March 3rd, 2020 Bolton Backcountry

On March 3rd, at 2:40 I began my bird walk. It was about 42 degrees and partly cloudy. The area I was walking in was the Bolton Backcountry. I started at 1800’ in elevation. Right at the beginning I saw and heard two Black-capped Chickadees. They were flittering around between a deciduous and evergreen tree. With the sun out and the activity of the chickadees at the beginning of my walk I was expecting to see many birds but, as I continued my way up I didn’t see many. At 3:00 I heard a Blue Jay. I continued up the hill, passing and hitting lots of snags of various sizes. The larger snags typically had larger cavities, and smaller trees had smaller cavities. I hit lots of the snags (probably over 20) during my whole walk and nothing came out of them. There were also not many birds around in general, I think that the birds might have been moved down in elevation for the day, while I was moving up. Maybe if I had been walking closer to sunset, the birds would have been in the cavities. I wonder if they return to the same ones every night. Around 3:40 I head another Blue Jay, I realized that I sometimes have a hard time determining if the call is a Blue Jay, a White-breasted Nuthatch or a Crow. The sun was still out but I could see the clouds carrying rain coming – I made my way up higher. The forest transitioned from a 80:20 deciduous to coniferous forest to a 25:75 deciduous to coniferous forest as I reached 3000 ft, and the top of my hike. At the top, the snowpack was certainly more than at the base, and I noticed lots of snow fleas in the shadows and pockets of the snow. On my way down I thought about the seasonal ecology. Those that stick around through the winter have to adjust their diet and find places to hunker down (likely in cavities in snags or coniferous trees). Birds likely get a winter coat and spend less time-wasting energy, only moving to find food to eat or sleeping. They have to search harder for bugs to eat and places to stay warm. Some birds may huddle together. In the summer and spring when the weather is warmers, and berries, buds and bugs are coming out they have more options for food, so then they can spend more time focusing on mating and raising young. I would think that they also have more options as where they choose to spend the night, building nests in trees, having to be less worried about snow and protection from the cold. As I returned to the beginning of my hike, slightly lower and a little warmer. Rain was coming. It was 4:45 and I saw and heard a pair of mourning doves in a deciduous tree.

Publicado el 07 de marzo de 2020 a las 04:27 AM por sgillies