Naturally
I didn’t know it, but the first time I laid eyes on a chickadee, it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. I was eating on the road, not like a turkey vulture on a road-killed raccoon; I was eating in a roadside cafe. My food cooled as I watched chickadees find their food in a window box of wilted flowers.
All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. I miss both frogs and toads during our cold weather. Frogs leap, toads hop. Frogs have longer legs that allow them to take big, long jumps. Toads make shorter hops.
Dis and data
A bar-tailed godwit holds the non-stop distance record for migratory birds by flying 8,435 miles from Alaska to Australia. The 11-day journey without rest or food was tracked by a satellite tag on the bird.
Pigeons hear sounds as low as 0.05 Hz, making their hearing powerful enough to detect distant earthquakes, storms, volcanoes and other natural calamities.
World Series birds migrating through Hawk Ridge in Duluth include common redpolls, snow buntings, red crossbills, purple finches, pine siskins and northern shrikes—birds indicative of the change of seasons.
A bird is worth 2,349 bird words
A synchronized wave of birds produced a significant sound as they made a seasonal shift.
It was roosting time in the fall and it was all noise and black feathers when the clamorous cloud landed on branches clinging to the few remaining leaves, the blackbirds creating silhouettes against a darkening sky.
They weren’t in the tree long before they dropped like grains of sand in an hourglass before heading back up into the tree as if the hourglass had been flipped. Perhaps it involved a seating rearrangement of the red-winged blackbirds and common grackles.
A flock in flight is an amazing thing to see. Scientists have figured each bird tracks and responds to a finite number of its closest neighbors—seven in the case of starling flocks—and maintains its distance from each, preventing the flock from turning into a horde of bumper cars.
A flock offers strength in numbers by fostering cooperation and provides eyes to watch for predators and search for food. There are many discordant voices to call out warnings.
Jim Muyres of Mankato asked why they are so noisy when going to roost in the fall. An excellent question, which I can only suppose an answer. It might have been a political debate, a planning and zoning meeting or a competition for prime roosting places that led to loud bickering. It might have been a report on food availability and procurement. I wouldn’t think it’d be to confuse or frighten predators, but maybe it was.
It was certainly communication of some sort, as birds excel at communication, and it might have involved the establishment of a pecking order. Roosting males don’t want to be crowded and aim to maintain a roosting territory by protesting any intrusion. No matter what its purpose, this behavior from a long ribbon of blackbirds twisting their way across the landscape is a harbinger of a changing season.
Guglielmo Marconi, the godfather of radio technology was convinced that no sound ever dies. It decays beyond the point our ears can detect it, but he believed it’s forever recoverable with the right device. That device might be the memory the birds give us.
Q&A
“Why is a young sandhill crane called a colt?” New cranes are precocious and able to run on gangly legs within 24 hours of hatching. Someone long ago observed cranes running and thought they galloped like horses, which led to them being called colts. The male is called a roan and the female a mare. A group of cranes is a flock, sedge, siege, team or herd. A sedge is a grassy or marshy habitat that cranes frequent. Cranes are famous for their dancing, so I think dance would make an excellent collective noun.
“Why so few fireflies this year?” They have a lot of things going against them: habitat loss, overuse of pesticides and light pollution. Their larvae feed on snails, slugs and millipedes, things that thrive in wet environments. Food would be harder to find in a drought.
“Do all birds migrate in flocks?” No. Many birds migrate in flocks: blackbirds, common nighthawks, American robins, swallows, ducks and geese, but some species migrate alone—the hummingbird is a prime example.
“Do house finches and purple finches interbreed?” The Birds of North America mentions one documented case of a purple X house finch hybrid in the wild, in 1996. House finches, particularly males, can vary in plumage due to differences in diet.
Thanks for stopping by
“See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little.”—Pope John XXIII.
“We don't laugh because we're happy—we're happy because we laugh.”—William James.
Do good.
©Al Batt 2023
In the early 1830s, on an expedition to Canada led by Sir John Franklin, ornithologists detected the bird we know as Franklin’s gull, first naming it Franklin’s rosy gull because it often shows a rosy pink cast on its breast and abdomen. The color fades as the breeding season progresses. It was called the “prairie dove” by the early settlers. The gulls follow tractors and eat the insects uncovered by the disturbance of the land. Photo of Franklin’s gull in nonbreeding plumage by Al Batt
Traveling on an Alaska Marine Highway System ferry brings out the readers. That makes me smile.
The platform is a silent memorial to a young life lost in a mudslide in Haines, Alaska. I’d think the view seen while standing on it would be what the deceased saw from a window of his home.
The Hammer Museum In Haines, Alaska, has a collection of 7,000 hammers, with 2,000 on display including this 20-foot tall pounder.
Haines, Alaska.
