Spring time!!!
This has been an exciting past week with a lot of bird activity! I have been out on several occasions since my last journal but for this journal I will talk about my birding yesterday, April 7th. It was a warm day, in the high forties, around 2 o-clock. Initially, I could hear a Song Sparrow singing but couldn’t find it. I got to where I knew it was in a tree close to me and finally I saw it perched on a branch. Its song wasn’t exactly as I picture their songs but I have been listening to recordings lately and have noticed that there is a lot of variety. Once I could see it, I could confirm that it was in fact a Song Sparrow and not a bird I don’t know. Along with the sparrow, I could hear a lot of Red-winged Blackbird activity. Right near where I live, there is a lot of different kinds of habitat. There are a lot of woodlands, both hardwoods and softwoods, there are open fields, and there are swampy areas and a brook. I went birding in Burlington earlier in the week, as well as Randolph before that, but up here in Northfield, it is fun to see the changes as I am so familiar with what has been around before now. I have been hearing Red-winged Blackbirds in fairly sizable groups (5-10) around lately, and yesterday, around 5 of them flew up into trees near where I was watching the Song Sparrow. They were too high up to clearly see the color on their wings but their call was distinctive. One of them had a higher pitch and sounded a little different and I thought maybe it could be subsong but I am not sure if Red-winged Blackbirds go through those same song learning stages.
Meanwhile, American Robins were all around me. It really felt like spring, with warm(ish) weather, a little sunshine, and a lot of bird chattering. I am not sure how many Robins there were but I heard at least 8 and it seemed like more were around. I saw individuals fly by and call or sing. The bird I was most excited to try and get a picture of yesterday, though, was the American Woodcock. I have been hearing them since a week ago last Saturday, and gotten close and seen them a few times but never with my camera, or never when it was still light enough for a picture. Since I was spending the whole evening outside watching and listening for birds, I figured it was my chance to snap a photo. At 7:30, as it was starting to feel like dusk, I heard the first peent from the field behind my neighbor’s house. I started walking towards it, although there is still some snow in the fields and it isn’t easy to get through all of it, and I got close enough that when it flew up, I saw it. However, its sound was coming from farther away when it landed and I heard one down across the road in the swampy area (an area I have seen it now a few times) so I beelined for that one instead. Again, I saw it fly up and got near where it had been. This time it came down pretty close but it was starting to get dark and my camera was having a hard time focusing on it and it flew again before I got a shot. Unfortunately I lost the light for photos but was able to get very close to it several times. I would get to where it had been peenting and hear its flight display get louder and louder and then hear wing beats right next to me. It was great!
Meanwhile, today is much colder and I decided to go out and compare and contrast what I saw in the same area. It was 28 degrees and there is a fresh layer of snow on the ground from a mixed precipitation that has been falling through out the day. It was pouring rain on my drive home from Burlington and it turned to snow on my drive when I got close to home. When I was outside, there was an icy rain and the birds I saw were mostly winter residents. I saw a lot of the crew I was seeing through the winter: Black-capped Chickadee, Blue Jay, Common Redpoll, Mourning Dove and Hairy Woodpecker. I saw a couple species I hadn’t seen up her, but know they live here in the winter: Dark-eyed Junco and Downy woodpecker. They were both at my neighbor’s birdfeeder, although I hadn’t seen them there until today. I saw one single American Robin, but nothing like the chorus of them I was seeing yesterday.
This comparison of days is similar to the prompt this week of comparing our resident species (or wintering birds) to our migratory species. The birds I saw today on this cold, more winter like day, were the winter hardy Vermont birds. I’m not sure how they all manage to make it through, but I know the Black-capped Chickadee has the ability to slow its metabolism down at night as well as spatial memory for seed caching. For them, the adaptations they have to survive winter make the energetic cost of migration not worth it.
As I mentioned in a previous journal, the Common Redpoll actually winter in Vermont and head north to breed, and live at a high elevation so they must have abilities that allow them to thrive in cold. It seems their migration strategy is to go where the food is. They are seed eaters and are actually irruptive migrant. Their range as residents is northern Quebec and all of Newfoundland as well as southern Alaska. To breed, they can go as far north as Baffin Island! They have a 2-year cycle and where they move corresponds to seed availability. They sometimes go into the southern states but not always, depending on food.
As far as new birds to the area, the Red-winged Blackbirds are here in large numbers, and possibly some were here all winter. According to Cornell, they migrate up to 800 miles. According to their map, they are year-round residents in most of the continental US, with the exception of VT, NH, and Northern Maine. They do breed in those states as well as go farther north into Canada. They also are residents in Mexico. Despite this large range, I assume they have a fairly high tolerance for the cold because they are an early spring bird here in Vermont, and with an affinity for swamplands I imagine their habitat can be cold in the early spring. The Song Sparrow is another short-distance migrator, and must not have the cold restrictions some birds have. I forget which species it was we talked about in class that had to eat a seed every few seconds in cold weather. I figure species like that are the longer distance migrators that go to warmer weather and don’t get back until it is warmer here. It would make sense that those birds that don’t go as far away can handle it colder, and therefore can return faster.
The American Woodcock goes as far North in the breeding season as Northern Quebec and a part of Newfoundland in Canada on the east, and as far south as Florida in the winter. A large section of their map is year-round habitat, though, so many probably don’t migrate far, if at all. The northern populations migrate down to the gulf states. They migrate at night, in groups, “at a leisurely pace”. I assume they just need the ground thawed enough here to be soft enough to get their long, shore-bird beak into it.
American Robin is another bird that perhaps is here all winter but definitely turn out in large numbers in the spring time. They can live year-round almost anywhere in the continental US. As worm eaters, I think that thawing ground would be important to them too for spring feeding. The way they survive in the winter must be to make use of whatever food sources are around. It is funny that they are considered such a classic harbinger of spring when likely many of them live here throughout the winter.
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