A Feather in Your Cap

I am very proud to note that I exceeded the 1,000 mark this week for total site visits to Your Bird of the Week. Pretty great, huh? Yet, I felt a twinge of guilt as I looked at that number, because it certainly was not due to any consistent effort on my part. No, it was mainly due to random Google searches. Would you believe someone actually googled, "What Kind of Bird Are You Quiz"? I mean, I believe that. But, would you?

Sigh! I got busy at work a couple months ago and suddenly lost my will to blog. But in 2009, I have made a resolution to be better at Your BOTW. How hard is it? I used to do this daily! In an e-mail! I can keep this up weekly, right?

With this new, bold resolution, I feel like we should start with a bird that can only be described as cheerful during the most trying of circumstances. A bird that is a frequent winter visitor to bird feeders, and a favorite of bird geeks everywhere. It reminds me of a chubby little kid, all puffed up with a black cap to keep it warm. In fact, if I wanted to keep a bird as a pet, I think it would be this, Your BOTW (and the first bird of 2009), the black-capped chickadee.

Fact: The black-capped chickadee is a little bird, just about 6 inches tall, with white cheeks, a black bib, and (what else?) a black cap. Its back, wings, and tail are a dark gray, and the upper wing feathers are edged in white. As I mentioned: totally adorable.

Fact: Do you know what else is cute? Its little, cheerful voice. In fact, it's how the chickadee gets its name. Its call is a sharp "chick-a-dee-dee-dee. It also has a song of two or three high notes that sort of sounds like "Fee-bee. Fee-bee." You'll hear both on this little spectograph.



Fact: The black-capped chickadee eats caterpillars and bugs during the spring and summer and mostly seeds during the winter. The seeds it very often gets from bird feeders. In fact, nearly every video I could find of a black-capped chickadee was taken during the winter. You have to admit, they do look awfully cheerful for what is likely a rough time of year.



Fact: The chickadee gleans its insect meals by hopping around trees, even hanging upside down to do it. Once it gets a bug or seed, it will hold the food against a tree branch to peck at it.
Fact: One reason the chickadee may be so happy in winter is that it hides seeds and other food in individual nooks and crannies, and it can remember literally thousands of its hiding places. With their similar love of food storage, the Mormons should consider making the chickadee an official LDS bird.
Fact: The black-capped chickadee is also energy-conscious. It can actually lower its own body temperature on cold winter nights, entering regulated hypothermia to conserve huge amounts of energy.
Fact: As you probably noticed in the feeder video, chickadees gather in flocks in the winter. These flocks have strict social hierarchies. There are the cool kids who get to eat first and the weirdos who get to eat last. Some birds actually flit from flock to flock, and have established (and very different) places in each flock's hierarchy. (This is just a guess, but I doubt the cool kids leave their flock very often.)
Fact: Chickadee sex is a pretty tame affair. They are generally monogamous. They often pick out a nest site together (usually in a tree cavity or nest box), and the female gets busy building the nest. The female is the sole egg incubator, but the male will feed her and the nestlings after they hatch.
Fact: Even chickadee fights are sort of sweet. One aggressive display they make is called "ballet." As far as I understand it, two birds will face off on a tree limb and hop and pivot around each other. The winner ends up facing his opponent, while the loser usually ends up facing away? Yeah, birds are weird.

This has been Your BOTW.

O' Christmas Tree II

Hmm, looks like I'm not the only geeky bird decorator out there. Great minds think alike, I guess!

The Birdcouple

Picus

Birdchick

O' Christmas Tree

As a certifiable bird geek, I have allowed my avian obsession to creep into my holiday decorating. My husband, who is most definitely NOT a bird geek, has been pretty good about it all, even supporting my decision to have a "bird" Christmas tree. Bird ornaments actually are pretty easy to come by. Birds were popular tree decorations in Victorian times, and they've become pretty hip again in your average craft store and local Target. This year, I added ornamental berries to my tree. In my weird little way, I thought it helped "explain" why the birds were all over the tree. During winter, of course many species would flock to a tree that was bearing fruit, right? Right? (Tim is rolling his eyes now.)

I'm bizarrely proud of the ornaments I've managed to collect over the past few years, and I wanted to show them off a bit. I've got both identifiable species and decorative birds that are meant to be nothing but pretty.



Here are a few of my favorite ornaments:

Stellar's Jay. It's immediately recognizable to fellow bird geeks. And, it reminds me of my family's trip to Oregon a few years ago.



Nesters. I've got a few "couple" birds on my tree, but these two are my favorite. They look so domestic. (No actual species here as far as I can tell.) My faithful BOTW readers know by now that birds rarely nest in such monogamous bliss.



Pheasant. My mother- and father-in-law gave me this particular ornament. I put him low on the tree, as he is a ground-dwelling bird. Love him.



Bald Eagle. I didn't add our nation's proud avian symbol until just this season. Most of the ornaments I found were too, um, Palinish Republican. (Does that make sense?) This ornament was just right. He reminds me of Sam the Eagle on the Muppet Show. They both look grumpy, slightly cross-eyed, and adorable.



Owl. I have a few different owls on my tree, but I love this guy the most. He gets the highest spot on the tree, both for his size and his general awesomeness as a member of the owl family. Incidentally, if I were actually hanging him where he would naturally be, he'd be roosting next to the trunk. I have no idea what his friend is...I may ask my 4-year-old nephew, Ethan, to help name him. (He recently drew a picture of a bird species of his own imagination; Ethan called it a "one-eyed long neck." I can't wait to see one in the field.)



Birding Santa. My sister managed to find me last year a "Birding Santa." He looks all outdoorsy and carries both a cardinal nest and a cardinal perching on a bird cage. Perfect for sitting under a geeky tree like mine.


Merry Christmas everyone!

Home for Christmas

I first saw this video on the Birdchick blog. Kind of funny...and sort of creepy. But it was made by the BBC in the UK to help get attention for a good cause: providing wintertime food, water, and shelter for wildlife in your own backyard. I don't think they're talking about bears and moose. More like birds and squirrels.





My father-in-law, Dave, provides food and fresh water every single day to the birds in his yard. I know I'm anthropomorphizing here (like that's anything new), but the little sparrows seriously look so happy to find water that isn't completely iced over! Those birds, in turn, provide a source of winter food for local Cooper's hawks, which know the Haran fence is a good place to hang out and catch a meal. Ah, the circle of life!





Photo credit: http://crhabitat.blogspot.com/

Gobble It Up

As you all sit down to your Thanksgiving meal this week, give a thought to the bird sitting in the middle of the table. That delicious Butterball is a descendant of the North American wild turkey, which once wandered throughout the United States and was an important food source for Native Americans.

We white people came along and ruined most of that, of course. (It's what we do best; just ask the passenger pigeon.) But through conservation and repopulation efforts, wild turkeys are once again roaming through most of the states, including Utah. So, let's learn a little bit about the other white meat, shall we?


Your BOTW is the wild turkey.



Fact: The wild turkey is a large, dark bird with powerful legs, a long neck, and a fan-shaped tail. Its body feathers are an irridescent brown, and here in the West the tip of its tail is white. It also sports bumpy facial skin and a bare head and neck (which is often blue in the male).
Fact: The male wild turkey often sports a beard, a long trail of feathers extending from its chest (see picture). Some females also have a small beard but face unfair pressure to get it waxed.
Fact: If you forget what a wild turkey looks like, put your hand down on paper and trace around it with a crayon. Add a beak to the thumb and make the other four fingers multi-colored. This should really help you identify a wild turkey in the field.
Fact: The wild turkey is big, with males weighing in around 18 pounds and females more than 10 pounds.
Fact: The wild turkey typically flock together in small groups. Here in Utah, they live in areas with ponderosa pine and aspen trees or pinyon pine, often near grassy meadows. At night, they usually roost together in trees for safety.
Fact: The wild turkey eats pine nuts, acorns, seeds, and greens. It also eats some bugs during breeding season.
Fact: While the wild turkey typically walks to get around, it can run and fly quite quickly. While it can only fly in short bursts less than a mile or so, the wild turkey has been observed flying as fast as 60 mph.
Fact: Even more suprising, the wild turkey can swim. I like to imagine one showing up at a bird triathlon. All the skinny shorebirds and raptors snort at the bald fatty. Then he stuns them all with his speed and swimming skills. Is there a children's book in this somewhere?
Fact: Let's talk about the stuff that won't make it in my Newberry award-winning book, shall we? It's turkey sex time. To begin, the male attracts one or several females by gobbling and "strutting."
Fact: Strutting just means the male puffs up his chest, fans out his beautiful tail feathers, and prances around the females to show how truly bad he is. This video shows two males strutting. You'll also hear a great gobble toward the end. (That screeching in the background is apparently a raptor of some sort.)




Fact: If the strutting works, the male copulates with one or more females, who then lay eggs and raise the chicks alone.
Fact: The Birds of North America Online made reference to those males who aren't picked by females. Apparently, some of them have been observed "pseudocopulating" with cow pies. This is the kind of stuff that attracts Germans to my blog, huh?
Fact: I think we've learned enough at this point to properly appreciate our Thanksgiving meal. So, now I will leave you with the wise words of Benjamin Franklin, who wrote to his daughter that he thought the turkey more apt a national emblem than the eagle. It's stuff like this that makes me love Franklin:

"For my own part I wish the Eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree near the river, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the Eagle pursues him and takes it from him...For the truth the Turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on."

This has been Your BOTW.

That's a Purdy Picture

As a bird lover and habitual reader of the New York Times online, I can't believe I missed the paper's article last month on the history of birds in art. They also included a cool, little slide show of some art and photographs from recent books on the subject.

Thanks to the Round Robin blog for pointing it out.

Red & Black

For all of you Ute fans out there--congratulations! Last night's win over TCU was even exciting for me. (And I don't really care that much about the U or college football.) Why don't we celebrate with a brief look at a bird that would have fit right in at the stadium last night?


Your BOTW is the vermilion flycatcher.
Fact: The male vermilion flycatcher has a dazzling red head and underparts, set off by blackish wings, tail, and nape. The female is totally inconspicuous. Gray with more gray, and just a hint of salmon under the tail. (When the only color you're wearing is salmon? Yeah, you've got a problem.)
Fact: The vermilion flycatcher is quite small, just 5 to 6 inches tall.
Fact: As you might imagine, the vermilion flycatcher catches flies. Like most flycatchers, it sits on an open perch, locates a bug, and then shoots out to grab it. (See video for an example. Most of the action takes place right at the beginning, so if the video has already rolled, start it over.)



Fact: Large insects, like grasshoppers, are brought back to the perch and beat against a branch to kill them.
Fact: Bugs are a flycatcher's only currency, so it makes sense that when the male vermilion flycatcher really wants to impress a lady, he presents her with a showy butterfly or other colorful insect. "A moth?! For me? Oh, you shouldn't have!"
Fact: "It's really nice, but can you at least put it down first?" According to The Birds of North America Online, males vermilion flycatchers have been observed still holding the colorful butterfly as they copulate with the female.
Fact: The male vermilion flycatchers is also known for its spectacular courtship flight. Its flies 10 to 30 feet above the trees, singing all the way.
Fact: Vermilion flycatchers live mainly in the south and southwest, so you likely won't see one around the University of Utah campus. But, if you're a true Ute fan, you'll look for one on your next trip to St. George.

This has been Your BOTW.

On an unrelated note, I was a little chagrined recently when I learned from SiteMeter that at least two people (one from Germany) had found my blog by googling "goose penis." Am I running a trashy blog without even realizing it?

Photo credit: Charles & Clint