April 22 Journal Entry

Date: April 22, 2020. 3:30-5:00 pm.
Weather: Mostly overcast with temperatures in the upper 30s to low 40s, with high winds.
Location: Medium sized planned forest in Essex Vermont.
Habitat: tall, uniform conifers, with lots of low underbrush, but very little vegetation between the floor and the canopy.

This time around, I got unlucky with my area selection choice. A friend and I went out to a small trail in a little planned forest for timber harvest. The area was very interesting for humans, but my guess is that this would be poor habitat for many bird species, and the heavy wind certainly wasn't encouraging flight. The trees were tall but sparse, providing little cover, and swayed heavily in the wind, creating a very unstable canopy. I did not see many birds, but I will d omg best to analyze those I did see.

First, the only bird I saw that seemed like it might be in the business of mate selection or territory defense was one singular robin. It was sitting on low branches and singing near us for a while, and I heard its song nearby for a while afterward. It didn't seem to have a mate, which has not been the case for most other robins for me this year, and it could be due to the poor territory. Since I did not see any other territory-defending birds out today, I decided to do some research on the mating habits of corvids, since I had such an interesting experience with them today (I actually managed to identify a raven because it was next to 3 crows). We had learned in class that crow tend to flock in the winter, and I wondered if that was true for the breeding season as well. All About Birds says that generally these flocks tend to split into smaller family groups, who work together to raise young, and they did not mention defending territories. Ravens, however, seemed to follow the common model more closely, defending large territories and generally practicing social monogamy. It seems unlikely that either of these species would have nested in this area, as tree branches were not large enough to give a lot of ample support, and windy conditions moved the trees too much to be stable.

For my mini-map, there were not a lot of interesting sounds around. I did my best here, but I don't know some of the species. The light green was either a crow or a raven, and the blue in the left corner was the robin. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vzFArBYo9nfTR7K4au585aolx2Vh_WQO/view?usp=sharing

Publicado el jueves, 23 de abril de 2020 a las 01:37 AM por lucasferrier lucasferrier

Observaciones

Fotos / Sonidos

No hay fotos o sonidos

Qué

Cuervo Norteamericano (Corvus brachyrhynchos)

Autor

lucasferrier

Fecha

Abril 22, 2020

Descripción

Saw 3 of these guys get into a squabble with a raven over a small carcass.

Fotos / Sonidos

Qué

Mirlo Primavera (Turdus migratorius)

Autor

lucasferrier

Fecha

Abril 22, 2020

Descripción

Saw one robin sitting in some low branches, singing periodically. Sorry for the really bad photo, its definitely not enough to identify by, but I couldn't get a decent angle through the brush. You can see the orange of the breast right in the middle.

Fotos / Sonidos

No hay fotos o sonidos

Qué

Estornino Pinto (Sturnus vulgaris)

Autor

lucasferrier

Fecha

Abril 22, 2020

Descripción

Saw a couple of these near the edge of the wooded area, moving about high up in the trees. I think I just saw a pair, and they moved past quite quickly.

Fotos / Sonidos

No hay fotos o sonidos

Qué

Ganso Canadiense Mayor (Branta canadensis)

Autor

lucasferrier

Fecha

Abril 22, 2020

Descripción

3 geese moved past overhead, as geese tend to do. Not much other behavior out of them.

Fotos / Sonidos

No hay fotos o sonidos

Qué

Cuervo Común (Corvus corax)

Autor

lucasferrier

Fecha

Abril 22, 2020

Descripción

This was a really cool find for me because I can never tell the difference between a crow and a raven. In this case though, they were right next to each other, and I could see an obvious size difference between the birds. It was interesting to see the crows team up to take on the raven.

Comentarios

No hay comentarios aún.

Añade un comentario

Entra o Regístrate para añadir comentarios