which may be why they are attracted to the sound.

Posted on March 25, 2019 03:33 PM by michaelmcg