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.

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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!