Outside My Window

Yesterday morning the sun was warm and nothing of interest was going on.  Time for a snooze. 

Here’s Dorothy, the adult female peregrine falcon at the University of Pittsburgh, asleep in front of the webcam.  Watching her sleep makes me want to nap, too.

(photo from the National Aviary webcam at University of Pittsburgh)

At last!  After weeks of no rain we’ve had a serious soaking today.  The grass was brown and dormant but today it revived and is showing a bit of green.   

The birds are happy about the rain too.  This morning while I walked to work I saw:

• An adult red-tailed hawk perched on the antenna of Carnegie-Mellon’s Warner Hall.  The red-tail spread its wings in an arc and held its head up as the rain ran down its wings and back.  He was enjoying every minute of his long-awaited bath.
• A flock of house sparrows bathed in a puddle on the sidewalk.  Very splashy and cute!
• Two Cooper’s hawks – an adult and a juvenile – perched next to each other on the fence at our neighborhood ball field.  Cooper’s hawks are notoriously solitary so I assume these two were related.  I thought they were enjoying the rain until I noticed their attention was focused on a flock of five crows walking on the field.  A sixth crow raided the garbage cans below them.  The crows silently eyed the hawks.  The juvenile “Coop” broke the tension by making a low swooping pass at the crows.  The adult Cooper’s hawk waited a bit, then made the same swooping pass.  Then both hawks flew away.  The crows were unfazed and returned to their watery games and garbage feast.

(photo of an adult Coopers hawk by Cris Hamilton)

The gulls wheeled and dipped above the bayside trees.  They were traveling in circles, swooping up, dropping down, zigging left, zagging right.

As I watched them a passerby asked, “What kind of gulls are those and what are they doing?”

They were ring-billed gulls on fall migration from their inland nesting grounds to their coastal winter zone, and they were hawking insects - some kind of flying ants.

I think of gulls as crab and trash eaters so it was fascinating to see them eating flying bugs.  Then I remembered the story of their relatives, the California gulls, in Utah.

The Mormons arrived in Utah in 1847 to establish a religious community near the Great Salt Lake.  Their first crops were nearly ready to harvest the next summer when thousands of “Mormon crickets” (actually a flightless relative of the katydid, Anabrus simplex) swarmed across the countryside.  These insects eat everything in their path – even their fallen comrades – so the Mormons thought their crops would be lost.  But a flock of California gulls arrived and ate the insects.  The Mormons called this the Miracle of the Gulls and named the California gull the state bird of Utah.

Ring-billed gulls haven’t done enough to be named a state bird but I am grateful they eat flying ants.  Now that I know to what to look for, I see them hawking insects every fall in Maine.  The flying ants swarm and the gulls do what comes naturally.  They eat them.

(photo by Chuck Tague)

Someone asked me this question at the bus stop the other day.  I’m not surprised it came up because the ubiquitous city birds - house sparrows – are champions of dust baths.  They’re the ones who prompted the question. 

House sparrows prefer very fine dust and will flap up a storm when they find a patch of it.  They dig a hollow with their feet, push their bellies into the dust and toss it under their wings and over their backs as if it was water.  Their goal is to get the dust into their feathers and all the way down to their skin.  When they’re suitably coated they shake off the dust and preen it away until their feathers are in good condition again. 

Why go to this trouble?  Dust smothers skin and feather parasites and absorbs excess oil that’s removed as the dust is preened away.  Did you know you can clean your hair using powder?  It’s the same idea. 

House sparrows take dust baths even when water is available.  Maybe the first house sparrow came from a desert climate.  After all, their Paleolithic fossils have been found in Ouum-Qatafa Cave in Israel.  If they can clean with dust and save water for drinking, why not? 

This summer we’ve had so much rain the house sparrows must be hard pressed to find any dry dirt.  They might have to use my bird bath after all.

(photo of a house sparrow taking a dust bath by Vishnevskiy Vasily via Shutterstock)

Our robins and cardinals are looking pretty ragged lately.  The adults are molting. 

Their feathers wear out so birds molt to replace them.  Robins and cardinals do it once a year.  Long distance migrants molt twice.  American goldfinches molt twice a year but their closest finch relatives don’t.  Who knows why.

Birds replace their feathers in a pattern across their bodies.  Most replace their center two tail feathers, then the two tail feathers next to those and so on until their entire tail has new feathers.  Their wings molt the same one feather at the same time on both wings.  This prevents flight impairment because their wings are still the same on both sides.  Heavy birds, like ducks and geese, molt all at once and are flightless for a short time each year.

I suppose August is as a good time as any to replace their feathers.  April won’t do because they have to look beautiful and sleek during courtship.  Rule out May through July because breeding season is too intense to be hampered by missing feathers.  Winter is too cold which eliminates November through February.  In the other months they’re migrating.  So August it is. 

I’ll be glad when they look normal again.

(photo of a wet northern cardinal by Chuck Tague)

p.s. Have your goldfinches started to turn dull yellow again? Mine have.

You bet they’re smart!  Here are two stories about how very smart they are.

There was a radio article on NPR yesterday morning – you may have heard it – in which two eminent crow specialists described how crows recognize humans by their faces. 

Kevin McGowan (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) and John Marzluff (University of Washington) wrote the book on crows – literally, books – and they know what they’re talking about.  They’ve banded and studied more crows than most of us will see in our lifetimes and they soon realized the crows knew exactly who they were no matter what they were wearing.  Marzluff conducted a study to prove it.

I am so impressed!  I was even more impressed when I visited the Morning Edition website, watched the video and took the “Can you recognize a crow by its face?” test.  (I can’t.)  You really must check it out!

And… on the way to finding that article, I found another one about a crow-sized camera that was fitted to New Caledonian crows to record them making and using tools.  My favorite part was, “They caught 18 wild crows and attached the cameras, which weigh less than half an ounce. A timer kept the cameras from filming for a couple days, otherwise they would just record crows trying to tear them off.”  

Of course!  It made me laugh out loud.  

(photo from Shutterstock by Alexander Chelmodeev)

Yellow-billed cuckoos are usually hard to find.  They skulk in the treetops – like this one is doing – and are found only by the sound of their amazing voices. 

That’s why I was surprised to see three cuckoos in the open recently.  Two were singing and chasing while a third one watched.  Was this territorial behavior?  Courtship?  In July?  I decided to find out.

Yellow-billed cuckoos return to our area in April and May but they tend to nest from late June to July because they wait for an abundance of their favorite foods: caterpillars and cicadas.  In my experience this gives cuckoos extra time to be secretive while other birds are visibly courting and nesting.

Cuckoos may be secretive but they’re more versatile when they nest, choosing among three methods depending their food supply. 

In years of normal or low food abundance, yellow-billed cuckoo pairs go the traditional route of building and using their own nests, but in years of explosive caterpillar or cicada infestations – such as 17-year cicadas – female cuckoos produce extra eggs, and they need to put them somewhere. 

Sometimes they breed co-operatively.  Two females share the same nest with a male and all three of them tend the young.  The males handle overnight incubation so I think the “co-op” guys must struggle to cover 5-11 eggs instead of the usual 2-3.

Alternatively, the females lay eggs in other birds’ nests, choosing those whose eggs are the same blueish-green color as their own.  According to BNA Online, yellow-billed and black-billed cuckoos are “the only known facultative, interspecific brood parasites among altricial birds.”  “Facultative” means that they can but don’t always do this, so cuckoos don’t have the bad reputation the brown-headed cowbird has.

Yellow-billed cuckoos have one more surprise up their sleeves.  When their nestlings are about six days old they become fully feathered in only two hours.  Their feathers literally burst from the feather sheaths.  Imagine Mrs. Robin’s shock when one of her kids goes from bare down to flight feathers so fast.   Surprise!  That one’s a cuckoo.

Now that’s versatile.

(photo by Chuck Tague)

p.s.  Based on the lateness of the cicadas this year, this is probably a low-food-supply year for cuckoos.

Poor Mama Bluebird!  Which mouth should she feed?  No matter which one she picks the other two will still be begging.

Despite appearances, having three fledged babies is a great sign of success.  As I’ve learned from watching robin nests it’s a huge challenge to get a baby bird to this stage.

People who tend bluebird boxes know exactly what I mean.  At the start of the season there’s the threat of cold, wet weather that suppresses their food supply (insects) and causes the babies to starve.  Then there are blowflies and other nasty parasites who kill the young.  Snakes, raccoons and cats take their toll, and bluebirds, like tree swallows, face competition for nest sites.  Since they’re the least aggressive of the cavity nesters, bluebirds take it on the chin.  The worst are the house sparrows who claim all the nest sites in their territory and kill bluebird adults and young, even in boxes the sparrows don’t intend to use.

Fortunately for bluebirds, people watch out for them and help by removing whatever threats we can.  It’s a symbiotic relationship in which bluebirds nest successfully and we get the enjoyment of watching a very sweet and beautiful bird. 

If your neighborhood doesn’t have open fields to support nesting bluebirds, you can now watch them nesting online.  Check out the PA Game Commission’s bluebird nest box camera at their Harrisburg Headquarters.  You won’t see this fledgling activity but you’ll get a glimpse inside the box. 

So congratulations, Mama Bluebird!  Soon your babies will be on their own.  Whew!

(photo by Kim Steininger)

If you want to see an ovenbird, this is the time to do it.

Ovenbirds are forest dwelling warblers the color of fallen leaves.  They usually spend their time walking the forest floor, weaving through the undergrowth, perfectly camouflaged as they feed on invertebrates among the logs and leaves. 

They even take ground-dwelling to an extreme and place their nests on the ground.  The female builds it in the shape of a beehive oven – hence their name.

Though hard to see they are easy to hear.  Their song is a very loud ”tee-CHUR tee-CHUR tee-CHUR tee-CHUR tee-CHUR” that carries easily through the forest.  

I always hear more ovenbirds than I see, except right about now. When this recluse has young babies he becomes protective and brash. 

Today I was harassed by an ovenbird at Ohiopyle State Park.  As I walked through the woods I heard a loud warning ”Dink!”  In an effort to identify the source I paused to listen, and it didn’t take long to find out.  The ovenbird was so provoked that he flew toward me, perched above me, raised his head feathers and repeated “Dink!”  Then he sang to make me go away.  He didn’t know his song would charm me.

Eventually he moved away and grabbed a small caterpillar from a leaf.  Instead of eating it himself he flew off with it, so I knew he had babies to feed.  I followed him with my binoculars in hopes of seeing his oven-shaped nest.  To my surprise a fledging popped out of the undergrowth and he stuffed the caterpillar in its mouth.  The fledgling was gawky but special to me – my first view of a young ovenbird.

Soon the fledglings will be self sufficient and their parents will stop caring when I walk by.  So now is the time to see an ovenbird.

(photo by Chuck Tague)

When I received this picture from Maria Pyrdek it made me laugh out loud.  

This is one of Martha’s foster babies at Animal Rescue League’s Wildlife Center.  Martha’s the great-horned owl I wrote about on May 13 who’s raising orphaned nestlings. The baby owls are ready to fledge so they graduated to the flight cage. 

Martha moved with them to continue her fostering duties and give them additional tips on how to be good owls.  Click on the photo to see nearly the entire family – except this guy.

I wonder what Martha thought when he did this.  He can fly, but can he land?  What a hoot!

“Cut me a break,” he says, “I’m learning.”

(photos by Maria Pyrdek at the ARL Wildlife Center in Verona, PA.  Click on the owl’s photo to see Martha with the babies in the flight cage.)