Looking at Birds is no Chore

I was picking up dead sticks in my yard and tossing them into piles. It’s a chore common to spring weather. Winter’s winds prune trees. An ebullient robin sang a repetitive tune full of hope and promise. A song inspired by day length. In the midst of dead things, life sang.

I listened to the gossip of newly arrived red-winged blackbirds. It was full of travel talk and winter tales. I found their talk intriguing enough to make a visit to a local lake. Minnesotans love lakes. That’s why we have so many of them. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”

Killdeer, common grackles, and American kestrels provided company on my journey.

I saw large numbers of Canada geese, many standing in pairs on ice or mud. I stopped to see eagles at the lake. They were fishing. They were all bald eagles—adults with white heads and mottled immature birds. Young golden eagles often have white patches under the wing and on the tail, but their white is more clearly defined than the white mottling on the wings and body of a young bald eagle. Spring rose up on eagles’ wings. I watch birds not only to marvel, but also to learn. Anna Botsford Comstock, the first woman professor at Cornell University and a pioneer in nature study, said, "The reason for studying any bird is to ascertain what it does. To hear some of our bird devotees talk, one would think that to be able to identify a bird is all of bird study. On the contrary, the identification of birds is simply the alphabet to the real study, the alphabet by means of which we may spell out the life habits of the bird."

Q and A

"What do pileated woodpeckers eat?"

Primarily carpenter ants and wood-boring beetle larvae. They also feed on fruit, nuts, and suet.

"When do white-tailed deer have babies?"

Fawn drop is mostly in May and June, but occurs from April into August.

"When do deer lose their antlers?"

They shed from late December into April.

Nature lessons

About 50 percent of fledged robins die each year. If a hatch-year robin makes it to mid-winter, it will live an average of 1.7 years.

According to the National Audubon Society, common grackle numbers have shrunk by 60 percent in the last 40 years.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issues depredation orders allowing the killing of migratory birds such as crows, grackles and red-winged blackbirds damaging property or posing a health hazard. New regulations removed the rusty blackbird, a species in serious decline, from the list of birds considered under such orders. It also banned the use of lead shot to kill birds under a depredation order because lead’s toxicity might poison other animals.

A woodpecker has a zygodactyl foot. The first and fourth digits face backwards while the second and third toes face forwards. This type of foot is excellent for clinging to the trunks of trees. 

I’ve been reading

This from “Kin and Kind” by Jonah Lehrer in the March 5, 2012 issue of The New Yorker, “Although the vampire bat has traditionally been seen as a ghoulish predator, it interests biologists for another reason: it is deeply altruistic. The bats live in expansive colonies, with hundreds or thousands sharing the same dark cave. Bats must feed constantly—they starve to death within sixty hours—and this has led to the evolution of an unusual way of sharing food. If a vampire bat fails to find a victim during the night, it will begin licking under the wings and on the lips of a chosen colony member. The animals then lock mouths, and the successful hunter starts vomiting warm blood. If such sharing did not take place, scientists estimate that more than eighty per cent of adult vampire bats would die of starvation every year”