watchingbackyardbirds.com • vol. 20 no. 3 • june 2017 tree ... · watchingbackyardbirds.com •...

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Baby Season

Baby Season

watchingbackyardbirds.com • Vol. 20 No. 3 • June 2017

atching

From the publishers of

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TREESWALLOW

Also:-Cranky Thrasher-Injured Birds

Also:

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INTRODUCTION

ABOVE: Tree Swallow.RIGHT: A single egg in an

American robin nest.

Watcher at the Window:Baby Season—Julie Zickefoose 12

Features Species Profile: Tree Swallows: Making Themselves at Home —Eirik A.T. Blom 6

Readers Write: An Almost-Proven Theory — Sandy Seibert 16

Photo Blog: East Meets West in My Backyard —Kathy DeLara 20

Cranky Thrasher — Carmen C. Christy 24

Ask Birdsquatch: How to Appease House Wrens; Hummingbird House 28 Short Stories from Al —Al Batt 30

SOM Seeking SOF —Nancy Castillo 32KURT

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Watching Backyard Birds (ISSN 1098-0229) is published bimonthly by Pardson Corporation. Material

appearing in Watching Backyard Birds may not be reprinted without permission.

SubscriptionsOne year: $16 • Two years: $30 • Single issue: $4

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For subscription or other information, please call 800-879-2473.

FOUNDING PUBLISHERS William H. Thompson (1932 – 2011) & Elsa Ekenstierna Thompson

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Departments

Editor’s Note 2

Bird Bites 5, 27

A Baltimore oriole snacks on an orange.

Curved-billed thrashers can be cranky.

Thanks to our sponsor! Bird feeding— Droll Yankees 3, 31

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bird nest in your backyard (or anywhere, for that matter) it’s best to keep your distance and let the birds carry on with the business of nesting undis-turbed. When we humans get too close to a nest, we can unwittingly put the nest and its inhabitants in dan-ger. No matter how diligent one might be in the personal hygiene department, we all still leave a scent trail behind wherever we walk. Preda-

Dear WBB Readers: June is nesting time for

many of our backyard birds. A favorite activity of backyard bird watchers during this sea-son is to look and listen for begging nestlings and fledg-lings. During my four decades as a bird watcher I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons. Two lessons that involve nesting birds seem worth sharing here. One is this: If you acciden-tally (or intentionally) find a

2 watchingbackyardbirds.com • Watching Backyard Birds Newsletter watchingbackyardbirds.com • Watching Backyard Birds

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Editor’s Note

Backyard Nesting Season

A killdeer and its eggs are well camouflaged. The nest is little more than a scrape in the ground.


Editor’s Note

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For more information and help with nesting birds, check out these resources:

Enjoying Bluebirds More (booklet) by Julie Zickefoose BWD Press

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Bird Homes & Habitats (book) by Bill Thompson, III, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

All of these publications are available in the Bird Watcher’s Digest Nature Shop, on the web at birdwatchersdigest.com/shop, or by calling 800-879-2473 8 a.m. through 5 p.m. eastern time, Monday through Friday.

4 watchingbackyardbirds.com • Watching Backyard Birds

tors know that human scent trails often lead to a source of food: the pet food dishes on the back porch, the compost pile, the garbage bag by the curb. For this reason, it’s best to avoid getting too close to an active nest no matter how much you want to see the eggs or young.

On the other hand, there are times when it’s useful and even helpful to birds to visit their nests. If you provide nest boxes for your backyard birds and those nest boxes are baffled to prevent predation, you should make regular nest checks to make sure things are going well. When we check the boxes on our bluebird trail we keep notes on the activity. This nest box journal permits us to monitor the health of the inhabitants and to inter-vene when weather, illness, parasites, or some other chal-lenge arises and threatens the birds. Boxes baffled to prevent predators are very safe for you to visit and for the birds to use.

There are a great many reli-able resources for nest box land-lords available both in print and online. A couple of good places to start are listed below.

Enjoy this nesting season. I’ll see you out in the backyard with the birds!

—Bill Thompson, III WBB editorial team captain

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BIRDBitesHelping Injured Birds Here’s what to do when

you hear that sound of a bird hitting glass, and you look outside to see a stunned bird lying on the ground below one of your windows.

Technically it’s illegal to touch a migratory bird without a permit, but if you don’t mind being outside the law for a few minutes, carefully pick up the bird and put it in a brown paper bag with the top folded over or a cardboard box with flaps for a lid. Make sure that the bird is upright—prop it up with a supporting circle of paper towels or tissues if necessary. If the weather is very cold, bring the bag or box inside to warm up the stunned bird. If the weather is warm, you can leave the bag/box outside, but place it out of reach of pets and other predators.

Do not try to give the bird food or water. Leave it alone in a warm, quiet, dark place for a couple of hours—it may take this long for the bird to recover.

Once the bird recovers, you’ll hear it scratching around inside the enclosure. Take the bag/box outside before peeking in, just in case the bird gets out—you don’t want it fluttering around in your rafters. To release the bird, simply open the enclosure and let it find its way out. Resist the urge to handle the animal any more than necessary, and don’t toss it into the air when releasing it. If you must hold the bird before releasing it, simply open your hand and it will fly away when it’s ready.

If the bird seems not to be recovering, contact your state or provincial fish and game or wildlife agency, or a local veterinarian for the name of a licensed wildlife rehabilitator near you who might take the bird. Get the bird to a rehab expert as soon as possible, because it will need food, water, and perhaps medical attention.

—Bill Thompson, III

Tidbits of Backyard Info You Can Use!

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Tree SwallowsMaking Themselves at Home

—Eirik A.T. Blom

“One swallow does not a summer make.“— Aristotle


For many people, one swal-low—the tree swallow—does make a spring, or at least announces it. Tree swal-lows are among the earliest northbound migrants in many parts of the continent, hardier than their rela-tives, more eager to start the seasonal dance. They begin sweeping north in March, when most warblers are still lazing about the tropics, and most bird watchers—at least here in the Midwest—are fretting over the possibility of late snowstorms. Swal-lows really do sweep: darting, dashing, weaving, covering the land like a low mat.

The tree swallow, once confined in summer to areas near water with an abun-dance of dead trees for nest-ing, is increasingly becoming a part of the suburban and backyard landscape in North America. Over the past 60 years, tree swallows have spread south and moved into areas where they were once rare breeders, making them one of the few birds with a population that is on the increase. The cause has been bird boxes, especially bluebird boxes, although tree

swallows are fairly adaptable and will use housing intend-ed for other species, such as gourds and even purple mar-tin houses. What had always been the limiting factor, cavi-ties for nesting, is now readily available, thanks to humans. The swallows don’t know or care that the boxes were originally intended for other birds. A house is a house, and in a tight market, whoever gets it first has possession.

The swallows’ quick appropriation of bluebird nest boxes was not initially viewed with enthusiasm by the people putting the boxes up. Acceptance came with the discovery that bluebirds and tree swallows are reason-ably tolerant of each other, if not of their own kind. The solution is to pair the boxes—one for bluebirds and one for swallows.

Early ornithologists described the habitat of the tree swallow as open spaces where natural cavities are available, usually near water. The requirement for open spaces has not changed, because tree swallows need room to maneuver, space for their dashing feeding forays.

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The bulk of their diet consists of flying insects taken on the wing, usually in a low, fast flight. The number of insects is often highest around bod-ies of water, which partly explains the preference. Dead trees with cavities excavated by woodpeckers are also more numerous near water, espe-cially around bogs. But it is now clear that the limiting factor is not food but nest sites. Now that boxes are available, tree swallows can be found nesting in treeless plains, in fields, and even in

open backyards. Insects are, after all, almost everywhere.

Watching a pair of tree swallows getting about the business of making more tree swallows can provide an entertaining distraction in the spring and early summer. The male arrives first, stak-ing a claim to the cavity. The female follows and quickly sets about the task of building a nest. The male’s main job dur-ing this period is to discour-age late-arriving interlopers, which he does with determi-nation and verve, despite his

An adult tree swallow looks out of a nest box intended for eastern bluebirds.


relatively small size and lack of armaments. Once the nest is completed, built of grass, moss, pine needles, and other fine plant material, and the first eggs are laid, tree swal-lows go in search of their most prized possession: feathers.

Tree swallows line the nest with the feathers of other birds, using them to regulate the temperature of the nest cup. Other birds molt and occasionally lose feathers for a variety of reasons, but feathers are not an abundant resource, and many people have discovered the pleasure of providing nesting tree swallows with feathers from chickens. So important are the feathers, especially white feathers, that swallows can be readily induced to snatch one from your fingers. Most people are content to drop feathers from an elevated back deck or porch, watching the aerial acrobatics of the tree swallow as it darts down to pluck it from the air. For reasons that no one has figured out for cer-tain, tree swallows will often repeat the game on the way back to the nest, dropping the feather deliberately and then swooping down to retrieve it inches from the ground. It may be an earnest and impor-

tant business for the swal-low, but it is also undeniably entertaining to watch.

Female tree swallows typically lay four to seven eggs, and it is the female who incubates them until they hatch, usually in about two weeks. The male has little to do during this period except to stand guard, but once the young hatch he joins in the effort to meet their demands for food, and both parents are fully occupied for the 20 or so days it takes before the young are ready to fly on their own. Tree swallows rarely attempt second broods, although they will renest if the first fails early in the season.

Tree swallows are not prone to lingering. Once the young are on the wing, the birds are on the move, among the earliest southbound migrants. Many are headed south in mid- or late July.

Swallows may come north in a wave, but they go south in a cloud. They begin to gather in late summer at favored feeding sites, places with abundant insects. These concentrations, which grow for a few weeks until they can include tens of thousands of birds, are usually near water: lakes, reservoirs, rivers, and A

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coastal marshes. Such con-centrations typically include individuals of all the spe-cies of swallow found in the region, providing the observer with a wonderful opportu-nity to study the subtleties of swallow identification. These fall gatherings are ephemeral, however, and the bulk of the birds can disappear almost overnight.

Most of the swallows that nest in North America head for the tropics in winter. The exception is the tree swallow. Many stay the winter along the southern border of the United States, massing in huge swarms along the coasts and over marshes. A few even winter farther north, braving freezing weather and a near absence of insects. The reason

Adult female tree swallows can be drab gray above, or nearly as blue/green irides-cent as adult males.

Watching Backyard Birds • watchingbackyardbirds.comg 11

is that the tree swallow, un-like other members of the family, regularly includes ber-ries in its diet in the winter, especially bayberries, which can be found in abundance in coastal areas. When the bay-berry crop is especially good, tree swallows will stay as far

north as weather permits. It is a risk, but it also carries an advantage: The farther north they winter, the quicker they get back to the breeding grounds. First arrivers usually get first pick of nesting cavi-ties, and it is easier to hold on to a site than it is to evict an already established tenant.

So, if tree swallows have usurped the nest box you put up for bluebirds or some other favorite bird, just add a box or two and sit back to enjoy the spectacle. And don’t forget to stock up on chicken feathers. M

Eirik A.T. Blom was a contrib-uting editor for Bird Watcher’s Digest from 1998 to 2002.

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Juvenile tree swallows are ready to fledge about 20 days after hatching.

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I’ve had a theory for a long time that when I’m at work, shopping, doing housework, or, generally, anytime I’m not look-ing out my windows, numerous beautiful birds are in my yard. I’m sure they are there, taking advantage of the bird feeders I have so graciously supplied for them, at my birdbath or pond that I’m careful to keep clean

and faithfully supply with water, or eating the natural food off the shrubs and trees that I have planted for them. Last week, I fooled those phantom birds and was able to gather some facts to support this theory.

Last Wednesday, I had a doctor’s appointment. Going to the doctor is something I’m not really fond of doing and so,

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Orange halves can attract Baltimore orioles.

READERS WRITE


as a reward to myself, I decided to take the entire day off work. I knew it was going to be a good day when I was awakened at 6 a.m. by the rich, musical song of an oriole. I hadn’t planned on getting up quite that early on my day off, but how could I pass up that opportunity? I bolted to the window and looked around at the orange and jelly feeders that

I had placed in my yard several weeks earlier in an effort to en-tice orioles. Much to my disap-pointment, there were no orioles to be seen, but I continued to hear them singing in the trees.

I dressed quickly, ran down-stairs, grabbed my binoculars, and started scanning the trees in the general direction of the oriole’s song. If it had shown up

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Clockwise from top left: yellow warbler, brown thrasher, and Tennessee warbler.

— Sandy SeibertSandy Seibert has owned and operated Backyard Birds, a wild-bird-feeding store in Omaha, Nebraska, for the past 25 years. She loves gardening, hiking, quilting, and spending time with her family.


before the leaves had emerged, it would have been much easier to locate. I grew frustrated, as it seemingly teased me by invisibly moving from tree to tree, all the while singing those sharp notes to keep me enticed.

Later, as I was eating break-fast and looking out the window in my kitchen, I noticed some movement in our honey locust tree. I again grabbed my binocu-lars, hoping an oriole was sitting there waiting to be viewed. To my surprise, the tree was filled with warblers feasting on the catkins that were so numerous this year. Yellow warblers and Tennessee warblers were flit-ting from branch to branch as if they couldn’t eat fast enough. Occasionally, one would drop down to the birdbath below the tree and enjoy a refreshing drink and then quickly return to its feeding frenzy.

After watching the warblers for some time, I decided it was time to get on with the tasks I had lined up for myself. First on my list was to fill the bird feeders. After gathering up an armload of different seeds, peanuts, oranges, jelly, and suet, I made my way outside. By this time, the oriole had either left or stopped singing, but I began

to hear a new sound that was not a familiar one in my yard. Moving toward the singing brought me to the two white pines at the far end of our yard. The song of the bird I was now searching for was varied, remind-ing me of a brown thrasher, but, unlike the thrasher, this bird was not repeating each phrase twice. This elusive bird soon gave itself away, when, toward the end of one of its songs, it mewed. Sure enough, in the brush pile between the two white pines, I spotted a gray catbird. Ever since that first encounter, each morn-ing when I’m outside I hear his song, so I’m hopeful that I have a pair that will spend the sum-mer in my yard.

Between visiting the doctor’s office and other errands, I was gone from home for around five hours. When I returned, I de-cided to continue my “research.” I got a tall glass of iced tea and my binoculars and headed to my deck, where I would have a good view of the entire backyard but remain camouflaged from the birds. It wasn’t long before I be-gan to hear an oriole. This time the song was even louder, and I knew it was in my yard. Still, the oriole feeders were vacant, and I began to wonder why I had been


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Male rose-breasted grosbeak.

putting fresh oranges and jelly out twice a week for the last four weeks! My patience was reward-ed, however, when that beautiful songster found its way to my birdbath. I enjoyed watching a male Baltimore oriole splashing around in the water and then flying to a branch close by to preen. This must have been a signal to the other birds, because soon I was watching a female Baltimore oriole, a male orchard oriole, and the warblers that I had seen earlier in the day bath-ing in the stream of our pond along with goldfinches, house finches, cardinals, robins, and chickadees. What a treat this

was! In an hour’s time, I would estimate I watched more than 100 birds enjoying the water as they splashed around in it.

I am now almost convinced that my theory is fact. I’m so glad I had that day off to watch all the activity in my yard. Now I wonder what was there while I was at the doctor’s office. Was that the time the rose-breasted grosbeaks decided to come to my feeders? Did a ruby-throated hummingbird enjoy some nectar at my flowers? Perhaps a scarlet tanager sat in my trees calling for a mate? I really think I need another day off to con-tinue my research! M


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—Al BattAl Batt is a writer, speaker, storyteller, and humorist. His first book is a collection of his stories, A Life Gone to the Birds, published by BWD Press.

Short Stories from Al

The tree had fallen in the heavy wind.

The owner of the tree called me because he had discovered that the tree housed a nest cavity occupied by a family of Ameri-can kestrels. There were five

young kestrels—once known as sparrow hawks—in the nest.

I arrived at the caller’s farm equipped with a bluebird nest box and good intentions. I had made the hole of the bluebird box big enough to fit a kestrel. I

A young american kestrel.

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introduced myself to the home-less immature kestrels. The tiny raptors flopped over onto their backs and flashed their talons in my direction. I carefully placed each of the young falcons into the nest box.

I picked a tall tree similar to the fallen one in which to place the bluebird box. The owner of the farm provided a rickety ladder that had been well used before the turn of the century. I climbed the weary rungs of that ladder and attached the bluebird box to the tree. The view from my perch was breath-taking: The shaking ladder took my breath away. I came back down the ladder and kissed terra firma. By the time my feet had touched ground, the mother bird was looking to the hole of the nest box.

I was so happy to be on the ground, but I was even happier to see that the nestlings would be well taken care of. M

Excerpted from A Life Gone to the Birds, available for purchase at birdwatchersdigest.com/shop or by calling (800) 879-2473. Al Batt lives in Hartland, Minnesota.

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Single Oriole Male, new to area since May 18th, looking for Single Oriole Female for monogamous relationship.Great singing voice. Enjoys meals of caterpillars, moths, aphids, and other insects as well as oranges, nectar, and grape jelly. Eight inches long; weight 1.2 oz. Flashy dresser (wears orange and black suit). Well groomed. Loves to travel long distances twice a year. Vacations during winters along Atlantic Coast of U.S. Spends summers in a beautiful area of

upstate New York with nearby stream. Many great restau-rants in area. Will give moral support while you build our pouch-shaped nest in a decidu-ous treetop penthouse. Hope to raise four to five young ones this season. Establishing territory right now and waiting for that special somebird. M

Nancy Castillo is co-owner of a Wild Birds Unlimited Franchise in Saratoga Springs, New York. Fol-low her blog, the Zen Birdfeeder, at wildbirdsunlimited.typepad.com.

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Occupation: Unemployed

Age: 2 years

Height: 8”

S— Nancy Castillo


Identifying and Feeding Birds by Bill Thompson, III—This readable, friendly guide is intended for bird watchers and non-bird watchers alike—for anyone who wants to enjoy nature right in his or her own backyard. Identify-ing and Feeding Birds contains countless tips on attracting birds to your backyard, identifying them when they arrive, and keeping them coming back for more. The book also contains simple, helpful profiles and photographs of 125 common backyard visitors. #669 $14.95

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The New Birder’s Guide by Bill Thompson, III— This book for beginners portrays 300 of the most common birdsin the U.S. and Canada. It informs without overwhelming the novice. It includes easy-to-understand drawings and maps, how and where to look, great ID basics, and “wow” facts about each species. #826 $16.95

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Western North America Learn to recognize backyard birds by their sounds! Backyard Birdsong is a touch-button, electronic handbook of birds and their songs from acclaimed ornithologist and author Donald Kroodsma. Includes 75 backyard birds common across western North America and their vocalizations. #1146 $34.95

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