Bird watch 4/20/20

Time: 6:30pm
Date: 4/20/2020
Location: Chatham, NY
Weather: Sunny, about 50F
Habitat: Along stream bed and near rural farm road

I began my walk outside my front door. I could hear a tufted titmouse singing nearby, and soon I could see it too, hopping around on a large white pine. At first I couldn't recognize the song because it wasn't the typical "peter-peter" sound, so I played the different songs on All About Birds to see if I could find a match. Little did I know this was a grievous insult, as almost immediately the tufted titmouse stopped singing and flew over to a telephone wire right above my head. He flapped his wings at his sides furiously and made an incessant buzzing sound. The message was very clear: I was displaying in his territory and he had to defend his rights. I also noticed another tufted titmouse hopping around the vicinity, so if this was his mate, it made the story even more clear. This was the first behavior related to reproduction I saw that evening.

This tufted titmouse was obviously not afraid of defending his territory and rights to mate, so I decided to analyze it's territory a little further. The tree where I first saw him and where he subsequently flew is on a short, dead-end street with not much activity. There are also a couple bird feeders in the vicinity as well as plenty of snags to nest in. The vicinity to humans may be a problem, but there is very little activity that would disturb them in this area. This tufted titmouse seems to have a prime territory compared to others. Its precocious nature and the fact that it already has a mate also indicates that this titmouse has fairly good fitness.

After this encounter, I walked a little ways to a nearby stream bed that has a rural farm road alongside it. In the stream I saw two ducks, but before I could identify them, a fisherman spooked them and they flew upstream. I took this as an invitation to follow, and not far upstream I saw them again. A pair of hooded mergansers. As I watched them, I also spotted a male wood duck nearby. The mergansers were obviously a breeding pair, but the wood duck did not seem to have a mate. As cavity-nesters, these waterfowl are probably building nests in dead trees along the stream. Eventually when I accidentally scared them away, they all flew up into the trees and I did not see them come down.

Then I walked up the back to the road, where there seemed to be a lot of bird activity in the vegetation on the side of a field. This is where I observed the rest of the birds I saw for this day. I watched two female brown-headed cowbirds follow a male brown-headed cowbird as he moved around in the trees. He must have been a very high quality male, as there were a couple other males nearby with no female attention. Several species of sparrows, American robins, and a house finch sang, hoping to attract a mate. I also saw a male northern cardinal singing and displaying his crest in a large honeysuckle bush, with a female nearby. These two were in the perfect habitat for their nest, at abut 8 feet off the ground in dense shrubby foliage. If they were in the process of building a nest, the male would be bringing twigs, bark, leaves, or grasses to the female, who would construct the nest. The male would not have to travel far to collect his materials since most are readily available on any patch of ground. Compared to the waterfowl, these passerines I observed were living in quite a different type of habitat, even though they weren't very far from each other. The passerines I saw mostly nest in open-cup nests in the trees or shrubs that lined the open field.

Mini Activity: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1odQKYPLlO0uL1_oO0GM4r3BoMLTrxc-t/view?usp=sharing

Posted on April 23, 2020 12:54 AM by