Our Window on Nature

Each winter we have an influx of avian visitors from farther north. Most are small and visit our feeders, but a few larger birds congregate in our area. Within walking distance there are several roosts where we can catch the TV show if we get there early enough in the morning.

For the non-birders among you, TVs are Turkey Vultures. With a red featherless face, many consider them ugly up close, but when they soar in their search for food they are graceful masters of the sky.

Although they join together in roosts at night, they spend much of their day in solitary flight, but first they have to get warm. During the night the Turkey Vultures let their body temperature drop by as much as four degrees to save energy.

If they have found some protected area for the evening hours, they will edge out into the sun as soon as it comes up. And often, before they take to the air, they will spread their wings to bask in the early warming rays. Not a bad idea on these chilly mornings.

Acorn woodpeckers leave very little to chance. Pessimists by nature, these birds devote their waking hours to storing insects and acorns from late summer through fall, making sure that they’ll have ample food for the coming winter.

In much of California and the Southwest, you can’t help seeing or hearing acorn woodpeckers. They’re common wherever you find a mixture of oaks, junipers, and pines. You won’t have to look hard for them either, because they’ll be sharing your backyard or campground. These birds rank among the noisiest of the woodpecker tribe, and their loud “jacka, jacka, jacka” announces their presence long before you spot the clownlike pattern of their facial feathers. More than most birds, they seem to take pleasure in the sound of their own voices.

Of course, they have a lot to discuss. Whereas typical woodpeckers move about in pairs, acorn woodpeckers live in groups of six to a dozen or more. It takes a lot of hemming and hawing, screeching and cawing to live, work, and raise young in close quarters.

As one might expect, such communal living produces distinctive behavior patterns. The most noticeable - and perhaps the most interesting - of these behaviors is the acorn woodpecker’s habit of storing food in communal granaries.

All North American species of woodpeckers are woodworkers, but none approaches the efforts that acorn woodpeckers make to build and stock their community larder. Find a dead snag in acorn woodpecker country, and it’s apt to be so riddled with holes that it looks like a sponge. (Read the rest …)

It was cold before dawn on the first day of the New Year as Kaye broke ice off the water container outside our office window. We put it there for the birds, but the squirrels and an occasional deer make use of it too.

We don’t make too much of New Year’s Eve, but look forward to the excitement of the following morning. It’s not only a new year, but time to start a new list. We join millions of birders around the world who keep close track of the comings and goings of their avian neighbors.

For some this is a casual pastime, for others a meticulous duty, and for a few an obsession. You’ll have to guess where we fit into this mélange of birders, but we certainly write down what we see.

Not surprisingly the first entry was a Dark-eyed Junco, one of the most common birds at winter feeders across the United States. Number two was a White-crowned Sparrow, and these two birds will be with us for the entire winter. But the list goes on for the following 365 days.

Why do people keep bird lists? Although there can be some scientific value, I think for most birders it’s a sense of competition, but in this case the competition is personal. Everything is on the honor system, and only you will know whether you really got a good enough look at that bird to add it to one of your lists.

You read that correctly – lists, plural. We have a year list, a life list, multiple state lists, an area list, and of course a backyard list. Oh yes, there is also a list for each of the nearby National Parks, and one for every wildlife refuge within driving distance. Let’s not get into our other animal and flower lists. We use a computer program, Birder’s Diary (see below) to help us keep track of all our lists.

We don’t think we’re really obsessive about this enjoyable pastime. But we have some friends that are. We were bird watching with a couple we have known for years when Phyllis suddenly called out “Lowell, get the name of that bird!” Up came my binoculars, but the flying object disappeared before I could identify it.

When I asked what the excitement was all about Phyllis said “I needed it for my s**t list,” wiping her face with a handkerchief.

Birder’s Diary Life List Program - North America

In winter we find more birds’ nests than at any other season. It’s not that we aren’t looking the rest of the year; it’s just that the leaves get in the way. But after autumn comes and goes, the bare limbs of trees are decorated by the deserted homes of our avian friends.

An expert can identify a species of bird by its nest, for each robin and wren follows its own species’ master plan. But not all birds construct an actual nest.

The simplest nest we’ve found was that of a killdeer in North Carolina. We drove into an overflow parking lot and noticed the bird standing surprisingly close to our motorhome. As we got out and walked closer, the killdeer put on the “broken wing” display typical of the species. She tried her best to draw us away from what we now knew must be a nesting site, but there was nothing in the area but golf-ball-sized gravel covering the field.

A careful search turned up the nest - a slight depression in the gravel, filled with four eggs that perfectly matched their surroundings. We drove around the “nest” on our way out, hoping that the eggs would soon hatch. It was nearly summer, and time for that parking lot to get heavy use. (Read the rest …)

Why don’t perching birds fall out of trees when they take a nap? Or off of phone lines when the wind starts to whip the bird up and down? Birds may seem to have a much better sense of balance than the rest of us, but the real answer is in the structure of their legs and feet.

Watch one of your local birds the next time you see it about to land on a branch. The first thing you’ll notice is that the bird stretches out its legs just before touching down. And what may happen too fast to observe is the bending of the leg after landing. These two actions are the secret to what at first glance seems like a remarkable balancing act.

There are flexor tendons that run down the bird’s legs, and when the leg is straight, the tendon is more or less relaxed. But when the leg is bent upon landing, it stretches these tendons, which in turn clench the bird’s toes, causing them to lock around the branch or wire.

And falling asleep doesn’t change the grip, since the weight of the bird keeps the leg in the locked position. When the bird is ready to leave it’s perch, it straightens the leg and relaxes the tendon. Come to think of it, that still seems like a remarkable balancing act.