Outside My Window

The warblers are gone.  The sparrows are here.

These little brown birds can pose an identification problem because they look so similar.  When they tried to fool me last Sunday I decided to write about them.  Here are four species you’re likely to find in western Pennsylvania in October with some tips on telling them apart.

Shown above is a song sparrow, a common bird that stays here all year.  His color varies regionally across the U.S. but in Pennsylvania he’s brown.  His field marks are his long tail, a striped face with pronounced malar stripes, and brown streaks on his white breast that form a blotch in the middle.

Get to know the song sparrow really well and you’ll have a basis for comparing other sparrows.

And here’s the first sparrow to compare…

Swamp sparrows are the same size and shape as song sparrows but their tails are shorter.  Though their chestnut colored wings are a good field mark, don’t look hard for color clues on swamp sparrows.  The very best tip is this:  Swamp sparrows look dark.  If you’re in the right habitat and are telling yourself, “This sparrow looks dark. It must be a trick of the light,” think again!  Swamp sparrow.

Swamp sparrows are very picky about habitat and are normally found near water, especially in wetlands.  And they don’t stay here all year.  They breed in western Pennsylvania but are leaving now for points south.

The third sparrow looks different than a song sparrow… from the front.

The chipping sparrow is slightly smaller than a song sparrow and much whiter overall because he has a clear white chest.  Like the swamp sparrow he breeds here in summer and leaves for the winter.  Summer adults have sharp rusty caps and black eyestripes set off by their white faces.  In the fall their rusty caps and black eyestripes fade and their formerly white faces develop tan ear patches.  The tan face resembles the clay-colored sparrow’s except that chipping sparrows don’t have an outline around the patch.  Another clue:  Chipping sparrows are common in western Pennsylvania, clay-colored sparrows are not.

And finally, this white-throated sparrow has just arrived from Canada to spend the winter here.  He looks very crisp with white head stripes, yellow lores and a white throat with a sharp dark border to set it off.   But beware, there are two color morphs of white-throated sparrows:  white and tan.  The tan morph is tan on the head and back where this one is white.  White-throats keep these two colors in the gene pool by preferring to breed with a bird of another color.

Good luck practicing with sparrows.  These “Little Brown Jobs” make it even more challenging by hiding in the weeds.

(photos by Steve Gosser)

In Peterson’s Eastern Field Guide To The Birds there are four pages labeled “Confusing Fall Warblers.”

For years I avoided those pages.  The birds on them are too similar to each other and so different from their spring counterparts that they may as well be new species.

But you can’t avoid them.  Confusing fall warblers do show up at this time of year.

On Tuesday this confuser visited Marcy Cunkelman’s windowsill.  It’s a blackpoll warbler.  I’m guessing it’s female.

She looks nothing like a springtime male (left) who has crisp black and white feathers, an all-black cap, a white breast and bright yellow legs and feet.  This bird is greenish yellow and stripe-y (right).

But to me, she fairly shouts blackpoll because:

• She’s the same size and shape as the springtime bird.
• She perches the same way — tail down.
• She has 2 wing-bars.
• She looks as if she was dipped head first in a greenish yellow wash, then painted with thin gray stripes on her back, chest and flanks.  (The color and stripes are my biggest clue.)
• Her undertail coverts are white, which fits with the idea of being dipped head first.
• Her feet are light-colored, not black.  In this case they’re orange.

Fall blackpolls resemble fall bay-breasted warblers, except that fall bay-breasted’s aren’t stripe-y and they usually have a faint pink wash on their sides.  Click these links for views of spring bay-breasted and fall bay-breasted warblers.  The spring birds look nothing like blackpolls!

Here are two more of Marcy’s photos to show off this blackpoll’s features.

Notice how she has dark legs and orange feet.  The guides say her legs should be light-colored too but her two-tones are very cool.  They remind me of snowy egrets’ black legs and fancy yellow feet.

So.. my best tip on identifying this confusing fall blackpoll is:  Think stripes.

(fall blackpoll photos by Marcy Cunkelman, spring blackpoll by Chuck Tague)

p.s.  Her beak is two-toned, too.  What a cool bird!

Red-breasted nuthatches are really common here in Maine.

Even when I don’t see them I can hear their “tin horn” voices saying “yank, yank, yank, yank” as they walk the tops of pines and spruces looking for insects.

Sometimes in the morning a group of them meets up and the “yank yank yank” gives way to long, melodic conversations and murmurs.  It sounds as if they’re telling stories over coffee.  I wait for the punchline.

I had no idea they were such chatterboxes.

(photo by Chuck Tague)

Have you seen a female goldfinch lately?

Female goldfinches disappear during most of July to spend 95% of their time on the nest.  They don’t even stop incubating to eat.  Their mates feed them at the nest by regurgitation.

To do this the male goldfinch (above) stores seeds in his crop, then flies in a big, undulating circle above his nesting territory, all the while singing “Potato chip, Potato chip.”

If his lady is hungry she calls softly to him from the nest, “teeteeteeteeteetee” and he flies down to feed her.

After the eggs hatch, the female broods them for four days.  And then, at last, she’s off the nest to help her mate feed the babies. Soon the fledglings will be at the feeders, too.

If you heard the “Potato chip” song above your yard in July, watch for goldfinch fledglings in August.

(photo by Chuck Tague)

Today’s video is a beautiful, peaceful, bird watching experience by local photographer Bob Greene, Jr.

Originally created for the Three Rivers Birding Club’s 2012 Slide Slam, Bob’s 12.5 minute video cameos the behavior of 35 species accompanied by music from the Celestial Aeon Project.

All of the birds are gorgeous.  My favorites are the nest-building house wren and the leaping greater yellowlegs.  See if you agree.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy watching birds at your desk.

(video by Bobby Greene)

It’s easy to notice when a new bird arrives in town, much harder to notice when a resident leaves.  This month the new arrivals are shorebirds.  Has any nesting bird departed yet?

Here’s a tale of two breeders who may have left — or soon will leave — our area.

Baltimore orioles nested in Schenley Park this year as they always do. (I have photographic evidence.)  They arrived in late April, quickly set up shop, and fledged young by mid-June.  In July they virtually disappeared.  The last time I saw an oriole in the park was in June.  The last time I heard one was July 12.

Orioles can afford to leave their breeding grounds early because they raise only one brood per year and their young are soon independent after fledging.  Mother orioles leave the family in late June.  The fathers leave a few days later.  Sometimes the young gather in juvenile flocks in August but the adults tend to be solitary and quiet.  That’s probably why they seem to be missing.

Dickcissels are another story.  They’re so unusual in Pennsylvania that many birders know exactly when they arrived and many will notice when they leave.  Every few days there’s a new report on the presence or absence of dickcissels.

Quite soon breeding will be over and the dickcissels will form flocks to head to their wintering grounds in Venezuela.  Since they’re not in a rush they often spend August and September in the grain fields of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas.  Notice the word “August.”   That’s only two days from now.

I expect the dickcissels will leave our grasslands soon.  Schenley Park’s orioles appear to be gone.

Have you seen either of them lately?

(Baltimore oriole photo by Steve Gosser, Dickcissel photo by Bobby Greene)

Last Sunday the Orlando Sentinel reported the grim news that the population of this bird, the Florida grasshopper sparrow, has plunged so far and so fast that it may go extinct in as little as three years.

Florida grasshopper sparrows are a unique non-migratory subspecies of the grasshopper sparrow that live their entire life in Florida’s dry prairie habitat.  Their loyalty to this habitat has made them endangered.

90% of the prairie is gone, converted to cattle ranches, farms, and development in the past 150 years.   By 1986 the Florida grasshopper sparrow was placed on the Endangered Species List.  The birds held their own in three remaining prairie preserves until recent population surveys found less than 200 individuals left.  It is now the most endangered bird in the continental U.S.

Loss of habitat obviously caused this bird’s decline but scientists say other factors have sent it over the cliff.  One factor is fire ants, accidentally imported from South America in the 1930′s.  Florida grasshopper sparrows nest on the ground.  The fire ants overwhelm their nests and eat the baby birds so there are no young sparrows to reach maturity in the next generation.

If this trend continues Florida grasshopper sparrows will go extinct when the last adults die.  Meanwhile U.S. Fish and Wildlife and other members of the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow Working Group consider this a wildlife emergency and are focusing intensive efforts to save the bird.

Back in January 2008, Dan Irizarry visited a banding station at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve where he photographed this bird.  Little did he know… little did we know… that this may be one of the last living Florida grasshopper sparrows on earth.

If you’ve seen a Florida grasshopper sparrow you are lucky indeed.

(photo by Dan Irizarry. Click on the image to see Dan’s Flickr set from Kissimmee.)

The breeding season is over for the European starlings in my neighborhood.

The first sign that the adults had thrown in the towel came early this month when I noticed their beaks had completely changed from breeding season’s yellow back to black.

They’re also molting, replacing their dark, shiny feathers with new white-tipped ones that make them look speckled or “starry” (hence their starling name).

Right now they look like to the two birds in the foreground, above.  Only two months ago they looked like this.

Not to be outdone, the juvenile starlings are molting, too.  A newly fledged starling has drab brown feathers (click here to see) but they become starry by their first winter.  Halfway through the molt sequence they look like the two motley birds in the background, above — drab heads, starry breasts.

Believe it or not, summer is half over.

The starlings, they are a’changing.

(photo by Daniel Plazanet on Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)

Have you ever noticed how the amount and direction of light can make a bird look different?

Male Costa’s hummingbirds have shiny purple feathers all over their heads but the feathers look black when the light is at the wrong angle.

This male fluffed his face feathers while Bill Parker was taking his picture in California last winter.  Here’s what he could have looked like had he kept his feathers sleeked.

The light has been subdued in Pittsburgh this weekend because of cloudy, rainy weather.   The birds look dull but we need the rain.

(photo of a Costa’s hummingbird by William Parker)

Yesterday morning I got a call from the Business Office, “There’s a bird in Payroll.  Can you come down?”

I grabbed my bird rescue towel (nothing special, just a bath towel) and headed for Lindy Mason’s office.  Someone had probably left the loading dock door open and a bird got in.  Once inside, birds always fly through the open concourse to the third floor lights and windows and are stuck upstairs without an exit.

I expected to find a song sparrow, easy to catch because they doggedly stay by the window, but when I closed Lindy’s door to contain the action I was surprised to find a male house sparrow and he had some tricks up his sleeve.

For starters he was fast.  Like a house fly he waited until I got close then darted away.

Worse, he hid.  While my back was turned he zipped into Lindy’s shelving and hunkered down like a mouse.  Silence.

It dawned on me that because house sparrows are cavity nesters they feel right at home in small dark spaces.  This was not going to be an easy rescue.

To give you an idea of the challenge I took some pictures after he was gone.

Here’s where he was.  It should have been easy to see a bird in here. Not!  It was dark and he was dark.

After moving the tape dispenser, file folders, and books not shown in this picture I found him on the bottom shelf in the back corner of the letter tray (where that yellow marker is).

And he escaped!!  I couldn’t find him anywhere.  Aaarg!!

Lindy came in to help me take her office apart.  We closed drawers, cleared the floor and moved the trash can up to the window ledge.

I finally found him in a very dark corner on the floor.  He flew again, darting back and forth (lots of shouting!) and then a miracle.  He fluttered at the window and dropped into the trash can to hide.

I was laughing so hard I couldn’t believe our luck.  He was hiding in something I could carry!

I checked to make sure he was in there among the trash.  He’s not in this picture but he was unbelievably hard to see among the folds of the liner bag.  I draped the bird towel over the trash can and took my bundle to the loading dock.

The loading dock door was closed.  The bird flew free.

We’re all happy that he’s now outside our windows.

(photo of a house sparrow in France by Pierre Selim on Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to see the original.  Remaining photos by Kate St. John)