Bird Fight!

There's a bird in this photo. Look at the end of the horizontal pipe near the top. That pipe holds cables that suspend another traffic light over the roadway. Click to enlarge.

These are favorite spots for New York City's house sparrows (Passer domesticus) to build nests. I see birds coming and going from the ends of these pipes all over town. There is room for two nests, one on each end. The male sparrows fight to claim and keep them.

The urban bird house.

As I was passing this spot today, a pair of male sparrows fell onto the road -- fighting with wings, beaks, and claws. The next moment I realized a car was coming right at them. I had a second only to hope they would break off and fly away as city-birds-on-the-road usually do. But they didn't! The car ran right over them! Whatever I yelled was lost in New York's noise. Then the car passed and there the birds were on the road -- still fighting! It was their good luck to fall exactly in the center of the roadway so the car passed without hurting them. They did break off and fly away then, one doing evasive maneuvers and the other in pursuit. I have no pictures because it happened too fast, just a story. But geez birds. Don't fight in traffic!

Nest Shopping

Nesting season has begun in New York City. This picture of a pair of European house sparrows, Passer domesticus, shows off the adaptability that helps theses birds live among humans so successfully. They'll make nests in natural cavities like holes in tree trunks, but also will readily move into man-made spaces like the hollow pipe the female on the right is sitting inside. The pipe holds cables that suspend a traffic light over Broadway in Manhattan. All over the city, males like the one on the left are defending traffic light cavities just like this one, and fights among males often break out around the streetlights in early spring. Females sparrows visit while the male nest-owner chirps and hops nearby, hoping a female will move in. This female looks pretty comfortable and might be thinking of how to decorate the interior with grass and fluff to make it a perfect dream nest. Looks like a match has been made. Click to enlarge. 

Meanwhile, in Central Park, this European starling, Sterna vulgaris,  has found a very nice natural cavity. Before long all the nest-worthy spots in the city will be full of cheeping nestlings. 

First Snow

We had our first substantial snowfall in Brooklyn this week. I am always impressed at how well the birds endure the cold winter weather; see how the sparrows on my fence puffed up their feathers for maximum insulation. Click to enlarge. 

I provided a breakfast buffet for the birds the next morning. There are always European house sparrows like these around happy to accept a handout. 

This extra cold looking mourning dove had some seeds, too. 

And my favorite -- a winter robin -- ate some raisins. We'll see more of this guy in the coming months. He looks great on a white winter background, doesn't he? 

Wreath of Sparrows

Wow -- a bunch of European house sparrows, Passer domesticus, gathering grain. Are they in a wheat field?

Nope. They are systematically taking apart an autumn wreath on the door of a Brooklyn brownstone. Looks a bit bare on the lower left, doesn't it?

A dozen more sparrows sat the on the steps below, waiting their turns on the wreath and snatching up fallen snacks. Clever foragers! No wonder they are such successful urban birds. Click on the photos to enlarge.

Subway Sparrow Refuge

Most of the city's house sparrows are puffing up their feathers and trying to keep warm, but not all of them. Click to enlarge. 

I take an express train to the 59th Street subway station where I can either go above ground and walk the rest of the way to the museum, or catch a local train. When the weather is bad, as it has been throughout February, I catch the local train and ride the rest of the way. The 59th Street station is busy with commuters, the intersection of several train lines, newsstands, street performers, and ... birds. It's full of birds!

One day last week the train doors opened and I was surrounded by the sound of chirping birds, so many chirping birds I could hear them over the din of the trains. I also heard some incongruously loud mariachi music. For a moment I was tricked into forgetting winter. I looked around and saw a flock of sparrows chirping in the rafters, some hopping on the platform, and a few more pulling a half-eaten danish from a trashcan. It was 7 degrees F above ground that day. Clever birds to fly down the stairs and away from all that!

Further down the platform a man holding a microphone burst into a Mexican song. A passerby stopped to dance. The birds chirped and fluttered.

Computer generated recreation... 

Gathering Nest Material

A house sparrow with a mouthful of dry grass. 

A red-tailed hawk with a stick. 

A squirrel carrying dry leaves. 

A lot of nest-building going on this week! 

Spring in New York City -- finally

Crocuses! 

Daffodils!

Robins are finding things to eat in the thawed soil. 

Pigeons seem to be copulating more than usual. This pair stopped when they saw me. Click to enlarge photos. 

House sparrows are fighting over nest cavities. This one is perched at the entrance to a nice natural tree hole. 

Yay, spring! 

An excerpt from Atalanta in Calydon (1865) by Algernon Charles Swinburne:

For winter's rains and ruins are over, 

And all the season of snows and sins;

The day dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins;

And time remembered is grief forgotten,

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,

And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins. 

Dust Bath, Sun Bath

This group of European house sparrows, Passer domesticus, was dust bathing in a sandy patch of dirt in Central Park in New York City on Friday afternoon.

To take a dust bath, scratch a depression with the feet. Wiggle the belly down into it. Ruffle the feathers. Shake and flap furiously to fling dust in the air. Spread the wings and get dust all over them. Shake the dust through the feathers and down to the skin. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Then shake the dust off and preen until spiffy. Voila! Many kinds of birds take dust baths; it helps control parasites and absorbs excess oil.

 Click on the photos to enlarge. 

This American robin, Turdus migratorius, is taking a sun bath.

Sun bathing, too, helps keep the feather parasites down. To sun bathe, a bird spreads or droops the wings, ruffles feathers, and assumes various postures that expose different areas of its body to the sun. When a parasite moves to get away from the heat and light, the bird snacks it down.

A gray catbird, Dumatella carolinensis, catching some rays. 

An Unusual Sparrow

A leucistic house sparrow! 

A female house sparrow, Passer domesticus, with normal coloration.

European house sparrows are so common in New York City that they are easy to overlook.

But I saw a special one in Cadman Plaza Park in Brooklyn Heights last weekend -- a female with patches of white feathers on her back, sides, and tail. She has a genetic condition called leucism, which prevents the normal deposition of pigment in some of her feathers. (Another form of the condition can cause birds to be pale all over.)

Leucistic birds are pretty rare. The Feeder Watch Project run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for instance, reported fewer than 1000 leucistic birds among five and a half million observed during one year at feeders across the US and Canada. That's less than one bird in 5500, or about 0.02%.

I hope this one stays in my neighborhood for a while. I'll report back if I see her again.

Click on the photos to enlarge. 

Sunday Breakfast

I scatter seeds on my porch in Brooklyn Heights for the birds when the weather gets cold. This morning I had lots of visitors. Click on the photos to enlarge.

House sparrows, Passer domesticus, are always the first to arrive. They like seeds and breadcrumbs.  They usually come in a group. 

The cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, eats seeds, nuts, and fruit. A male/female pair come together, and he usually comes out from cover first. She is less trusting and flies away if she sees me watching. They can open peanut shells, and often nibble some grapes and then fly off with one big peanut each to peel and eat in a more private place. 

I can always tell when the blue jays arrive from their loud calls of Jay! Jay! Jay! The jays, Cyanocitta cristata, target whole peanuts in the shell, carrying them off, one by one, until they have collected them all. They find a good spot and bury them for later. 

White-throated sparrows, Zonotrichia albicollis, mainly breed in Canada and then migrate south to spend the winter in the eastern and southern states, west coast, and northern South America -- and in my garden. They show up on the porch when I put out seeds, seeming mainly to be interested in the smaller ones, like millet. 

Pigeons, Columba livia, almost never come to the garden, but they seem to know immediately whenever there are seeds on my porch. Ditto breadcrumbs, another of their favorites. 

Sparrows in the Snow

An English sparrow, also called house sparrow, Passer domesticus, in Brooklyn snow yesterday. 

Ever wonder how birds survive the cold winter weather? There is no question that it is hard for them, but they have some adaptations that get them through it.

Their feathers insulate them against the cold and the oils that they spread on them while preening add waterproofing. But their feet are bare ! you are saying. Like in a heat-exchange system, their blood passes through side-by-side capillaries on the way to and from the legs; incoming blood is warmed and outgoing blood is cooled. Less heat is lost that way. And they sometimes stand on one foot with the other tucked up in the feathers.

They puff up their feathers, which traps some insulating air. They can huddle together. They can sit in the sun. They find wind-sheltered places like the broad-leaved evergreen bush near my porch fence in the picture below. They sometimes perch on warm human structures, like chimneys and outdoor lights. I knew a red-tailed hawk that regularly slept on the windowsill of an old building in Manhattan -- heat leaked from the rickety windows and made it a good place to spend a cold night.

The sparrows outside my window remind me of a poem called Winter Birds, by Andrew Downing. Here is part of it:

Warm sheltered corners the cattle have chosen,
Shivers the pine in its evergreen leaves;
Pools by the roadside in wrinkles are frozen--
Bayonet icicles hang from the eaves.
Five English sparrows, defying the weather,
There in the pathway a conference hold;
Ho! merry midgets in doublets of feathers!
Why do you rally out there in the cold?

Little you care for the riot and rattle--
Little you heed--let the mercury fall!
Brave little fighters, go on with your battle--
Here is a friend who will welcome you all!
Fly to my window--I'll feed every comer--
Hail to the comrades that constancy show
Loving and loyal, in winter and summer--
With us, alike, in the heat and the snow!