Outside My Window

As soon as the lakes thaw the ducks will be here.  But when will that be?

I was hoping to spend today happily watching ducks but several factors argue against it.

• My favorite lakes are still frozen according to reports on PABIRDS. 
• Pittsburgh’s rivers are flooded, debris-filled and swift.  Fortunately the flood isn’t major, but conditions aren’t good for waterfowl.
• Yesterday’s rainstorm was windy.  Not a good time for ducks to fly into our area.
• And it will rain more today, which is unpleasant for me though not for ducks.

I hear there are ducks at Shenango River Lake, 1.5 hours north.  They’re coming soon to a lake near me.  The only question is… When?

Update, 6:00pm:  Well!  I made the trip to Shenango and found ten species of ducks, including green-winged teal and canvasbacks.  There weren’t any buffleheads yet.  Wait until next weekend.

(photo of a male bufflehead by Brian Herman)

Snow geese are so unusual in southwestern Pennsylvania that it’s incredible there are 120,000 of them in the state — and none here — but that’s how many were at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area yesterday.

Middle Creek is on the border of Lebanon and Lancaster Counties, squarely on the migration path of waterfowl travelling from the Atlantic coast to their breeding grounds in the Arctic and northern Canada.  In early March the lake hosts as many as 250,000 snow geese, 8,000 tundra swans and a wide variety of ducks.

I went there last Sunday to get my annual dose of birds.  The weather was great and all day long the waterfowl numbers increased.  As we watched from Willow Point more birds arrived from the south than flew off to the north.  Every day must have been like that this week.  There were 45,000 snow geese last Sunday.  Now there are three times as many.

Yes, 120,000 birds in a huge flock on a small lake.  Imagine when the entire flock takes off at once in fear of a lone bald eagle overhead.  Their flight is controlled chaos.  Such noise and excitement!   It’s a wonder they don’t hit each other in the air.

So if you can, set aside some time to visit Middle Creek this weekend.  (Click the links in the text above for more information.)

What a migration spectacle!

(photo by Kim Steininger.  We were both there last Sunday.)

I heard them before I saw them.

I was walking by the lake at Moraine State Park yesterday when I heard the whoo-ing of tundra swans in the northwest.  It took me a while to find them overhead because they were white birds against a whitish blue sky and they were very high up.

Through binoculars I counted 24 birds with their leader far ahead of the V.  As I watched, all the birds in the flock - except the leader – cupped their wings and lowered their feet as if to descend to the lake.

The leader kept flying.  “Don’t stop now,” he seemed to say, “We have too far to go.”  The flock regrouped and followed him southeast.

Just passing through.

(photo by Steve Gosser)

Why is this bird in such a hurry to migrate south in mid-summer after raising only one brood in North America? 

The answer is a surprise.  It turns out that some yellow-billed cuckoos raise a second family in the thorn forests of western Mexico.  And so do orchard orioles, hooded orioles, yellow-breasted chats and Cassin’s vireos.

Called “migratory double breeding” the discovery was stunning.  Scientists knew of just two Old World species who did this on their journey north but no birds had been found to do it in the western hemisphere and none anywhere were known to double-breed on the southbound trip.

Gathering the evidence was truly detective work.  Scientists were in the thorn forests in July and August, expecting to study the molt cycles of migratory songbirds.  Instead they found males singing on territory, female birds with established brood patches and no young birds as they’d expect if the families had already bred in the forest.  The clincher was when they found the nests and eggs.

If five songbird species are double-breeding in the thorn forest, why did it take so long to discover it?  July and August are forbidding months in western Mexico.  It’s the monsoon season with temperatures at 100 degrees, humidity at 100% and lots of biting insects.  People have only recently begun to farm the region, leading to a decline in thorn forest habitat.  Interestingly, the habitat decline coupled with migratory double-breeding may explain the decline of yellow-billed cuckoos in the western U.S.

So like the story of a man who has two families half a continent apart, these birds must hurry to squeeze in a second family in western Mexico, then finish their migration to tropical Central and South America.  That’s what the rush is all about.

Read more about the discovery in this Science Daily article.

(photo by Chuck Tague)

November is prime time for duck migration so despite the fact that the weather has been too nice for them I’m going to go look for ducks today.

Too good for ducks?  Yes, it’s been gorgeous.  Warm days, sunny skies and a south wind.  Ducks are forced to migrate when the lakes freeze (no chance of that this week!) and like all fall migrants they prefer a tail wind from the north. 

So I’m not expecting much but I still want to know…  Are the ducks here yet? 

(photo by Brian Herman)

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…Later… after visiting Yellow Creek State Park:  As I suspected it was not great for ducks but I found American coots, ruddy ducks, and pied-billed grebes, plus two mallards, one female ring-necked duck and four gadwall.  It was a better day for hiking than for ducks – but warm!

Tundra swans are on the move.

Last Sunday at the Allegheny Front we heard three flocks whoo-ing overhead before we saw them very high above us, heading southeast to the Chesapeake.  That night I heard another flock pass over my house though I couldn’t see them in the dark.  As their voices faded in the distance I heard a lone swan following them.  He had fallen behind.

Swans and geese fly in V formation because it cuts down on wind resistance.  The lead bird takes the brunt of the wind and expends the most energy.  The birds who follow fly just above the wing of the bird ahead of them and ride a cushion of air created by the previous bird’s wing.  Eventually the lead bird tires, falls back in the flock and lets another bird take the point position.  In this way the entire flock shares the burden and is able to fly further without becoming exhausted.

A lone bird gets no benefit from the V formation and, if he’s trying to rejoin the flock, he must fly faster than they do.  If they don’t slow down, how can he ever catch up?

Tundra swans travel in family groups and pause more often during fall migration so their young can regain energy and keep up with the flock.  Juvenile swans are especially vulnerable if they fall behind because they don’t know the migration route.  They learn it from their elders on their first trip south.   If a juvenile becomes separated from the flock, he’s lost.

It’s poignant to see a lone juvenile tundra swan in November.  When I do I always hope another flock will come along to take him in.

(photo by Steve Gosser)

(p.s.  How to recognize juvenile tundra swans:  In this picture there are three adults and four juveniles.  The adults have bright white heads, the juveniles have grey heads that gradually lighten to white on their necks.  Sometimes the juveniles have pink on their bills.)

Since I missed the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch last weekend I’m itching to go out there today – but I can’t, I have to work.  To compensate for this I spent time last evening looking through the hawk watch records at Hawkcount.org.  The statistics are fascinating and they support a hunch I started to develop last year.

Every fall I attend two hawk watches 775 miles apart.  In early September I visit the Cadillac Mountain Hawk Watch in Maine and see mostly American kestrels and sharp-shinned hawks, approximately one kestrel for every two sharpies.  Then in October/November I visit the Allegheny Front where the most common hawks are sharp-shins and red-tails in nearly equal numbers.  The kestrel count there is low, sometimes insignificant. 

I used to think my experience at Cadillac Mountain was normal for September and that I missed seeing kestrels at The Front because I visited it too late in the fall.  (That’s how I miss broad-winged hawk migration.)  But I had a hunch I’d got it backwards.  Perhaps, I thought, kestrels are scarce and my experience at Cadillac is unusual.

The numbers at Hawkcount.org bear that out.  Compared to the number of sharp-shinned hawks, kestrels are 40-60% as numerous at Cadillac but are only 4-10% as numerous in Pennsylvania.

Kestrels really aren’t a big item at most hawk watches and my experience isn’t “normal.”  I prefer to think of it as special.  Special, like the kestrels themselves who are one of the most beautiful raptors on earth.

(photo of a male American Kestrel by Brian Herman)

Canada Geese have been moving south for several weeks now.  Yesterday morning I saw hundreds of them resting near Millers Ponds at Pymatuning.  These geese are true migrants, probably just arrived from their breeding grounds in the southern James Bay region of Canada.

I mention them as migrants because in Pennsylvania we have plenty of resident geese.  It seems hard to believe but the subspecies Branta canadensis maxima (Giant Canada Goose) was nearly extinct in 1900 due to overhunting and habitat change.  Many states conducted reintroduction programs to help the geese along.  The birds so did well that there are now nearly 290,000 resident maxima Canada geese in Pennsylvania and their population keeps growing despite a special hunting season instituted in 1992.

Why don’t our resident Canada geese migrate? 

Geese travel in family groups which collect at staging areas to join larger flocks.  The young geese learn their migratory paths from their parents.  If their parents don’t migrate the whole family stays put.  I’ll bet the geese that were reintroduced had no one to teach them to migrate so they and their descendants became residents.

Not so with the geese at Pymantuning.  By 5:00pm when I left Linesville all the migrant geese were gone.

(photo by Cris Hamilton)

This year is different. 

We usually don’t see huge flocks of grackles in Pittsburgh until late October but this year they showed up in the third week of September. I first noticed them in large groups in Schenley Park, gathering in the treetops at dusk.  Since then they’re most noticable on rainy days when they graze on neighborhood lawns and fly low over the road.

Common grackles are diurnal migrants who tend to move in mixed flocks with blackbirds and starlings.  Within the flocks you can pick out the grackles because they have long tails and make a low “chuck” sound as they fly.  Though I’ve looked for other birds among them, the recent flocks are nearly 100% grackles.  When they gather at dusk their “rusty gate” voices are very loud.  Then they take off in unison – an impressive sight. 

I wonder why the grackles are early this year.  Is there less food up north than usual?  Is winter coming early?  Do they know something we don’t know?  Probably.

(photo of a flock of brown-headed cowbirds by Chuck Tague.  Are there any grackles mixed in?  Look at their tails.)

Are you seeing a lot of blue jays lately?  I am. 

I used to think blue jays didn’t migrate because their range map shows them as year round in North America.  Because I see them all year, I assumed I was observing the same individuals.

That was until one May morning at Lake Erie when I saw a long line of jays flying northeast along the shore.  Chuck Tague told me they were flying to Canada but the lake was a big barrier.

As we watched, the jays turned north over the lake and hit a wall of air none of us could see.   One by one they battled the invisible barrier.  Finally they broke formation and flew back over land where they regrouped and again proceeded in a line, following the shore.

Other than similar observations at migration hot spots, blue jay migration is subtle if it occurs at all.  Blue jays don’t have to leave home if they can store enough food for the winter.  When they do decide to migrate, they travel during the day in small groups of 10 to 30 birds.  It often doesn’t look like they’re migrating because the jays fly one at a time from tree to tree, a behavior that resembles foraging.

This fall blue jays are leaving Canada in droves because their winter food supply is low – too few acorns, beechnuts and hazelnuts.

I’m sure they’ll enjoy their time Pittsburgh.  We have a bumper crop of acorns.

(photo by Chuck Tague)