Happy 4th of July

 

No blog today, just some holiday-appropriate red, white, and blue local birds. Like this perky northern cardinal gathering a gift of grapes. Click to enlarge.

A great egret in a sultry summer pond.

And a handsome insouciant blue jay. Have a great holiday! Click to enlarge.

Happy Fourth of July!

No blog this week -- just a couple of red, white, and blue local birds: northern cardinal, great egret, and blue jay. Have a great holiday! Click to enlarge. 

Spring Birds in Winter

Remember the polar vortex winter we had last year? This robin came to my window every cold morning of it with his feathers so puffed up he looked downright chubby. I fed him raisins for breakfast straight through until spring. He's back! He (or someone who looks just like him) started looking in my windows a few weeks ago and is back in the habit of breakfasting on raisins at my place. 

Robins eat worms and insects and fresh fruits and berries when they can get them. We typically see robins stalking worms in short grass all through summer. When winter comes and the insects and worms hole up, robins change to a diet primarily of dried fruit. Some robins migrate to warmer places, but some just disappear from lawns and form winter flocks that travel to different kinds of foraging areas. 

White-throated sparrows are behaving differently in deference to winter, too. They have started to show up on my porch where I haven't seen them since last winter. I see them in the neighborhood all year, but they only visit the porch in winter (even though they would likely find a snack of seeds in any season). Click to enlarge.

New York City's northern mockingbirds tend to stay put during the winter, but it might seem like they have gone south. We are used to their flashy wing-waving and tireless singing; in winter they become relatively quiet. They visit my porch for raisins. 

I usually hear my favorites, the blue jays, before I see them. I give them peanuts in the shell. They make repeated trips until they have gathered them all. But they have to share with...

Northern cardinals that always seem happy to pose in the snow in return for peanuts... 

and Brooklyn squirrels! 

Sheldon Cooper's Bird

This is a blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata. 

I was watching old episodes of The Big Bang Theory on television last night. This story is therefore a few years late, but I am writing it anyway for those who haven't heard about it and because I love blue jays.

In episode 9 of season 5 of The Big Bang Theory, "Ornithophobia Diffusion," a bird lands outside Sheldon's window. It won't go away. Sheldon is afraid of birds. Funny things happen.

What really got my attention is that he called the bird a blue jay. It was not. It was a black-throated magpie-jay, a Mexican bird that really should not have been outside his window in Pasadena. Ok, so maybe it was an escaped pet. (Click here to see a black-throated magpie-jay.)

I have lived in places in the west (northern Idaho, just south of Seattle, and Vancouver) where people sometimes call the Stellar's jay, Cyanocitta stelleri, a blue jay. Although it is a jay and it is blue, the name blue jay is already taken by our eastern bird, C. cristata. (Click here to see a little movie of a Steller's jay.)

The bird's identity been discussed thoroughly on the Internet already. The television show's representatives say Sheldon's fear of birds was responsible for his lack of familiarity with species and  consequent misidentification. The episode aired on November 10, 2011. I just saw it. That's not a blue jay.

This is a blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata. 

Polar Vortex Winter Birds

Male northern cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis. Click to enlarge.

It was a cold week in New York. As I sat writing at my desk by the window I saw the neighborhood birds in another light. One of the ways birds keep warm is by fluffing up their insulating feathers; they looked like puffballs all week. 

European house sparrow, Passer domesticus. 

They have other ways to keep warm. Their feet are thermally isolated from their bodies by a network of blood vessels that cool outgoing blood and warm the returning flow. They also can stand on one leg with the other inside the warm cover of their feathers. Sone huddle together at night to share warmth. City birds are good at finding warm spots to sleep near like chimneys or lights, and on eaves. An old building I worked in attracted a red-tailed hawk on cold nights; it slept on the sill of a window that was so leaky that the perch was practically toasty. 

Another thing that helps keep birds warm in cold weather is eating high calorie foods. When snow covers the ground, even the most resourceful city birds have trouble finding food. My little porch gets covered with snow but I brush off the dormant planters and put food in them: sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, peanuts, grapes, raisins, perhaps some bits of apple and whole grain bread. Below are summer photos of the neighborhood birds that have been visiting.

The blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata, announces its arrival with chime-like musical calls. A pair have been showing up together all week. They eat seeds and peanuts. Each takes one seed at a time to a perch in the little tree close by. The bird holds the seed in its feet, pecks with its bill, then pulls the seed out, eats it, and comes back for more. Very labor intensive! 

A house sparrow might show up alone but is soon followed by a flock. They eat  everything, including safflower seeds that they are reported to eschew. Maybe Brooklyn's  house sparrows  have a cosmopolitan taste for foreign foods. 

The male northern cardinal preferentially takes whole peanuts. He flies away with them and returns in a few minutes for another. I know when he has arrived because I hear his quiet tick tick tick. After peanuts, sunflower seeds are his next favorite thing. He stabs at grapes eating beak after beak full of fruit. 

The female cardinal has arrived alone or with a male every day. 

White-throated sparrows, Zonothrichia albicollis, normally feed in the underbrush by scratching at leaves. They are good in snow, too, tossing it up with their feet and flapping wings to uncover seeds. A few of them come to my porch to look for food throughout the winter. 

Morning doves, Zenaida macroura, seem passive with the other birds, but make up for it by eating faster. They don't open the seeds before eating them, like most of the other birds. They just peck them up, shell and all, one peck per seed. Very efficient! 

American robins, Turdus migratorius, don't all migrate away for winter. They do change their eating habits. No worms are available. They disappear from lawns and go foraging for dried berries. Click here to read more details in a previous blog. One or two are spending the winter near my place; the apples, grapes, and raisins are for them. And they like an occasional nibble of whole grain bread. 

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. 

Born in the summer of 2010

It's 30 degrees and windy in New York City today. As I scattered seeds on my Brooklyn porch for the birds this morning I couldn't help thinking about the coming winter and how it will impact the birds. Some of them, like the northern cardinals and the pigeons, will stay here through the winter; they are called residents. Others, like robins and blue jays, have mixed feelings about leaving; some of them migrate but some don't. Still other birds, like winter wrens, migrate to here to spend the winter from even colder places further north. Regardless of the migration plan, winter causes upheaval; the birds face either a long cold season or a long round trip.

The baby birds pictured below were all born this summer in New York City despite noise, pollution, and about eight million people. Despite all that and snow, ice, and freezing temperatures, or a trip to Florida or Mexico, they will be here next spring to start families of their own.

A family of Canada geese, Branta canadensis, in the East River.

This baby rock pigeon, Columba livia, was born
on a Manhattan building ledge. 

Baby American robins, Turdus americana, look like
adults with spots.This one was born in a tree behind
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

These Mallard ducklings, Ana platyrhynchus, were
born by The Pond in Central Park, across the street
from the Plaza Hotel. 

This baby blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata, was born
on Manhattan'supper west side in Central Park near
the Shakespeare Garden. 

This baby northern cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis,
was born in my condo garden in Brooklyn.

Blue Jays Plant Trees

A blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata, occasionally comes to my backdoor in Brooklyn for a snack of peanuts. 

Blue jays are so common that we sometimes fail to notice how flashy they are. They are from 9 to 12 inches long, boldly patterned in blues, black, gray, and white, and have a sporty crest that is held flat when the bird is calm and extended when the bird is excited. Their common call is a loud attention-getting jaay jaay.

They’re not just beautiful – they’re smart. A scientist working with blue jays reported watching a caged bird make a tool by ripping off and rolling up strips of paper from its cage floor; it used the tool to reach seeds that had fallen outside the cage and pull them back until they were close enough to eat. Other caged blue jays in the laboratory picked up the trick by observational learning and soon the entire colony was doing it.

Their intelligence may have developed along with their complicated food caching system and the need to remember the locations of buried nuts. Blue jays are scatter hoarders – like squirrels, they bury surplus nuts, mainly beechnuts and acorns, one at a time, and return to consume them later. The strategy of scattering the food in many hiding places minimizes loss if others find the stash. 

Lucky for humans and lots of other animals, blue jays bury many more nuts than they eventually return to. Some of the buried nuts germinate and sprout into new oak and beech trees. Of the many American animals and birds that eat acorns and beechnuts, the blue jay is the most likely to unintentionally plant new trees. Blue jays take nuts relatively far away, often more than a few hundred yards from the parent tree; they push them into the soil and they cover them. They bury a lot of nuts, and they take nuts to recently burned places and into open grassland, thus introducing trees to new areas.

Scientists think that blue jays planted oak and beech trees throughout eastern North America at the end of the last Ice Age in the wake of the retreating glaciers and helped regenerate forests on the newly exposed treeless lands. 

Today blue jays are still great dispersers of seeds from increasingly isolated fragments of woodlands. Their role is so crucial to sustaining oak woods that they are considered a keystone species -- that is, one with an unusually critical ecosystem function, without which the system would be in danger of collapsing. All this and friendly to humans too!

The next time you see one -- give it an extra peanut. It’s not only beautiful. It’s a very hardworking bird!

There is more information about blue jays in my book, A Field Guide to Urban Wildlife of North America, which will be published by Stackpole Books in spring 2011.