Trip Reports  March 20 and 21,  Linda  Orkin 

Saturday, March 20

We have finally landed in Spring and it is lovely.  Saturday morning was  bright and sunny, although quite chilly. In spite of the chill, Tom, Randy and I had a large group of about 14.  The level of energy is palpably higher as we are getting in to warmer weather, visibly swelling buds on trees, bright   daylight, and many birds singing.  More and more Common Grackles are here, more American Robins, more Redwings, including recently arrived females. Song Sparrows are singing everywhere, flying low into weed patches, perching high to sing.  It is so nice to see their little mousy brown bodies and watch their bodies vibrating with song.  We started out walking and pointing out all of this activity to our   very enthusiastic group. When we got to the wetlands platform, we were looking for the male American Kestrel and having no luck, when I suddenly spotted a bird right on top of a light post to the right. It was the Kestrel, but this time, the female.  All brown with striped tail, she was just sitting there quietly.  This was our first view of the female after having seen the male for the past two weeks.

 I just read a really great book about Falcons and learned that, yes, the male Kestrel does come back first and the female follows later. They do mate for life as long as they both live and have nesting success. I like a quote from the book though, specifically about Peregrines that says, “they mate for life, but do not mourn for a second”.   (It has become quite interesting to learn how many birds do maintain a pair bond throughout the year and over years, for example, the Pileated Woodpeckers that I discussed recently, Carolina Wrens, and resident Northern Cardinals. Of course, Canada Geese and Swans are famous for the longevity and strength of their bond. It seems especially true for birds that overwinter and maintain a territory, but it is so even for migratory birds such as falcons and other raptors.)

I just got external speakers for my iPod and along with the Stokes CD of bird sounds that lists each bird individually that I was able to alphabetize in my iTunes, I had a great way to play sounds that I was hearing.  This was a great resource really.  At the end of the walk when Randy and I were near the building I saw and heard a Song Sparrow but was not able to point it out  quickly enough before it flew down, so I played it for Randy just so he and the other woman Lois that we were with could  hear it.  And then the sparrow responded and flew up.  I only played it once, I did not want to stress out the sparrow and that had not even been my intention. I was telling Randy and Lois that Song Sparrows learn the songs of their neighbor males and they sing those shared songs back and forth to each other on their territories to constantly   redefine their territories but also, probably, to reassure each other that it is a familiar male nearby.  Perhaps this song on my player, being an unfamiliar bird, would cause the male some additional stress and I did not want to do that.

At the feeder by the blind, Randy told us that he had learned what the little electronic device was at the base of the feeder.  He said it is a device that is able to read a certain type of band that has been placed on Black Capped Chickadees.  Charles said that this, for now, is just to test how well the device works and then, to determine how often a chickadee visits the feeder and to try and make some determination of territory size and other data. Very interesting.

Tom and Randy had both participated in the nest maintenance with Charles and several others on Friday. They lowered the PVC snags so that the hole is at the same level as the companion conventional nest box hole, which will make the chickadee preference experiment have much more validity. Tom spoke to some interested people about this while Randy and I walked on.

Along the sidewalk, Randy asked me if I knew what a certain dried plant was. It was a goldenrod, but very interestingly and not surprisingly, it had a large gall in its stem. This gall was drilled out, with a pretty good sized hole on one side.  It could have been a Black-capped Chickadee that did it, but from the scrape marks, I thought it was more likely a Downy Woodpecker that had excavated the Goldenrod Fly larva.  We talked about how a fly larva would chew his way out of the gall while it still had proper mouth parts, then go back in the tunnel to pupate and then be able to emerge from this tunnel when it was a fly. Tom wondered it a chickadee would know to look for this little hole to find the pupa inside.

This was a very successful walk.  Tom and Randy were great co-leaders, helping to detect and locate birds for the group.

 Sunday, March 21

Sunday, I had weekend visitors and they came out for the walk, along with Randy and Larry.  Besides those 8, we had at least 12 other people.  This was a surprisingly large group to show up on a cloudy, cold, flurrying morning and it makes me feel that both Spring and our continued execution of this program are creating a tipping point.  We may have these very large groups all through the Spring.

We spent some time at the feeders, looking at siskins and many Red-winged Blackbirds on the ground who were not displaying at all.  I described to people how redwings can choose  to not display territoriality by keeping their epaulets covered, so that they can participate in this type of group activity peacefully.  The pair of Canada Geese was on the little pond right by the stone bridge walkway. They were both sinuously dunking their heads in the water and up again.  I pointed out this courting behavior.  Someone asked if you can tell male Canada Geese from females. I said I wasn't sure but Charles has since told me that males are noticeably larger. I am not good with larger and smaller, I can not detect this difference.  As we watched them court, the male suddenly jumped atop the female to copulate right then and there.  And then we could tell!

At the platform by the wetlands, we found the male Kestrel in a tree off to the left.  We were not able to locate the female.  I decided to play the sound of the Kestrel just so people could hear, and maybe just serendipitously, and maybe not, the female flew in, lower down than the male.  He immediately flew down to join her and then they copulated.  This was fun, but I made sure to tell people that I had not played this for that reason, and I certainly would not continue to play these sounds.

We walked on the Wilson Trail north spur, I heard  a White-throated sparrow sing and when he stopped before people got to hear it, I played his song.  He immediately responded to it (again, not my intention) but then we were able to locate him in a small shrub, but so hunkered down that his whole white throat was hidden.  We heard the high pitched zseets of Cedar Waxwing and watched a small flock of about 20 of them fly away. We saw a couple of Downy Woodpeckers, White-breasted Nuthatches, and many chickadees.  When we came around by the feeder, someone found a female red-wing in a shrub by the pond.  People are always so amazed at the female.  I saw an American Tree Sparrow in a shrub by the feeder, they seem to have certainly decreased in  number. There are still many siskins in  the trees on the north side of the building, many are singing.  Listen to the songs of the siskins and goldfinches on All About Birds & compare them.  They are very similar in their complexity, but the siskins lack the squeaky quality of the goldfinches.  We had three flyover and around sightings of R-T Hawks, and then saw one perched in a tree in the back of the building.  We had a Turkey Vulture fly over.  There were at least two GB Herons flying back and forth over the far side of the pond.  We saw both the Hooded and Common Mergansers on the other side of the berm.  There were  lots of singing Song Sparrows when we got back to the building.

This was really just a great day.  Can’t wait for more, it is addictive.