Gregory
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Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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Activity 1: Birds matter to me because they are relatively easy to observe and deeply fascinating: behavioral adaptations, extreme physiological features, evolutionary history, migratory journeys, and so on. Observing them is the basis of what is probably my strongest connection to the natural world, as I cannot regularly access wild areas. Finally, they are important symbols of the places that have been significant in my life. Activity 2: I purchase some bird-friendly coffee for myself, I participate in citizen science with my eBird checklists, and I do avoid using disposable plastics when possible. When I have a garden at some point in the future, I plan to include native plants. I could probably do more to reduce the amount of trash I generate, and I could purchase exclusively bird-friendly coffee. I hope it will get easier in the future as the farming practices become more standard and widespread globally. Activity 3: I have only been observing birds carefully for about 5 years, so while I have noticed significant variation in the numbers of migrants of different species in different years, I don't have enough personal observations to feel confident about overall trends. I do think that the population of Canada geese in the neighborhood has grown over time, however. Activity 4: While I am interested in learning all sorts of information about birds, I am particularly interested in understanding and observing the behavior of birds at the ecosystem level. I would like to spend more time watching communities of birds: behavior at different times of day, composition at different times of year, and so on. I would also appreciate opportunities to observe birds which represent interesting branches of the evolutionary history of the entire class. What next steps do you want to take in your birdwatching journey? Has this course inspired you to try anything new or make any changes in your life? Share in the discussion.
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Activity 1: I usually try to take photos of the birds I see, and on these birding occasions I generally refrain from taking notes. However, if it is difficult to take good photos or if I have opted to go without a camera, writing down brief notes in eBird as I go makes it much easier to keep an accurate record than trying to remember what I saw afterwards. Additionally, even if my first guess for the identity of a bird turns out to be wrong, having the guess marked down makes it easier to remember what the bird looked like (and to correct the record) because I can more easily remember why I made that guess. Activity 2: I wish I had signed up for the local rare bird alert before today, because it told me that there was a rare bird at the park I just visited, and at the time I wasn't looking very carefully at distant birds!
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Activity 1: The nearby park has a lagoon with a patchy, relatively young forest on one side and a small meadow on the other. The forest is frequented by warblers, vireos, American robins, Baltimore orioles, and gray catbirds; woodpeckers and hummingbirds can sometimes also be seen. The meadow is a better place to find red-winged blackbirds, European starlings, and occasionally Cooper's hawks. Of course, the lagoon itself has plenty of ducks and geese, as well as herons, egrets, gulls, terns, and double-crested cormorants. Activity 2: Down House hosts many kinds of doves, gulls, and songbirds, along with some raptors, pheasants, and woodpeckers. In contrast, Sevenoaks hosts many kinds of ducks, geese, and wading birds, as well as some swallows. There is reasonable overlap between the species lists, and both seem to host several kinds of corvids. From this, I imagine that Down House has a lot of open spaces with some wooded groves, while Sevenoaks has some extensive aquatic habitats, perhaps a small wetland bordered by trees.
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Activity 1: I have often observed mallards dabbling for food close to shore or snapping it up off of the ground. Small fights frequently break out which includes some pulling of feathers, rapid running, and quacking at each other; this is usually immediately followed by the participants resetting their plumage, either by just fluffing up and settling back down or by bathing. After this lesson, some of the grooming and preening behaviors I have seen I now know to involve spreading oil from the gland by their tail over the rest of their coat, which requires them to rub it with their heads. Activity 2: Carolina chickadees typically grab just one seed at a time before flying to a nearby perch to eat it, while house finches and northern cardinals remain at the feeder to eat continuously. The cardinals usually scare away the finches, but if there are enough finches they sometimes will charge back at the cardinal and reclaim their spots, although they frequently compete with each other. Chipping sparrows visit not infrequently. Carolina wrens, eastern bluebirds, and tufted titmice are much more furtive around the feeder. Brown thrashers frequently forage through the leaf litter underneath for the seeds that have been dislodged by the finches and cardinals. In the late winter and early spring, it is common for a northern mockingbird to fly to the feeder and scare away any other birds feeding there, but they usually do not get anything from the feeder themselves; it seems like a purely territorial activity. Activity 3: Most of the time, I hear northern cardinals and blue jays making their calls, sometimes joined by more distant American crows, or by Canada geese flying overhead. In the mornings, Carolina wrens often sing; northern mockingbirds are heard even more frequently.
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Activity 1: The northern cardinal is non-migratory and has a large range centered in the southeastern states, while the Blackburnian warbler is extremely migratory, with very high densities in small ranges for relatively small periods of the year (I was surprised to see its abundance in the Appalachians, mostly avoided by cardinals, during the breeding season). The scarlet tanager and western tanager are extremely well-separated geographically with the former in the eastern US and the latter in the western US during the breeding season and, somewhat surprisingly to me, the former in northern South America and the latter along the Pacific coast of Mexico during the non-breeding season. The ruby-throated hummingbird and rufous hummingbird are similar in this respect, but their migration patterns have a more pronounced geographic cycle, with both staying closer to the oceans on the journey northward. The sandhill crane has a significantly less sharp migratory pattern than the yellow-bellied flycatcher and mostly occupies a larger geographic range, with some clearly observable distinct populations (such as those that remain in Florida during the breeding season). Activity 2: Ring-billed gulls, Canada geese, and house sparrows are year-round residents, while chimney swifts and Caspian terns start appearing in mid-to-late spring and depart in mid-to-late autumn, and red-winged blackbirds are abundant from March through August and present but not abundant for the remainder of the year. I have seen all of these birds, but did not pay much attention to the seasonality of the swifts and terns before. Activity 3: In the summer, male American goldfinches have bright yellow bodies with strong black crowns and wings and orange bills, while in the winter, they are mostly brown, with vaguely yellow faces and black bills. Common loons have the same general color scheme in summer and winter of dark backs and light bellies, but the black feathers are much more dramatically black in the summer (especially the hood) and the checkered pattern of their backs is very striking, as are the red eyes. Activity 4: At a park I have visited often before, green herons, yellow-billed cuckoos, and ruby-throated hummingbirds can sometimes be found at this time of year; in 6 months, double-crested cormorants, American coots, and hooded mergansers should be present.
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Activity 1: In the nearby park yesterday I saw 10 Canada geese, 2 wood ducks, 7 mallards, 1 ruby-throated hummingbird, 2 ring-billed gulls, 2 double-crested cormorants, 4 great blue herons, 3 green herons, 1 black-crowned night heron, 1 great egret, 1 Cooper's hawk, 5 American crows, 15 barn swallows, 3 gray catbirds, 10 house sparrows, and 3 American goldfinches. Activity 2: Apparently the 10 overall most likely birds right now are the ring-billed gull, American goldfinch, mallard, northern cardinal, house sparrow, Canada goose, American robin, barn swallow, black-capped chickadee, and chimney swift. American goldfinches are somewhat seasonal, barn swallows and chimney swifts are strongly seasonal, and the rest are very common throughout the year. Activity 3: Common goldeneyes are very abundant in winter, semipalmated sandpipers are common from early summer to early autumn, snowy owls are moderately abundant in the winter, yellow-billed cuckoos are relatively common in late spring through mid-autumn, and Swainson's thrush is very common in late spring and early autumn but not during the summer.
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Activity 1: Swallows have forked tails, but chimney swifts do not. Activity 2: Indigo buntings are a medium hue of blue almost all over except wings, blue jays are blue on the back, crest, wings, and tail feathers, and eastern bluebirds are blue on the back, tail and most of the head. Activity 3: Great blue herons fish by quickly stabbing their beaks into the water from a standing position, mallards dabble and tip their tails out of the water as they do so, and grey catbirds pry berries from fruits (seemingly usually around head height). Activity 4: Canada geese are large with long necks, moderate beaks and legs, and short tails, they have black necks and heads with white chinstraps and light brown bodies, and they have an iconic clear and somewhat high-pitched honk preceded by a subtle low vocalization.
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Activity 1: The Carolina Wren is one of my favorites, because its song is distinctly memorable from earlier childhood even though I was not especially interested in birds at the time. Activity 2: I am fortunate to live close to a lake with some parks lining the shore, which attracts many different bird families (waterfowl, seabirds, shorebirds, warblers, sparrows, finches, wading birds...). Activity 3: Seeing a variety of birds is fun, but I will always appreciate the ubiquitous Canada Goose for being easy to find and letting you observe its behavior quite closely; this parent goose successfully chased off 11 other adult geese so that its 3 goslings could monopolize a food source.
Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)