Stoopid Birds!

I often hear people make comments along the lines of: “Today a bird flew right into my window. Stoopid bird!” or “Stoopid ducks - why are they crossing a busy highway?”

But what’s really stupid - or maybe “silly” or “surprising” or even “horrifying” is the better word - is that we as humans have the expectation that wild birds should figure out our unnatural human world and make accommodations for it. In the last few decades, we seem to reason, wild birds should have evolved an understanding of reflective windows in houses and how dangerous they are. And they certainly should have figured out what a highway is and how to avoid it, even if it is inconveniently located between a prime nesting spot and a desired body of water.

"Barn Swallow," by Linda Tanner CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In fact, birds make surprising accommodations to our human world and its infringement on their own. In The Bluebird Effect (one of my favorite books!), naturalist and artist Julie Zickefoose writes that in multiple incidents recorded in the U.S. and Japan, barn swallows have figured out how to open the sliding glass doors in big-box stores and warehouses. They identify the motion-activated electric eye unit and hover in front of it until the doors slide open. Then the birds quickly fly in (or out) before the doors close. Successive generations learn the technique from their parents, such that a Home Depot in Maplewood, Minnesota, has had a barn swallow colony return every year to nest inside the store since 2000!

"Put Me Back! House Finch Greets the World,"
by John Flannery CC BY-SA 2.0

And this article and video summarize a recent experiment by Mexican scientists seeking to explain why urban house finches have the odd behavior of stuffing discarded cigarette butts into their nests. The scientists theorize that it’s a pest-control technique: the cigarette butts ward off blood-sucking ticks that otherwise infest their nests. It turns out that nicotine has some anti-parasite properties.

Despite these happy stories, overall our human world is changing the bird world much too fast for the birds to keep up. Bird numbers are declining - alarmingly fast for some species - because we’re clearing their habitat, poisoning the insects they eat and the water they drink, interfering with their migration by putting windmills in their path and lighting up the night sky, and so on. (For more information, see the 2016 State of North America's Birds report.)

Even the clever little house finches haven’t yet caught on that those discarded cigarette butts - one of the world’s greatest sources of environmental pollution, by the way - are causing genetic damage to their chicks by interfering with cell division. But doesn’t that make us humans, the ones who throw out the cigarette butts in the first place, the stoopid ones?

In Praise of (Bird) Fathers

As Father’s Day approaches, obviously I can’t help but think about dads. There are all kinds of dads out there: wonderful dads, active dads, cold and distant dads, up close and personal dads, mean dads, deadbeat dads, disciplinarian dads, laidback dads - you name it!

There are also all kinds of bird dads. But, through our cultural lens, we often project our expectations of human dad behavior onto the bird world. For example, when describing birds in the process of nesting behaviors - building the nest, sitting on the nest, feeding the young’uns after they hatch - I always hear people use the pronoun “she.” In many of our minds, the human parent doing the most to manage the household and take care of babies is the mom. Sometimes our projections lead us to get quite heated about perceived fatherly neglect in the bird world. The other day I was reading in online forums about people’s experiences with killdeer nests in their yard, and one irate woman noted that the female killdeer sat on the nest 24 hours a day while her “no good husband” didn’t bother to stick around.

Fascinating, huh? Not only are we characterizing bird mating behaviors as marriage, but we’re also judging bird morality based on whether or not their actions conform to our human expectations of gender and marriage!

Once you start looking at bird behavior, you might be surprised to find that dads are integral to the nesting and caregiving processes of most bird species. They don’t just love ‘em and leave ‘em, as we may be tempted to think. Let’s take the example of the killdeer, assumed by this one woman to be a deadbeat dad. Killdeer pairs mate for life, they go around marking out potential nesting sites together, and they take pretty equal turns sitting on the nest. I know from experience with a killdeer nest in our garden that the male is much more aggressive about chasing potential threats away from the nest than the female. After the first nest hatches, the parents take the chicks away to a safer place and share the responsibility of caring for them until they can fly within about 30 days.

The northern cardinal dad is a devoted caregiver after the female incubates the eggs, feeding her and the chicks in the nest until they fledge. While the female sits on a second nest, the male continues to feed and look after the older, fledged young, while also feeding the female and guarding their territory. By the time the second set of eggs hatch, the older siblings are ready to live on their own, and the dad can turn his attention to the next brood of nestlings. It’s hard to find a male cardinal at the end of the breeding season who isn’t exhausted, with bare patches and bedraggled feathers, badly in need of a molt.

Songbird males can also serve as mentors to younger males. I’ve just recently learned how a chipping sparrow male learns to sing. He doesn’t learn from his dad. Instead, when chipping sparrows return to their breeding grounds a years after a young male hatches, he seeks out an older male in the territory he wishes to inhabit and learns that male’s song. An older male will not tolerate another adult male in his territory, but he allows this new young fellow to move in and learn his song, even knowing that that younger male may eventually seek to take over his territory.

Of course, a few birds are, in fact, deadbeat dads. Since they are so cute and beloved, you may be disappointed to know that the ruby-throated hummingbird male is one of the most neglectful. He flies around in all his ruby-throated glory and mates with one, two, three, or however many females he can find around his territory. After that, a female builds a nest, lays (typically) two eggs, and raises the chicks, all on her own. There is some probability that the male does allow her to feed in his territory without fighting her off, as he would another male, but that’s the extent of his care for her or the young. By the time the young hatch, the male has often left the territory. And then guess what happens: as soon as they’re old enough, her young will start fighting with the poor female over food sources in the territory. I’m sure the complaining woman mentioned above would have plenty to say about these ungrateful children!

So there are all kinds of bird dads, and they may or may not live up to our human standards (just like human dads). Just as it’s interesting to think about the social, cultural, economic, and other pressures that lead to certain kinds of human dad behaviors, it’s interesting to think about the territorial, food, climatic, and other kinds of factors that lead bird dads toward behaviors that will (hopefully) ensure the survival of their offspring and species. Happy Father’s Day to all dads, bird or human, with appreciation for all that you do!

Pacing Oneself

I’ve been noticing lately that the pace of nature is very slow. I started to understand this in the past few years by watching one of our cats, Lemmon, hunt mice in our house. When she detects a mouse, say, behind the stove or refrigerator, she will sit in that part of the kitchen for hours and even days at a time, waiting for it to move. She knows the mouse will come out eventually, and she’s in no hurry.

A few days ago a toad moved into the rotting old stump near my flower garden. There’s enough erosion underneath to provide room for a toad to sit in the cool mud, a happy spot that benefits from water trickling down from the bird bath that sits on top of the stump. And there’s tall grass around the stump to make for good bug and slug-hunting territory. So the toad seemed happy to be there, and I was happy to watch it for hours at a time, fascinated. One morning I sat there reading for three hours, and the toad moved one inch in all that time. Like Lemmon, it was waiting patiently for bugs and slugs to come its way.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about reproduction and loss in nature, and that speaks to another kind of slow pace in terms of the endurance and rise and fall of population sizes. This year I’m fascinated in particular by the killdeer. Our resident killdeer pair have their second nest of the season in the garden right now. The first nest, as is typical, produced four chicks. One of the chicks survived the dangers of our neighborhood and is now as big as the parents, and we await the hatching of the next four eggs. A 25% yield is pretty darn good, but knowing that 90% of baby birds don’t survive their first year makes me realize that the little chick isn’t safe yet. It’s also likely that only one or none of this next brood will survive after hatching.

In other words, successful breeding is a slow business. Over the course of their lives, these two killdeer may produce anywhere between eight to eighty eggs, and for population maintenance we can really only hope that two will survive and reproduce. That means six to seventy-eight eggs and chicks may be lost. Similarly, I saw a mallard mama in our neighborhood start spring with nine little ducklings in tow. By the end of a two-week period, they were all gone, probably because of a combination of the red fox I’ve seen in the area, the barn cats at my neighbor’s horse farm, and the enormous snapping turtles in the creek where they swam. Now she’s on her second nest, on the edge of a neighbor’s house. Yesterday he came over to tell us that rat snakes had gotten into the nest and eaten all but three of the eggs. Such a sad loss of nine-plus lives so far, with little chance that one of the remaining three chicks, if hatched, will survive and grow to adulthood. But mallards are one of the most successful species in the world in terms of expanding their range and increasing their population, so obviously Mother Nature knows what she’s doing in the end.

So the lesson learned is that nature moves slowly, producing lots and lots of young over time so that a tiny minority will survive to reproduce. But, in the meantime, that “waste” goes to feed lots of other animals so that their young will survive to reproduce as well.

All of that is hard to grasp from my human perspective, especially given that I come from a society that values speed, efficiency, and immediate gratification. The hours I spend watching wildlife are painfully slow and bearable only if I’m reading or making to-do lists or something else so that I won’t be “wasting” my time. I don’t understand why Lemmon even bothers to hunt mice, knowing that there will be a bowl of food set down in front of her three times a day by busy, efficient me. But there are age-old lessons in the slowness of nature that we should heed.

First, slow, careful work yields a lot. One day I noticed a growing pile of teeny wood shavings at the bottom of that old stump. Finally I looked for the source and realized there are ants inside, digging out passageways; each ant works hard to dig out the wood and bring the shaving to a crack in the stump to dump it out. It’s amazing how the pile has grown in a few short days! Likewise, tons of research on writing shows that a little bit of writing every day produces many times more pages over the course of the year than a fast and furious spurt of occasional writing. The tortoise and the hare principal applies in nature and in our lives, otherwise Aesop wouldn’t have bothered writing a fable about it.

Another lesson is the importance of patience. Lemmon and the toad eventually get what they want (although we always take the mouse away from poor Lemmon and release it in the field across the street), and they do so by waiting patiently, saving themselves a great deal of exertion. Needless to say, developing that kind of patience is a tough one for all of us. But how many self-help books advocate patience and endurance, setting and working toward long-term, important goals, rather than chasing after short-term goals, urgent matters, and immediate gratification? We know that kind of patience is better for our emotional, mental, and physical health.

And there are other lessons, perhaps less satisfying, about the inevitability of death and loss and grief, but also about moving on, laying the next nest, hatching the next brood, trying again, optimistic that all of those efforts will produce much over the long haul.

Life After Downton Abbey

Something very sad happened to me recently. The great horned owl family that I have been watching obsessively since February on the Savannah Owls bird cam have now left the nest. First I watched the parents settle into the nest. Then I watched the mother sit patiently on her two eggs for endless days, as the wind and snow blew on her, and I watched the father bring in food or sit on the eggs so the mother could have a break. The eggs hatched, and I got to watch two of the most ugly-cute baby birds on earth grow up, with their ghostly white feathers and their even spookier wide, staring eyes. I shuddered as the dead animals piled up in the nest - mice, rats, squirrels, egrets, and other unidentified birds - and the babies slowly learned to pull chunks of dead flesh off the bone and feed themselves. I watched with dread as the parents spent less and less time on the nest and the owlets began to climb the branches of the tree around the nest, flexing and flapping their developing wings. And then, suddenly, the sad days came, as each of the owlets disappeared from sight. For a couple of days, the mother would come back to the nest with food, and sometimes be able to call the owlets back, but for the last two days there has been nothing.

I know they’re out there in the world together, and that the parents will continue to guide and protect the owlets for months until they can hunt successfully on their own and stake out their own territories. But I won’t see all of that happen from here on out, and it feels like the same kind of loss I experienced when six seasons of Downton Abbey came to an end and I no longer had those “friends” in my life.

Bird cams are a revolutionary technology growing in popularity. They bring us into the most intimate sphere of the bird world. We admire the birds for their hard work, tenacity, and long hours of caring for offspring. We see how helpless the babies are and how quickly they develop. We even give them names. The eagle family featured on the Washington, D.C., eagle cam are “Mr. President” and “The First Lady”. (Next year will they be the Clintons? The Trumps? The Cruzes? The Sanderses? Only time will tell!)

Bird cams also make us face the horrible realities of nature: that somebody has to die in order for somebody else to live, or that sometimes somebody dies for no good reason at all. Whole families and offices full of people cheered as the bald eaglets hatched in Hanover, Pennsylvania, and then expressed horror as one died in the nest, for no clear reason. The Washington, D.C., eagle cam website even posts the following warning:

“This is a wild eagle nest and anything can happen. While we hope that these two healthy juvenile eagles will end up fledging from the nest this summer, things like sibling rivalry, predators, and natural disaster can affect this eagle family and may be difficult to watch.”

Like reality television, the bird cam industry is expanding. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology alone hosts 15 cameras on a variety of species, from hummingbirds in West Texas to an albatross nest in Hawaii. Daily moments on the cams are tweeted, shared on Facebook, and captured in videos for Youtube. As with all other internet and social media phenomena, they are changing us and our experiences of life. For example, the intimacy of the camera now makes the nests in my yard seem a little dull. I can’t stand next to the Leyland cypress and peer into the chipping sparrow nest several hours a day without running the poor, scared little things off and without developing leg cramps from standing on a ladder. A couple of weeks ago I was at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV, looking through binoculars at a bald eagle nest that I watch online here, and it was a real letdown to see it in person, from far away, with an obstructed view because of the tree branches. Sitting in my office, staring at my computer suddenly seemed the more “real” way to interact with nature. Funny, huh? The internet as the best and most real way to celebrate nature.

Today I went to the Savannah Owls cam website, desperately hoping that maybe the camera would catch one of the owlets back in the nest for a daytime sleep and I could smile at how much he has grown in the last couple of days. To my surprise, there was a pair of ospreys on the nest instead. I am watching them now as they check out the nest and call to each other. Will they nest there? Will they successfully raise a family? Will the owls return? Will the owls kill and eat the osprey chicks after I have fallen in love with them? As with any soap opera cliffhanger, I will definitely have to tune in tomorrow and find out more.

Cute - or Deadly?

It’s a beautiful week in central Maryland, and I’m on spring break, which means I’ve been out a lot, looking at birds. As I walked along the Potomac River yesterday morning, there were Eastern bluebirds everywhere, one of my favorites. I love that flash of blue in the sunshine, that bit of chestnut brown on the breast, their big, round cartoon eyes, and their perky little song.

But these particular birds were not being cartoonish and perky; they were fighting. There were eight total, four males and four females. They seemed to be fighting over territory, with each pair trying to run off the other pairs. However, it may be that they were fighting over each other. It’s early in the mating season, and pairs may not yet be securely established. Plus, although most songbirds are generally monogamous, both male and female Eastern bluebirds always look to get a little action on the side. (This article provides a concise summary of bluebird mating habits with more such fascinating information.)

Whatever the reason, the fighting continued for the entire twenty minutes that I stood there watching. The birds chased, dove, flapped, and pecked - and they were so caught up in their actions that they were oblivious to my presence there, flying past me several times and letting me get pretty close to them. It struck me that they were wasting an enormous amount of precious energy on this process. Cold winters are hard on bluebirds, which generally stay put in our region for the year, and many of them die in the early spring because they are starving and weak and food resources have not yet picked back up. But here they were, willing to spend such long periods of time in the energy-sapping process of fighting.

This morning I had the thrilling opportunity to see two Northern flickers do their mating dance. (You can watch a quick video of this neat little dance here.) Another energy-intensive process, it went on for minutes and was followed by quite a bit of flying and chasing and chirping. Northern flickers are another year-round bird that can be exhausted and weak by this time of year, yet every year they summon up the energy for this elaborate mating process.

I often hear people talk about how “sweet” the sound of the birds is, how “happy” they sound when they sing or “cute” they look when they zip around our yards. I have used this language myself! When we hear birdsong, it makes us feel sweet and happy, and so we assume that those nice emotions must be shared by the pretty, energetic, brightly-colored birds around us.

But there is nothing sweet or happy about these springtime behaviors. These birds are in a fight for their lives and the right to claim the best territory, find the best mate(s), and raise the best brood. Those beautiful songs contain threats to competitors and lures to potential mates. Many of the males will lose out and be resigned to a life on the margins, trying to mate surreptitiously with an unattended female or move in on another male’s territory when he dies or is injured. The females will wear themselves out with raising brood after brood and helping to defend their territory against predators, other birds, and those marginal males. By the end of the nesting season, toward the middle to end of summer, all of the adults will be looking ragged and worn.

As I finished my walk this morning, I saw a male song sparrow, singing his heart out in an evergreen by a creek - the ideal spot for a song sparrow to claim as his territory. So tiny, singing his beautiful little melody - the words “cute” and “happy” definitely came to mind. Funny to think that, in his own mind, he was being “fierce” and “threatening” and asserting his “masculinity” - perhaps not too different from the young man who then drove by in his huge dually truck with double exhaust stacks.

Birds on the Move

March 1: a big day for me because March is the month when many songbirds start their migration north to their breeding grounds. I am so ready for them! I am ready for their dawn song, their frantic nest building, the hatching of the eggs, the fledglings making their way around my yard, the parents flitting back and forth between food sources and home.

There are amazing technologies out there for tracking the migration of birds - and a lot of information about migrants gathered carefully by everyday citizen scientists who go out birdwatching and record their data online in various forums.

Birdcast.org will soon begin weekly forecasts of bird migrations. It is so much fun to read their forecasts and then watch them come true in your yard that week. If Birdcast says you will see a grey catbird in your region by early Tuesday, you can bet you’ll hear its iconic mewing sound on that day. But these forecasts are not only for our delight as birdwatchers. They are essential to persuading wind farms to shut off their turbines during certain days or times of day to avoid grinding up millions of migrating songbirds. Big building lights can also be dimmed strategically so that the birds are not confused by the lights, which can get them off course or lead them to crash into the buildings as they fly.

Ebird.org is also a useful resource. Individual birders record the species they observe in particular areas - and the data is coming in from all over the world - so that you can figure out where to go to see a migrating species arrive to stay or to fly through quickly on their way further north. This tool helps a lot during warbler season especially. A lot of warblers remain in our area only for a few weeks, and this tool helps me know where I am likely to find them. Over time, these recorded observations (coupled with radar, which picks up flocks of migrating birds) can also help scientists track how arrival and departure dates for certain species change from year to year, which could be useful in determining the effects of weather, climate change, food source availability, and other phenomena on bird migration. Apparently scientists are still using Henry David Thoreau’s carefully recorded observations of weather, nature, and wildlife as a baseline for comparison with later years in the area around Walden Pond!

Such tools can help us learn about and enjoy nature, and they are also an excellent way to participate in science as a non-scientist. Please write in the comments if you have another tool that helps you enjoy the migration season.

Animal Frenemies

Like many people, I love viral videos about lions that befriend baby antelopes or zoos where tigers decide to be best buddies with the live goats given to them as food. I watch with awe, and knuckles tightened, as people show videos on youtube of their cat playing sweetly with their cockatiel or a bunch of ducklings sleeping serenely on the back of a bird dog. I’m even enjoying my own “lion lies down with the lamb” scenario here at home, with two cats and a rabbit running around in the living room together, giving off an air of happy curiosity, occasionally sniffing each other’s faces. It’s heart-melting stuff.

I’ve been obsessively watching the live birdcam hosted by Skidaway Audubon Society in Savannah, Georgia, trained on a great horned owl nest. (You can watch two live cams here or go to “highlights” for videos of some of the most interesting moments.) It seems as if the spring nesting season will never get here, and fortunately great-horned owls start their nesting season in January. So I can watch the mother - and occasionally the father, when she needs to have a break or go hunting - on the nest, keeping two good-sized eggs warm on cold winter nights.

This morning on the bird cam, I observed a couple of interesting things. First, I heard a squirrel squawking and watched as Momma Owl got more alert and interested, rolling her head around in that amazing way that owls have. I saw the squirrel come up the tree, eye level with the owl, and shake its tail. The owl tensed up, stood, clicked her bill menacingly, and rushed at the squirrel, feathers fanned out so that she looked twice her size. The squirrel ran off but continued to squawk from nearby for at least 15 minutes. Momma Owl eventually relaxed and started looking a little sleepy. Then the pesky squirrel jumped over her nest, from one branch to another, and the process began again. The squirrel was messing with her!

Just after the squirrel incident, there was a moment of much greater tension. I could hear American crows having what I call their “morning coffee”. Crows live in large, extended families and communities, and early in the morning they like to meet together in a group of tens or hundreds and call to each other for half an hour or so. I like to think they are discussing the previous day’s news and checking in about what’s up for the day ahead before they fly off in different directions. This morning the crows were very close to the nest, and Momma Owl seemed to respond with a great deal of concern, even hooting for a while, perhaps as a warning to the crows or to summon her mate in case she needed protection.

Squirrels and crows are the prey of great horned owls, which eat just about anything in the size range between frogs and large Cooper’s hawks, including other great horned owls. But Momma Owl looked vulnerable when the squirrel and crows were on the scene. If she were in the air, and could swoop down on that squirrel, the squirrel would be lunch. Sitting in her nest, needing to protect her eggs from cold air or egg-stealing species (such as squirrels and crows), however, she was vulnerable. A great horned owl is not agile enough to suddenly rise up in the air and fasten her powerful talons around a squirrel, nor do the size and shape of her bill allow her to grab at a quick, clever, squirrel-sized mammal unless she already has it subdued within her talons. There was nothing she could do except try to scare the squirrel away. The squirrel finally gave up; it had made its point. But that squirrel had better sleep with one eye open tonight, if you know what I mean.

I’ve noticed Momma Owl’s fear of the crows on other days. Her best strategy there seems to be to lay low and hope they don’t notice her. Crows are not afraid to mob and harass owls and other predators when they are in flight. But it is hard to believe that crows would try to force Momma Owl out of her nest. Why would they want to get her in the air, where she’s more of a threat to them? Nevertheless, crows are often seen harassing and taunting nesting owls for long periods of time. Again, crows seem to enjoy messing with them! This interesting column offers a thought-provoking explanation that the crows are acting out their fear and hatred of owls. There is also the possibility that crows - and squirrels - are engaging in signaling behavior, a well-documented survival strategy in which a prey animal deliberately gets close to a predator in order to say, “See, I’m so fast and strong that I know I can get away from you - so you might as well not even try!”

My point here is that there are always conditions when the prey can have a little fun with the predator or when the vulnerability is temporarily reversed. But predators are predators and prey are prey - and a change of conditions will always right the situation. In other words, I put my money on Momma Owl every time.

Same with our domesticated or encaged animal frenemies. That recent lioness and antelope video, when analyzed by experts, showed that the lioness was simply playing with the baby antelope just as a housecat plays with a mouse. It can look sweet at times, but it’s really quite cruel and always ends in mangling and death for the mouse or antelope. A tiger and a goat can be buddies in the rarefied environment of a zoo, but that should always be seen as an exception rather than a rule. Our rabbit Ollie can play with the cats while I am there to supervise, but I rely on the fact that Ollie is as big as they are, and can run faster and navigate the small spaces of our house with more agility if she needs to. The cats are well fed and lazy; if they were outside and hungry and saw Ollie streak by, I have no doubt their instincts would kick in and they would chase and kill her.

We all love the thought of the lion lying down with the lamb, and viral videos suggest that it can happen from time to time. And we apparently love to set up unusual conditions in which cross-species “friendships” can occur and then allow ourselves to extrapolate these to visions of world peace. But it’s wise to remember the old story about the girl who found an injured snake and nursed it back to health. The snake bit her, and she died from the venom. The moral of the story? A snake is still a snake.