Ornithology and Birding

Let’s imagine for a moment that you are walking through a mature forest and a male Pileated Woodpecker lands on a dead snag not five meters away. It is truly a glorious bird, over a foot-and-a-half long with a flaming red crest. It gives you a cautious glance, but being the size of a crow and sporting a beak that hammers out wood at 25 pecks a second, it doesn’t have much to fear. As it goes about its feeding business, you begin to note some of its features. The body is almost completely black and the neck is striped black and white, and the contrast between the crest and the rest of the bird is almost unreal. You wonder if there is a female nearby, and your question is instantly answered as a piercing ‘kuk-kuk-kuk’ call rings through the forest. Looking back at the male, you can see the mandibles of the beak are opened slightly by something between them. Before you can get a look at what it is, the bird flies off to a cavity you hadn’t noticed before. A fluffy, crested head peeks out of the nest hole, and the food is transfered to the hungry youngster. As the male flies to another favored feeding area, you have a chance to inspect the snag it left. The holes bored by the powerful beak are noticeably rectangular, and inside those holes you can occasionally see an ant or grub barely missed by the woodpecker. All of a sudden you hear another bird behind you; it is a Red-bellied Woodpecker, another resident of these woods. As you walk away, trying not to disturb it, it flies to the dead tree and begins feeding through the excavations created by the larger woodpecker. You smile as you see another species benefitting from the borings. It is starting to get dark. As you begin to walk back, you hear for one last time the resonant call of the Pileated Woodpecker, as it raises the next generation of a bird that many will enjoy for the years to come.

Simple Sentence

Compound Sentence

Complex Sentence

Compound-Complex Sentence

Source:

All About Birds – Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Hi everyone and welcome to Bird of the Week. This is the first Bird of the Week chosen by readers, and managed to beat out two other competitors with 4 votes. You might be familiar with this bird; it is a common backyard resident with a well-known peter-peter-peter call. You got it, this Bird of the Week is the Tufted Titmouse!

Let’s start with some basic classification. The Tufted Titmouse is a parid, a colorful family of birds with strong bills, legs and feet. Another parid you may know is the chickadee. The aforementioned strong legs make parids one of few birds that are able to hang upside down on branches.

The Tufted Titmouse also has a very distinctive appearance. It is one of the smallest crested birds, only a few inches in size. It is a beautiful silvery-gray above and has a reddish wash on its sides, or flanks. It also has black above the beak, the only area of black on the whole bird.

Moving on now, let’s look at some traits that set the Tufted Titmouse apart from other birds. It is an arboreal bird commonly found in densely packed deciduous forest, preferably at lower elevations. They have a varied diet, mostly insects such as caterpillars, beetles and ants during the summer, and also seeds and berries, which are more important during the winter when insects are scarce. A study of Tufted Titmice showed that the birds go for the largest seed possible when foraging.

The Tufted Titmouse also has a distinct feeding behavior. It is a common member of mixed feeding flocks made up of several species including woodpeckers, nuthatches and other parids. It looks almost curious when foraging, acrobatically inspecting pine cones and the underside of branches. Another interesting behavior it exhibits is mobbing, which is when several songbirds scold a predator in the nearby vicinity with distinctive callnotes.

When a titmouse visits a feeder, it will first pick out the largest seed available. It will usually fly to a nearby perch and use its strong bill to break open the seed while gripping it in its feet. During the winter, this bird will cache hulled seeds near a food source, like a bird feeder.

If they aren’t feeding, the birds are probably busy  nesting. Titmice build cup-shaped nests in abandoned tree cavities created by woodpeckers. Some titmice might choose to build their nests in nest boxes or metal pipe. They line the nest with soft material such as hair. Hair from squirrels, woodchucks, cats, cows and even humans have been found it titmouse nests. The eggs are white but speckled in brown, red and purple.

The Tufted Titmouse is still probably best known for its fearlessness. It is so curious it will come closer to human noise just to find out what is making it. It will also eat out of a human’s hand after a few days of gaining trust. This probably coincides with its bossy feeder attitude, chasing away other birds in an attempt to hoard the birdseed for itself.

The Tufted Titmouse is by far one of the most entertaining birds. It is curious and easy to see. Often the first sign of a Tufted Titmouse is the peter-peter-peter call it is so well known for. This birds’ curiosity is often why it is one of the most common feeder birds. We birders are a little like titmice, too – if we hear a birdcall we don’t know, we will strain out eyes and necks in an attempt to get a better view.

Have you ever seen one of these birds? This was actually my first parid. I was so excited when I saw and heard this bird high up in the leafless winter canopy a few days after I started birding. Since then, I have seen it in any woodland in my area, and it was curious enough to give me the photo above in January of this year.

Sources:

All About Birds – Cornell Lab of Ornithology – Tufted Titmouse

birdhouses101 – Tufted Titmouse

Google Books – Tufted Titmouse

And once again. . . personal experience!

It’s Saturday and that means it’s time for Bird of the Week. The inaugural Bird of the Week will be a bird that can be found across the Western Hemisphere and even here in Qatar. It’s the White Wagtail!

The White Wagtail is the best-known member of the wagtail genus Motacilla. It gets its name from a common behavior it exhibits – wagging its tail up and down almost constantly. Nobody actually knows why it does this; most scientists believe it helps flush insects from the ground. The tail can also act as a rudder when the wagtail performs complicated aerial maneuvers while catching insects in midair. Because the wagtail is strictly insectivorous, the tail is very important for feeding.

The White Wagtail is also a highly territorial bird. It often engages in midair fights with others of its species. It exhibits sexual dimorphism; the males’ plumage has darker grays than the females’. It has eleven recognized subspecies, which often sprouts debate over classification of individual subspecies. For example, some taxonomists classify the Pied Wagtail subspecies as a separate species.

It is surprising that there is so much debate over such a commonly seen bird. Quite often, the first sign of a White Wagtail’s presence is a slender bird with a bobbing flight pattern low over the ground. Upon landing, the bird will authoritatively wag its tail and proceed to strut around comically. This first impression quickly gives way to the birds’ cuteness, and it is always enjoyable to see one of these birds walk on a curb, keeping between the road and grass. Even when the curb curves, the wagtail will stay the path and follow the curb.

Although this bird is quite common in the Western Hemisphere (excluding Africa), birders limited to the East will have a hard time seeing its cute behaviors. It only occurs as a spillover in Alaska from Siberia. Oddly enough, the White Wagtail is one of few songbirds able to endure harsh cold in the North even though it is also abundant in hot climes.

Whatever the location, the White Wagtail is a ground nester, like most other wagtails. It usually lays six speckled eggs in a cup-shaped nest made from dry grass. Unlike many birds, the male helps the female incubate the eggs. Both parents feed the young for about 3 weeks until the fledgelings are ready to feed themselves.

Wagtails are often associated with water and this one is no exception. A large part of its diet consists of aquatic insects. A running river often hosts a wagtail hopping on the rocks, hoping to capture a quick meal in the water. Oddly, when most insects have died off during the winter, the white wagtail will continue to feed on insects rather than adapt to a seasonal diet.

The White Wagtail can be a great ‘teaching’ bird. It often exhibits different behaviors in close proximity to the viewer, therefore quickly increasing the viewer’s knowledge of birds. Feeding is almost always happening when one sees this bird, and when several are present, you may see midair fighting. And of course, you will always see the birds’ trademark tail wagging!

My first White Wagtail was in Aspire Park, Doha. It was feeding with two bulbuls and several sparrows. Having began birding in the States, I was very excited to see this bird which would have taken me years to find in the East. Since then, I have seen wagtails all around Qatar, in Japan, and even my house!

How about you? Have you been lucky enough to observe this bird and how it commands attention from people around it? Share your experiences here and read about others.

Sources:

RSPB – Pied Wagtail

RSPB – Why do wagtails wag their tails?

Personal experience!

Today I proved that you can find birds anywhere. I was on my way back from a campout in the desert and was watching power lines and wire fences that stretched on for miles, enjoying Crested Larks and a large count of Gray Shrikes – 4. I was also taking photos of birds on the ground (mostly larks), but apart from the shrikes, I hadn’t seen any notable birds. Then I came across an area with green grass, berry bushes, and even yellow flowers. I was there looking at birds for half an hour.

My single life bird for the trip was the Gray Francolin. This is a game bird closely related to partridges that has only bred in this area for a decade or two. It actually is not an introduced species – no one really knows for sure how it got to Qatar, but it presumably expanded its range here. The two birds ran away from me but I still managed a decent shot: