One Tough Bird

We've had a pair of resident sandhill cranes nesting here for as long as we've had our big pond; making it thirty years.  I don't believe it has been the same pair for the duration ; nevertheless, we've been witness to cranes arriving here in the month of March is some remarkably harsh weather conditions.  Including Winter Storm Elsa which ended late Monday.  Our cranes have been here for a couple of weeks already and when I arose yesterday they were easy to spot given all the snow on the ground.

There they were - several hundred yards north of the house - at the edge of the frozen pond, in a couple feet of snow, on a sunny 18F morning.  The sandhill is an incredibly hardy critter always arriving at their northern breeding grounds while there is still snow covering icy wetlands. 

This bird comes factory-equipped with some sophisticated physiological adaptations that allow it to thrive under the harshest of conditions.  One of these is a sophisticated network of blood vessels in their legs called rete tibiotarsale.  Also found in penguins and turkey vultures this allows warmer arterial blood from their heart to transfer heat to the cold venous blood returning from their feet.  This keeps their core temperature warm while allowing their feet to remain at a lower temperature while standing in snow or icy water.  

When airborne cranes typically fly with their long legs trailing behind.  If it is too cold at 10,000 feet of altitude the bird will tuck their legs into their belly feathers to conserve heat.  Speaking of which, the crane's plumage is a dense layer of soft downy feathers beneath an outer layer of contour feathers.  Air trapped by the inner layer provides thermal insulation beneath the outer feathers that repel wind and freezing rain.   

Crane behavior strategies include the use of tail winds to speed their migration from Mexico and southern states, roosting in warmer waters adjacent to power plants and preening their gray feathers with mud to make a rusty-brown camouflage to hide from predators.  Until the arrival of spring green-up, this is a bird capable of digging beneath snow to locate waste grain in agricultural fields and tubers and dormant invertebrates and amphibians in frozen mud. 

Anyway, we're looking forward to observing the ritual mating dance of Wisconsin's tallest bird.  The birds will face each other, bow and jump while flapping their wings and making loud cackling calls.  Yes, this tough bird can dance too.

Stay-tuned for any lucky trail camera photos I might capture this season. 

Winter Adaptations

 

Sunrise the other day dawned at a brisk -4F (feels like -15F).  And while we have to deal with decisions about venturing outside our process has more to do with is it just taking the dog out to go potty, are we going out for an hour to check trail cameras or is this a trip to town for a scheduled meeting or a gallon of milk or do I have to dress for a Packer game at Lambeau Field.

All of the foregoing involve different sub-decisions about how to layer-up or is the trip even necessary.  How do the resident critters that make their home around here adapt and adjust?

The short answer is that wildlife does have adaptations to the seasons and this time of year they manifest as both physical change, behavior or a combination of the two. 

Thinking of the critters that show-up most frequently on the trail cameras; the resident white tails, raccoons, coyotes, fox and other mammalian species all grow a thicker coat of hair and fur that absorbs sunlight, and provides camouflage properties avoid detection by predators.  Additionally, this fur coat generally consists of several layers; the softer, thicker layer adjacent to the skin traps air and retains body heat.  Next to this undercoat is an outer layer of guard hairs that repels rain, snow and wind.  

As I observe the dark-eyed juncos scratching in the snow beneath my bird feeders they look like grey on white puff balls.  They also have two layers of feathers to repel the elements and retain body heat.  This effect, related to goose bumps, is called piloerection and animals puff up their fur or feathers to not only look larger as a defense mechanism but also as a means of thermoregulation to conserve energy and retain heat.  

In the run-up to winter wild animals consume more calories to build-up stores of fat. This additional fat not only adds an extra layer of insulation it also is a store of energy reserves that can be metabolized during periods of food scarcity. 

Deer and rabbits modulate their circulatory systems (an evolutionary mechanism - not a parlor trick) such that blood vessels found in the ears and other extremities have reduced blood flow helping to retain core body temperature. 

Naturally, many animals (just like many of my neighbors and friends) beat it out of dodge before the Thanksgiving holiday and return with the warmer temperatures and lengthening days of springtime.  The herons, cranes, orioles and many other birds winter in warmer climes along with many of their warm season human neighbors.  

Other animals split the difference.  They don't migrate and they don't recreate; they hunker down to ride-out the winter.  The resident skunks, snakes, muskrats, salamanders, chipmunks, badgers, bears, turtles and other burrowing wildlife retire to their underground dens and enter a state of torpor or hibernation - a condition characterized by reduced metabolism where they survive on fat reserves or food caches over the winter season.  While our apex species, the whitetail deer, do not have a location or den; they do regulate their movement during the harshest winter conditions and seek bedding areas in thick conifer cover which provides browse and serves as a windbreak and thermal protection. 

Over millennia native wildlife have evolved and developed adaptations to managing all seasons and living conditions.  It is both remarkable to witness and not so remarkable to understand.  Get yourself a trail camera and situate it within view of a deer trail.  Over the course of a season you can use your citizen science skills to document the changes one animal undergoes as they go through their annual molt.

Fine Dining

click on image for a closer look

On the way to class this morning I spotted one of our resident bald eagles accompanied by three juveniles dining on a road-killed whitetail in a neighbor’s field.

The third juvenile had just taken to the air; look for it in the center of the photo (trees in the background).  

Bald eagles develop their distinctive white head, neck, tail feathers and yellow beak and eyes around five years of age. 

Want to read previous posts on the subject of bald eagles?  Use the handy Label feature to the left or click on this link. 

Adding To Your Stash

Blue Jays are well-known for their food caching behavior, stashing nuts or seeds at hiding spots for later consumption. 

 

They bury food like acorns and peanuts in various locations, often using distinct landmarks as memory cues to relocate their caches. 

 

This behavior allows them to build up a food supply, especially for the winter months when food is scarce.

 

Blue Jay with an acorn….

2025 Graduating Class

It's been a terrific year for the birds that come to the oriole feeder; including the Baltimore and orchard orioles, indigo buntings, purple finches, catbirds, rose-breasted grosbeaks and red-bellied woodpeckers.  Sometimes a ruby-throated hummingbird will pay a call.  Anecdotally, I've observed more orchard orioles than in any previous year.  

Best of all, for a couple of weeks the fledglings of all of the foregoing are now coming to the feeders to be fed by mom and dad before figuring it out on their own.  By the time you read this I will have gone thru fifteen, 32 ounce (two pound) jars of grape jelly and a pile of navel oranges.  And taken thousands of digital images with a trail camera strapped to a post on the west side of the porch.

Anyway, here's a selection of this year's graduating class since the last time I've reported on the subject.

Fun Fact: Fledglings of these species oftentimes look like females.  They're all adult-sized. Male orchard orioles share the coloration of a female (the lack the distinctive ruddy brownish red of an adult male) but share the distinctive black hood and bib of an adult male. 

Second Time Around

The resident blue birds have commenced their second brood.

Fun Fact:  Young bluebirds, or fledglings, may sometimes help their parents feed subsequent broods of younger siblings. This behavior is more common when the fledglings are from an earlier brood within the same breeding season. 

Sky Dance

In his classic: A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold characterized the courtship display of the male American woodcock as the “sky dance.”  

Knowing the place and the hour, you seat yourself under a bush to the east of the dance floor and wait, watching against the sunset for the woodcock’s arrival. He flies in low from some neighboring thicket, alights on the bare moss, and at once begins the overture: a series of queer throaty peents spaced about two seconds apart, and sounding much like the summer call of the nighthawk.             

Suddenly the peenting ceases and the bird flutters skyward in a series of wide spirals, emitting a musical twitter. Up and up he goes, the spirals steeper and smaller, the twittering louder and louder, until the performer is only a speck in the sky. Then, without warning, he tumbles like a crippled plane, giving voice in a soft liquid warble that a March bluebird might envy. At a few feet from the ground he levels off and returns to his peenting ground, usually to the exact spot where the performance began, and there resumes his peenting.    

– Aldo Leopold              

Meet Scolopax minor – The American Woodcock – colloquially known as the timber doodle.   Superbly camouflaged this chunky bird - unlike its shore-dwelling relatives - spends much of its life on the forest floor probing with its long bill for insects and earthworms.    

A woodcock’s eyes are positioned high and near the back of their skull. A unique adaptation that allows them to keep watch for danger in the sky while they have their heads down poking around in the soil for food.  This diminutive bird's coloration also makes it difficult to find except during flight at dawn or dusk or when the dog flushes one.  On occasion when you are innocuously walking to or from a turkey blind or a deer stand in the dark - with no advance warning - the sudden explosion in the darkness that originates from the immediate vicinity of your feet will most certainly have come from a doodle bird.  After the adrenaline rush has ebbed you resume your walk. Tiptoeing gingerly.  

 

Witnessing the woodcock courtship display is truthfully more a patient exercise in listening rather than seeing.  As the sky begins to darken or the dawn begins to glow if you are attentive this time of year you will hear the nasal BZEEP.      

The male will perform his plaintive beeping call on the ground followed by launching into a spiraling flight of 200 to 300 feet.  Like a barnstorming acrobat he then tips into a twisting descent.   The air rushing thru specialized wing feathers whistles to the accompaniment of bubbling vocalizations.   

photo - Thomas Gaertner

 

Upon landing the male fans his tail much like a gobbler or ruffed grouse with the hopes that his dance has attracted a lady charmed by his advances.  In case you care to know - the boys are promiscuous and will mate with any and all females attracted to their affections. 

 

  

Woodcock displays can last for several hours between dusk and dawn from early-March through early May.  The following video was taken in the rain.  Turn-up the volume and listen carefully for the peents followed by twittering flight.  Can you identify the other birds calling in the background?  

 

Spring has officially sprung....

2024 Graduating Class

Some of this year's new recruits.

Fledgling orioles coming to the feeders to be fed my their parents.

And mama whitetail tending to her fawn. 

 

Great White

Meet Ardea alba – the Great Egret.  This rare visitor actually paid us a call the other day.  They never stick around, so they must be passing-thru. 

An entirely white bird - they are a tall wading species with long black legs and a yellow-orange, dagger-like bill. These birds are found in both salt water and fresh water habitats and build their stick nest high in trees.  They live in colonies and prefer island-living so as to be safe from predators like raccoons.  This bird doesn’t nest here as I believe we are pushing the furthest extent of their breeding range.  Besides, we have no islands.  Great egrets can be found breeding on a few islands in the lower waters of Green Bay.  You can spot them crossing the Leo Frigo Bridge at the harbor entrance.

This bird spent the afternoon dining on whatever it could catch in the big pond just south of Silver Creek.  Standing still for a period of time it would suddenly thrust its bill into the shallows.  One less frog in the mix so it seems. 

We're Grandparents!

Meet Sialia sialis - the Eastern bluebird.  These are cavity-nesting birds and only a couple of human generations ago their numbers were in serious decline in this country as a consequence of limited nesting habitat.   

They’re more common nowadays as song bird enthusiasts have mobilized in the face of that decline and assembled and installed nest boxes for them. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of similarly-minded individuals and you get the drift.  More cavities – more birds.  

Most of the time house wrens and tree sparrows nest in our boxes which is just fine.  They make for good tenants.  Only a few days ago I spotted a flash of blue and upon checking the box discovered this.  They’re nesting in a box just at the edge of the back yard making bird watching from the sun room easy.

A fun factoid about the eastern bluebird is that the young of the first brood assist in raising the young of the second brood.   

While out with the dog for a walk we made a house call to check on progress.

 

 

Songster With a Temper

A foxy brown bird with heavy, dark streaking on their whitish underparts. The face is gray-brown and the wings show two black-and-white wingbars. They have bright-yellow eyes. 

An aggressive defender of its nest, this bird is known to strike people and dogs hard enough to draw blood.  Aggression aside the name of this bird comes from the sound the critter makes when scratching through debris on the ground.

This bird is endowed with one of the most varied repertoire of any bird studied. A single male can sing over 2000 songs. 

A personal favorite; the Brown Thrasher!

 

 

Return Of The Timberdoodle

While out walking the dog recently she has flushed several doodle birds.  They're common around here because of the remnant alder and willow thickets in the lowlands and younger reforested uplands.  Nevertheless, outside of the local situation this curious bird is becoming less common every year.

The American woodcock - Scolopax minor - also known as the timberdoodle - is a ground-dwelling shoreland bird species found in young forest and shrublands.  Woodcock breed across eastern North America with Wisconsin part of its western range.  This migratory bird winters in lowlands from the Mid-Atlantic south to the Gulf Coast states. 

Historically, woodcock were found in much larger numbers.  This was a consequence of a landscape that included larger amounts of early successional habitat - the technical nomenclature for younger forest.  Not surprisingly those younger forest have evolved and grown to mature forest where woodcock do not live. Fire is suppressed and logging is in decline so the extent of younger woodland habitat continues to shrink.  Urban development also destroys former habitat and because of all of these factors the woodcock population has fallen by about 1 percent each year since the 1960s. 

Aldo Leopold’s - A Sand County Almanac - describes the courtship display of the male Woodcock.  This is one of the true harbingers of spring around here and a delight to observe before sun-up.  From the chapter titled Sky Dance in this excerpt.

I'm tickled to listen to the courtship ritual.  It is another sure sign of the arrival of spring.

 

The Big Pecker

For a awhile there has been a persistent hammering coming from the treeline along Silver Creek.  Mind you there is an abundance of dead and dying ash along the creek banks and in the swampy slough to the west. 

I already had a pretty good idea of who might be the maestro of the anvil chorus emanating from the woods - but I hadn't had an opportunity to confirm the identity.

So the dog and I went to investigate on one of our walks.

Check this out.

A big old ash tree with any number of cavities under construction.   

 
At the base of the tree was a sizable trash midden of wood chips.  

And while I didn't catch it on the job; these holes belong to none other than Wisconsin's largest pecker.  The pileated woodpecker.  

 

Female Pileated - Nestwatch Image

The name derives from the the Latin pileatus - "wearing a cap".

This bird is about the size of a crow and announces its territory by drumming on hollow trees, chimneys and utility poles.

It's favorite food is carpenter ants and it will carve oval holes up to several feet long in tree trunks. It feeds it's young regurgitated insects.  Yum!

 

Anyway, since this on one of our regular routes we'll be monitoring progress to determine if these are nesting cavities or if the birds are simply disassembling the trees for purposes of feeding.  

 

One of the consequences of Emerald Ash Borer is an abundance of dead and dying ash on the landscape.  I have never been witness to so many numbers and varieties of woodpeckers in my life.  Lordy.

 

Bluebird of Happiness

Among the regular harbingers of spring is the return of the Redwing Blackbird, the American robin and the eastern bluebird.  One of our favorites is the bluebird and they've been seemingly scarcer the past couple of years. 

The notion of the bluebird of happiness has its roots in French folklore and comes from the delightful feeling associated with the sighting of one of these birds with the faded rusty breast, white belly and blue back and tail. They're a flash of color in an otherwise brown and dreary springtime world. They’re fond of perching on the top of a post, tree or garden rake leaning on the fence and surveying their domain.  

WI.DNR.Gov

 

Meet Sialia sialis - the Eastern bluebird.  These are cavity-nesting birds and only a couple of human generations ago their numbers were in serious decline in this country as a consequence of limited nesting habitat.  They’re more common nowadays because us people have mobilized in the face of that decline and assembled and installed nest boxes for them. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of similarly-minded bird enthusiasts and you get the drift.  More cavities – more birds.  

Most of the time house wrens and tree sparrows nest in our boxes which is just fine.  They make for good tenants.  Only a few days ago I spotted a flash of blue and upon checking the box discovered this.  They’re nesting in a box just at the edge of the back yard making bird watching from our new three season room easy.

A fun factoid about the eastern bluebird is that the young of the first brood assist in raising the young of the second brood.   

Good parenting the bluebird has. 

New Bird Sighting?

One of my neighbors texted me a photo of a flock of birds in one of her recently-picked corn fields.  It was unfamiliar to her and she asked me for an identification.  All of which might have taken awhile had I not already fetched the SD cards from the trail cameras and was puzzling over a sequence of burst photos of a flock of birds myself.  These birds looked different to me too.

And eventually I figured it out.

Meet Sturnus vulgaris - the European Starling.

It is a non-native invader that was introduced to New York City in the late 1800s.  It has spread far and wide and is an annoying year-round resident in Wisconsin.  This avian gangster rousts other cavity nesting birds from their nests and destroys the eggs of more valuable native bird species.

I had always considered it a shiny purple-black bird of summer that is similar to the Common Grackle.  Identification changes seasonally with the plumage changing to white speckles and the ordinarily yellow bill changing to gray in the autumn and winter.

A partial migrator it will occasionally move to southern states for the winter and congregates in large flocks in the fall.

This bird is a shape-shifter.  ID solved!

 

How To Tell A Crow From A Raven

The large all-black bird that you observe is likely a crow or a raven and they both happen to belong to the same family known as Corvidae and the genus Corvus. The latter actually being Latin for crow.

This species makes its home throughout the world with the exception of Antarctica and South America.  While the common raven is more abundant on a global basis it is found in the western US, Appalachian Mountains, northern reaches of Wisconsin into Canada and Mexico.  The American crow is found throughout the US and Canada.

Both birds are year-round residents here and the best way to tell them apart is by the difference in size.  Ravens are larger.

There is also a subtle difference in their beaks - ravens sport a larger, curvier beak with larger bristles at the base.  This aids the raven in the pursuit of its preferred meal of roadkill and carrion.  In contrast crows are largely herbivores and will eat roadkill only rarely.

Vocalizations are different too.  Crows caw and ravens croak.  Ravens will also scream - a vocalization used to attract others to a particularly good source of food.

Listed as a species of least concern neither of these birds are endangered.  As a matter of fact they respond positively to the presence of people and the easy food resources that accompany urbanization and fragmentation. 

Even though these birds belong to the same genus they are indeed biologically different as described in the preceding paragraphs. While both are among the most intelligent animals on the planet, ravens excel at problem-solving, mimic the calls of other birds and possess the ability to plan in advance.  Crows have the ability to recognize individual people.

They don't necessarily coexist and have been known to raid each others' nests and compete for territory and food resources.  Strangely, the smaller crows make the most trouble.

If you want to learn more about the lives of these birds here at The Platz you can search under crow or raven using the labels on the homepage of the blog or plug either name or the word: corvus in the search feature in the tool bar above.

Raven

Crow

Reduce Reuse Recycle

Spizella passerina commonly known as chipping sparrow is among the most common sparrows in North America. They are summer visitors here and can range as far north as Alaska. They are both winter and year-round residents of Central America and the southern states.

Fairly tame, this bird takes its name from the sharp chip call it makes as it hops and runs on the ground foraging for seeds and insects.  It takes flight in short, rapid bursts. 

Field marks include a rusty crown and a dark eye line. 

The female constructs a cup nest low to the ground in dense shrubs and is usually lined with animal hair.  This bird fledges two broods per year.  Both male and female feed the young. 

After brushing Blonde Dog it is common to observe mama gathering dog hair for her nest. 

 

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

 

Backyard Circus

 

Audubon Image

Meet Circus cyaneus - the northern harrier - colloquially known as a marsh hawk. A predictable resident as we've been host to a nesting pair for any number of years already.

 

The genus name Circus comes from the Greek kirkos - meaning 'circle' a reference to its circling flight. Cyaneus is Latin - meaning dark-blue. 

 

This is an easy bird of prey to identify.  Northern harriers have several characteristics that set them apart from other hawks.  The feathers around their face have an owl-like disk focusing sound into their ears. Their wings form a v-shape as they fly low and slow and parallel to the ground during flight. Males have a white belly while females have a streaked brown belly.  They also have a distinctive white rump and black wing tips which are visible during flight. 

 

This raptor both nests and feeds on the ground and provides hours of bird watching as they hunt over the tall grass prairie north of the house.

 

I captured this video Sunday afternoon.  It was the second time I witnessed this behavior this week and fortunately had the presence of mind to have my device handy to record it.  A turkey has cutting thru the field out back and both birds were ganging-up on it to harass it and drive it off.  If I had to hazard a guess this is a display of territorial behavior.  It is not at all different from tree swallows dive-bombing me and the dog during nesting season.  Although I'm not going traipse thru there and test the hypothesis with the hawks.

 

Be sure to turn-up the volume....

 

 

Roadkill

 There nothing left of the road-killed whitetail now but skin and bones.  Nevertheless, there are plenty of trail camera photos yet to share so be sure to stop-by from time to time and check them out.

This is a juvenile bald eagle.  The large, distinctive hook beak is one of the characteristics to aid in identification of this bird in the field.  Juveniles gain the characteristic bald eagle white head and tail at 4-5 years of age.

This is a rough-legged hawk.  The raptor takes its name from the feathers that extend down the legs to the base of the toes - an adaptation to the cold environment this bird prefers.  This hawk is only seen here on the peninsula during the winter months with the southern-most extent of its winter range being the Texas panhandle.  Summer breeding range is the northernmost extent of Canada's coniferous forest zone and escarpment bordering the arctic tundra. 

Wile E. Coyote.  This canine has been tugging and dragging the deer carcass from here to there.

Adult bald eagle stretching her wings.  At up to a 7-foot wingspan this is a Big Bird.

And there is this.  A raven selfie.  And I am really digging the hair do..... 

Roadkill

The road killed whitetail has been reduced to skin and bones.  And not getting much attention by the local critters.

Here's another handful of photos captured by the trail camera on the 15th and 16th of March.

 

This is a juvenile bald eagle.  Not to be confused  with a rough-legged hawk this bird is not only larger than its arctic cousin - a field mark to aid in ID is the large, curved, yellow bill

 

 

Crow taking flight

 

 

 

Adult bald eagle.  Juvenile eagles do not develop the distinctive white head until 4 to 5 years of age

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                Adult and juvenile facing-it-off and getting into a fracas

Classic bald eagle pose

Stay tuned for more photos to follow...