Diario de mrgorton

Today, on February 16th, 2016, at 2:37 p.m., I went into the University of Vermont’s Centennial Woods. The temperature was 28°F and it was snowing. When I first arrived in the woods, there wasn’t a lot of bird activity. But this soon changed; after 15 minutes of sitting still, the forest started to come alive.
I started to hear a multitude of American Crow “cawing” in the distance. The resident Black-capped Chickadees soon answered the calls of the American Crow and started to sing their own songs, “chickadee-dee-dee, chickadee-dee-dee.” After the Black-capped Chickadees sang their songs, I was quickly able to locate them in an eastern white pine. While I was observing these acrobatic Black-capped Chickadees jump from branch to branch, I noticed a streak fly by. It turns out that this was a male American Robin. This handsome bird decided that this was a good opportunity to land in a staghorn sumac and eat some of its succulent fruit.
After watching the American Robin for 15 minutes or so, the American Crows became very vocal and 25 of them flew overhead. I figured that either a human or some type of predator had frightened them. Suddenly I saw a bird of prey come into view, followed closely by a screaming American Crow. After a few moments I was able to determine that this bird of prey was a Red-tailed Hawk. The interaction between the Red-tailed Hawk and the angry American Crow was quite the sight to behold. The American Crow would scream and then swoop down at the Red-tailed Hawk and repeat this process over and over again. The Red-tailed Hawk would quickly flap its wings to avoid the American Crows attacks and then it would continue its glide. The other birds of the forest didn’t seem phased in the slightest, by the battle that raged above them. It seemed like they knew that they were in absolutely no danger.
I really enjoyed observing the birds interact with each other and their environment. They all seemed to have their own quirks and they seemed to be well adapted to the niche that they occupied. The Black-capped Chickadees were able to perform awesome acrobatic feats with their short wings. They would effortlessly jump from branch to branch by flapping their tiny wings two or three times. The American Robins flight seemed far less chaotic than the Black-capped Chickadees. It seemed to fly with a great degree of grace. The American Crows flew in flocks and seemed to never stop flapping their relatively long wings. The only time the American Crows didn’t flap their wings, is when the one brave crow decided to attack the Red-tailed Hawk. When this happened it changed the pitch of its wings and dove towards the hawk. The Red-tailed Hawk alternated between gliding and slowly flapping its wings to gain altitude. This method of flight seems to serve the Red-tailed Hawk well, especially considering their hunting strategy.