April 29th Bird Walk
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.
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