Category Archives: Songbirds

In a Contest Which One Wins?

Two house sparrows: little bib, big bib (photos from Wikimedia Commons)

14 March 2024

Did you know that male house sparrows can tell who’s dominant by looking at each other from afar?

It’s in the size of the bib. Big bib dominates little bib.

Watch for this behavior at your feeder. Learn more in this vintage blog:

(credits are in the captions with link to the original photos on Wikimedia Commons)

Downy or Hairy?

Downy or hairy woodpecker? (photo by Donna Foyle)

5 March 2024

Last month my friends and I were debating the identity of a woodpecker photographed by Donna Foyle during the Backyard Bird Count. Is this a downy woodpecker or a hairy? The photo’s partial view and low light conditions make it an interesting ID challenge.

First let’s look at two clear photos of both birds, downy woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) and hairy woodpecker (Dryobates villosus), then talk about the field marks.

Male downy woodpecker (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Male hairy woodpecker (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

The downy woodpecker is 3/4 the length of a hairy woodpecker and weighs less than half. However, this is a tricky field mark when you don’t have both birds next to each other. (*Thank you, Laura, for reminding me in the comments.)

The easiest field mark when you’re looking at a solo bird is the length of the beak relative to length of the head.

Downy vs hairy beak lengths compared to the head length front-to-back (photos from Wikimedia Commons)
  • The downy’s beak is shorter than his head front-to-back.
  • The hairy’s beak is the same length as his head front-to-back.

Unfortunately the bird in Donna’s photo seems to have an intermediate bill length. Perhaps it was the angle.

The size of the white patch on the downy woodpecker’s neck is larger than the one on the hairy. David Sibley illustrated this clue to their identity in an article in 2011. The clue is subtle in my comparison photos but the bird in Donna’s photo seems to have a large white patch on its neck. Downy?

Downy vs hairy white face patches compared (photos from Wikimedia Commons)

The fourth clue is on the back of the male’s head but you need a photo to see this.

  • The red on the back of the male downy’s head is a continuous line.
  • The red on the back of the hairy’s head is broken by a vertical black patch.

The hairy’s head photo was the best I could find. David Sibley has a good illustration at this link.

Downy vs hairy red on back of the head compared (photos from Wikimedia Commons)

And finally, downy woodpeckers have dots on their outer tail feathers while hairy woodpeckers have all-white outer tail feathers. Photos of missing white dots were not useful so there is only this illustration.

Illustration of male downy woodpecker noting the dots (image from Wikimedia Commons)

I have never — ever — seen the tail feather field mark because I am too busy looking at beaks.

Kathy Miller had the best advice during the downy-hairy debate, “If I can’t tell which one it is, it’s a downy.”

(photos from Donna Foyle & Wikimedia Commons)

Checking Out a New Apartment

Blue tit flies from a nest box in Europe (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

9 February 2024

Like our chickadees, Eurasian blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) are cavity nesters who may nest in backyard boxes.

The nest box shown below was lovingly decorated by the landlord and equipped with a camera to view the comings and goings of prospective renters. This bird seems satisfied and will soon take up residence.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons, tweet embedded from WildlifeKate, @katemacrae, located in South Wales)

Watch Birds in the Snow

Redpolls and pine grosbeak in this screenshot from Ontario Feederwatch Cam, 19 Dec 2023 (from CornellLab)

26 December 2023

Take a break from the holiday bustle to watch northern birds in the snow at two live feeder cams:

Live Feederwatch video from Ontario, Canada via Cornell Bird Cams on YouTube
Live video from Maine and the FinchResearchNetwork on YouTube

You’ll see chickadees and nuthatches as well as northern specialties like evening grosbeaks and redpolls. Enjoy!

Look How He Can Move His Eyes!

Great-tailed grackle (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

22 October 2023

The great-tailed grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus), a close relative of our common grackle, is so numerous and annoying in Austin, Texas in the winter that there are always news stories about them. This interview with a grackle researcher revealed a very cool fact about great-tailed grackles that probably applies to our grackles as well.

Great-tailed grackles can move their eyes independently to keep watch in two different directions at the same time! Check out the video below.

video from KUAN on YouTube

Look how he can move his eyes!

(credits are in the captions; click on the captions to see the originals)

Confusing Fall Chipping Sparrows

Tricky chipping sparrow, Frick Park, 7 Oct 2023 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)

10 October 2023

Migrating chipping sparrows (Spizella passerina) have just begun to arrive in Pittsburgh and they look different than they did last spring. The adults are fading and the juveniles, which never did match the adults, now resemble other species. We have a category for Confusing Fall Warblers. There ought to be one for Confusing Fall Sparrows.

From mid-March to mid-April chipping sparrows molt rapidly into breeding plumage with a rusty cap, a sharp white swatch above the black eyeline and rusty-orange tones on the wings.

Chipping sparrow in breeding plumage, April 2020 (photo by Lauri Shaffer)

In mid-August the adults being two and a half months of molting into duller non-breeding plumage, looking ragged in September and ending up with the brownish cap and muted facial markings of non-breeding plumage.

Adult chipping sparrow in October 2012 (photo by Steve Gosser)

Meanwhile the juveniles lose the spotted breast they fledged with and gain sharper facial markings. Sometimes they look like clay-colored sparrows which are indeed rare in Pittsburgh.

Let’s compare the young chipping sparrow at Frick Park to an October clay-colored sparrow: chipping on the left, clay-colored on the right below. These small photos are just like the long distance view in the field.

Chipping sparrow (by Charity Kheshgi) vs. clay-colored sparrow (photo from Wikimedia)

They look almost the same. What’s the difference?

  • The chipping sparrow has a strong black eyeline that extends all the way to its beak and its face patch has muted edges.
  • The clay-colored sparrow has no black between its eye and beak but it does have a dark “moustache” outlining the front edge of its face patch.
  • If you can see the top of the head, the young chipping sparrow may have thin white stripes but the clay-colored has a distinctly wide white crown-stripe.

And just to shake things up, there was a leucistic adult chipping sparrow at Frick last Saturday who looked as if he had been dunked face-first in white paint. His forehead, cheeks and throat were so white that it the camera had a hard time picking up the details.

Leucistic adult chipping sparrow, Frick Park, 7 Oct 2023 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Leucistic adult chipping sparrow, Frick Park, 7 Oct 2023 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Leucistic adult chipping sparrow, Frick Park, 7 Oct 2023 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)

Theorectically leucism (lack of pigment) is in his genes so his face will always looks like this no matter what plumage he’s in. He’s the only chipping sparrow I can identify as an individual.

p.s. More confusion: When American tree sparrows arrive later this fall they’ll resemble chipping sparrows in breeding plumage, except that the chipping sparrows will be in non-breeding plumage. Click here and scroll down to see American tree sparrows compared to chipping sparrows at All About Birds.

(photos from Charity Kheshgi, Lauri Shaffer, Steve Gosser and Wikimedia Commons)

Leave The Leaves

Woolly bear, Isabella Tiger Moth caterpillar, 3 Oct 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)

6 October 2023

In October we see woolly bear caterpillars (Pyrrharctia isabella) out in the open, crossing the trails. Because they overwinter as caterpillars, they’re busy looking for the perfect place to spend the winter in leaf litter, under bark or beneath a fallen log.

Fallen leaves in Schenley Park, Nov 2016 (photo by Kate St. John)

Leaf litter is key winter habitat for a lot of insects including springtails, millipedes, earthworms, butterflies and moths.

Millipede(*) Hays Woods, Sept 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)

It also shelters salamanders and newts

Red eft among the leaf litter in West Virginia (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

… and provides an insect hunting ground for birds including eastern towhees, dark-eyed juncos, robins and mockingbirds.

Eastern towhee, male (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

If you’ve been thinking about “wilding” your yard — even just a little bit — now is a great time to start. Leave the leaves. You don’t have to leave it messy. Here’s advice on what to do.

Leaving the leaves and other plant debris doesn’t have to mean sacrificing your yard to the wilderness. The leaves don’t need to be left exactly where they fall. You can rake them into garden beds, around tree bases, or into other designated areas. Too many leaves can kill grass, but in soil they can suppress weeds, retain moisture, and boost nutrition. 

Avoid shredding leaves with a mower. Raking or blowing are alternatives that will keep leaves whole for the best cover and protect the insects and eggs already living there.

If you decide you need to clean up the leaves and debris in spring, make sure you wait until late in the season so as not to destroy all the life you’ve worked to protect. 

Xerxes Society: Leave the Leaves: Winter Habitat Protection

Take a break this weekend. Don’t bag those leaves! Just push them aside for wildlife. 🙂

(photos by Kate St. John and from Wikimedia Commons)

(*) p.s. The millipede was easy to photograph because it was dead, probably the victim of a parasitic fungus that prompts the millipede to climb high on a twig before it dies. I wrote down the name of the fungus when I took the picture but cannot read my writing. Perhaps it’s Anthrophaga myriapodia.

Undertail Tells The Tale

Magnolia warbler in fall, Sept 2018 (photo by Dave Brooke)

19 September 2023

Right now warbler migration is at its autumn peak in southwestern Pennsylvania but, as usual, the birds are hard to identify. Their fall plumage is dull and confusing, they move fast so we never get a good look at them, and we don’t get much practice because many of them are here only in September. And then they’re gone.

This year it dawned on me that the magnolia warbler (Setophaga magnolia) is super-easy to identify if all you see is its butt, as shown at top and below.

Magnolia warbler shows its undertail, May 2019 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

The “maggie” has a unique pattern on its undertail, easy to see on the free Visual Finders PDF, downloaded from The Warbler Guide. I’ve highlighted the magnolia warbler on this screenshot of Page 15.

Visual Finders Download, Eastern Undertails page from The Warbler Guide I have highlighted the Magnolia tail

Note that the magnolia warbler is the only warbler with a white belly, white undertail coverts, white undertail and a large black straight-edged tip on the tail. It looks as if this warbler was dipped tail first in black paint.

Magnolia warbler excerpt from Visual Finders Download, Eastern Undertails page from The Warbler Guide

On some juveniles the tip is dark gray but the pattern is the same.

So this view is the best way to identify a magnolia warbler.

Underside of a Spring plumage magnolia warbler (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

The undertail tells the tale!

Download Stephenson & Whittle’s free Visual Finders PDF at The Warbler Guide.

(photos by Dave Brooke, diagrams from The Warbler Guide free download)

I highly recommend the 560-page The Warbler Guide by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle which I use at home after noting the warbler’s key features in the field. In my opinion the book is indispensable if you take photographs.

The Bluest Thrush

Grandala near Dzongla (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

11 September 2023

While on the way to somewhere else I found … the bluest thrush.

According to Birds of the World, the grandala (Grandala coelicolor) is a gregarious thrush that makes a vertical migration in the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau(*) from barren alpine breeding grounds at 3900–5500 m (12,800-18,000 ft) to rocky mountainside valleys and ridges at 3000–4300 m (9,800-14,000 ft), sometimes as low as 2000 m (6,500 ft).

To put this in perspective, if grandalas lived in the U.S they could only breed on Denali (20,000 ft) or the highest Rocky Mountains. Some of them never come down as low as the highest point the Rockies, the peak of Mount Elder.

Range map of grandala, embedded from Birds of the World

Grandalas are the same size as wood thrushes and like the wood thrush are the only species in their genus, but there the similarity ends. For instance, grandalas are sexually dimorphic with royal blue males and brownish-gray females.

Five male and one female grandala (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Grandalas have versatile diets tuned to their cold climate lives. They eat insects in summer and fruit in fall and winter.

Like cedar waxwings grandalas travel in huge flocks in fall and winter. When they perch they flick their wings and tails.

Watch the bluest thrush in this 4:45 minute video by RoundGlass Sustain.

video from RoundGlass Sustain on YouTube

(*) Grandalas occur at high altitudes in these countries/territories: India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, China, northern Myanmar.

(credits are in the captions)

Hummingbird Day on August 19

Ruby-throated hummingbird, July 2014 (photo by Steve Gosser)

9 August 2023

Have you noticed a lot of ruby-throated hummingbirds at your feeders lately? Their fall migration is already underway so this month is the perfect time to see them up close at Powdermill.

Powdermill Nature Reserve, operated by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, has one of the longest continually-running bird banding stations in the U.S. Throughout the year they see species abundance ebb and flow based on weather and migration timing.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) start their fall migration earlier than many other species so they’re more abundant than usual now. Come to Westmoreland County for a family friendly hummingbird event on:

Hummingbird Day, Saturday 19 August 2023, 9:00am-noon at
Powdermill Nature Reserve
1795 Route 381
Rector, PA 15677

Powdermill Nature Center (photo embedded from CMNH Powdermill website)

Learn about hummingbirds, the plants that attract them, and how to care for your feeders so the birds stay healthy. There will also tips on taking great bird photos. And if the weather is good and the birds cooperate we(*) will get to see hummingbirds up close like this one in the bander’s hand. This bird was banded by Bob Mulvihill in Marcy Cunkelman’s garden in July 2015.

(*) I say “we” because I’ll be there, too, to teach you about hummingbirds. I’m looking forward to it!

Ruby-throated hummingbird in bander’s hand, July 2015 (photo by Kate St.John)

This event is free but do register here in advance so Powdermill knows to expect you. As the registration page says:

Events fill up fast! Registration is recommended to guarantee your spot and help us plan timing, seating, and/or trail routes. If there are spots available at the time of the program, non-registered individuals can join on a first-come, first-served basis.

CMNH: Hummingbird Day Event

Click here for more information. Hope to see you there.

(hummingbird photos by Steve Gosser and Kate St. John, Powdermill photo embedded from carnegie.org)