Midwinter Ramblings

This piece details some Noxubee County, Mississippi observations that I made many years ago.  Enjoy!

As is the case with any human activity, there are days when birdwatching reaps huge “benefits” for participants…you know, those days when something truly out-of-the-ordinary steals your attention and causes an immense adrenaline rush.  What constitutes an out-of-the-ordinary avian encounter is different for every person, but it always involves birds that are beautiful, graceful, especially fascinating, or rare—in other words, unusual.  Memorable occurrences such as an out-of-range species that provides a first record for a state or country, a trip to a wetland where thousands of waterfowl are congregating, stormy weather in spring bringing astonishing numbers of colorful neotropical migrant songbirds to a tiny patch of woods, and of course seeing a life bird all involve a feeling of intense concentration, combined with that welcome surge of adrenaline.

It’s a mild day in January.  For birders, midwinter days—as well as those of midsummer—seldom bring the intense excitement and anticipation that characterize other times of year, but this doesn’t concern me.  As I head out the back door, I notice the slight breeze and the freshness of the air; a cold front that moved in last night after the violent storms has left the temperature hovering at about 50 degrees Fahrenheit—although certainly not cold, it is cool enough for a light jacket, and chillier than it has been for a number of weeks.  The white airbrush streaks of airplane contrails mark an otherwise clear, azure sky—a far cry from the brooding grayness, rolling clouds, and fierce wind, rain and hail of yesterday.  I had originally figured that the conditions yesterday might have caused some birds to be more active today, but as I stand in the back yard, listening and watching, it crosses my mind that this will likely be one of the slower days of birding—in other words, an “ordinary” day.

Some of the first bird sounds to reach my ears are from the “regulars”—chickadees, titmice, and Carolina Wrens calling in the woods some distance away.  I walk across the soggy, gray lawn to the thicket behind the old outbuilding.  This thicket was mostly cleared out several years ago, but since then it has been allowed to grow into an impenetrable mass of tangled vegetation, the haunt of nesting Carolina Wrens, Northern Cardinals, and Brown Thrashers in summer.  Lush and green during that time of year, now the intertwined grasses, saplings, and vines are bare, gray, and brambly.  As I look closer, though, I notice that a few plants still have some green vegetation, and last year’s dry leaves dangle from the branches of some of the sapling oaks. 

A brief, scratchy call note, evoking the sound of a mechanical toy being wound, sounds from the upper branches of a large pecan tree in the thicket.  Oh, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet.  As I watch, the tiny bird flutters up to pluck small white berries from clusters growing near the pecan tree—poison ivy berries.  I follow these berry-laden branches with my binoculars, and with a sense of fascination mixed with horror, I find that the poison ivy has grown in the form of a large shrub, rather than the vines that I commonly see.  Its thick, hairy trunk leans against the old pecan tree.  Whoa.  I step away from the thicket and look at the sky, hoping to see a hawk or two.  As it turns out, one of the neighborhood Red-tailed Hawks is soaring overhead, the sun shining through the rust-red feathers of its rectrices—an unexpectedly beautiful sight.

Red-tailed Hawk

I walk down the slope of our backyard to the pond, and from there I go to the marshy ditch on the southeast side.  The “marsh” itself is home to willows, cattails, and various types of grasses, while pines and brushy woods grow on the northeast side of the pond.  White-throated Sparrows flush up in bunches in front of me and land in the woodland cover several feet away, exchanging sharp peek! calls.  They are most likely alarmed by the presence of this strange, flightless intruder.  If I’m careful, I can creep into the woods to look at these large sparrows, which are plumaged in subdued, yet striking, gray, brown, white, and yellow feathers.  Sure enough, I spot some of them as they dart in and out of the shrubbery.  A single, dry check note fills me in on the whereabouts of a Yellow-rumped Warbler, perhaps calling to its associates that are also somewhere in the woods, hidden from view.  

White-throated Sparrow

The churr churr call of a Red-bellied Woodpecker sounds faintly off in the forest.  I wonder where it is, exactly; most of the time, I see these woodpeckers close by in the yard, foraging in the old pecan and walnut trees.  Of course, this might not be one of the individuals that I see in our yard, but it easily could be—I’m sure that their territory includes much more than the few acres that comprise our property.  Barely detectable over the sound of the woodpecker are the little chipping calls of Pine Warblers moving through the pine thicket some distance away.  Pine Warblers tend to travel in small groups, and are seldom seen far from pine trees.  These warblers are too far away to locate at the moment, so I turn my attention to other things.  A small creek runs through these woods—barely a creek, actually… it appears more like a shallow ditch, filled with runoff from yesterday’s rain.  Just the fact that there is a depression, though, makes me think that the stream of water must run through here most of the time.  Both sides of the creek are lined with dense privet bushes, laden with clumps of small, bruise-colored berries.  Many naturalists hate privet with a passion; the invasive shrub is spread around in bird droppings, choking out native vegetation wherever it sprouts.  Although I’m not thrilled to see it here, the White-throated Sparrows darting in and out of its luxuriant growth seem to have quite a different opinion.

Red-bellied Woodpecker

It’s been several minutes now since I entered these woods, and I’m considering walking back out of them soon.  But wait—what is that little insect flying near the ground?  Looking closer, I see that it is a blue bottle fly.  It seems a little incongruous for one of these usually warm-weather insects to be out today—the 50-degree temperature surely takes a toll on its fragile metabolism. Not surprisingly, the fly buzzes around feebly before settling down on a dried stalk of grass.  A band of Blue Jays suddenly flies in, one of them giving a near-perfect imitation of a Red-tailed Hawk’s scream.   Then, just as abruptly as they arrived, the jays disperse into the woods.

Blue Jay

The White-throated Sparrows are starting to return to the territories from which I initially disturbed them.  They are settling in for the evening.  The sun will set soon, and it seems like a good time to turn in, so I head back to the house.  On the way, I stop to admire the faint pastel colors just beginning to appear in the sky.  It’s a nice ending to this midwinter day in the field, and a reminder that not all exciting birding experiences must be intense.  In fact, I wonder if an unending stream of amazing, adrenaline-pumping experiences would just tend to blend together, as the “ordinary” days do.  On the other hand, as self-proclaimed naturalists, finding something to enjoy in every outing should be one of our biggest priorities—and it’s rarely a difficult task to discover something worth watching in nature’s fascinating show.

Ice Storms

The ice storm that hit during the third week of February threw everything off-kilter for a while.  The ground was crunchy (and, later, slick) with a layer of ice, the roads were impassable, tree limbs sagged, and being outdoors was tolerable for only a few minutes at a time.  I had taken down the bird feeders in the backyard, mainly because I was concerned about freezing rain coating them and clogging up their openings.  If the ice rendered them unusable for the birds, then there would be no point in keeping them up.  However, my mom and I did put birdseed inside the rotting stump (mainly for the benefit of the tree-dwelling birds) and on the frozen ground (for the shrub- and ground-dwellers).  This turned out to be a reasonable solution, and it meant that I didn’t have to worry about continually scraping ice off the tube feeders.

Obviously, the storm system was highly unusual for this region, so it’s probably fair to say that it caused most of the birds and other wildlife to struggle.  Most of the time, birds don’t actually need the food that we put out for them; we feed birds because of the enjoyment we get from watching their activity.  During extreme weather events, however, feeding can sometimes help.  Seed-eating birds, such as sparrows and finches, may have a hard time finding food after a storm buries ground vegetation under a sheet of ice.  

Insectivorous birds may have it even worse.  Freezing weather kills most of their prey, making it difficult for them to find anything to eat.  I was reminded of this fact just a few days into the freezing weather event, when an Eastern Phoebe turned up dead on our front porch.  The bird seemed to be extremely thin, with its keel—the part of the sternum to which the flight muscles attach—very bony and prominent, which makes me suspect that it starved to death.  An American Robin was found on the driveway a couple of days later, dead for the same reason, I would guess.  I stored these birds in the freezer until I could give them to the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture at Mississippi State University.  They’re going to be part of the ornithology collection.

The deceased Eastern Phoebe

 

The American Robin specimen -- after I'd bagged it for the freezer

Although some omnivorous and insectivorous birds will come to feeders for mealworms, I didn't have any of those available, and phoebes tend to feed more on flying insects than on crawling ones, anyway.  I doubt that anything I could have done would have prevented the deaths of the phoebe and the robin.  Other birds, however, seemed to benefit from the easy pickings in the backyard.  The cold weather drew out many small groups of birds, including some species that I don't see very frequently in this area.  For example, the makeshift feeding station attracted at least fifteen Fox Sparrows.  On normal days, I'm lucky if I see one or two of these large, rust-colored sparrows in the neighborhood.  Some of the sparrows even serenaded us with snippets of their songs.

Fox Sparrows foraging with White-throated Sparrows

Like this Fox Sparrow, most of the songbirds fluffed their feathers out in order to stay warm!

A couple of Rusty Blackbirds also showed up.  Although I occasionally see larger flocks of this species, it isn't an especially common bird around here, either.

Rusty Blackbirds -- with a Fox Sparrow in the background

In the fields between the creek and the end of the driveway, a few Killdeer scavenged for whatever dead insects they could find in the icy grass.  I see Killdeer flying over the neighborhood on a semi-regular basis, but it's less typical of them to forage in these fields.  I think that the grass is usually too high for them.

Killdeer in the field

 

The other species were more common birds for this area, but they were still enjoyable to watch.  Here are some photos of the avian activity in our yard:

Perhaps surprisingly, Brown Thrashers came to eat the seed.

 

American Goldfinches fed on the ground.

A female Eastern Towhee showed up at one point.

White-throated Sparrows (front) were fairly numerous, but I saw only one Song Sparrow (back).

 

Northern Cardinals always put in appearances, even during foul weather.

"Snowbird" is actually a nickname for the Dark-eyed Junco.

Cardinals and juncos used the stump feeder.

 

And Purple Finches did, too.

Although this event is definitely not one that I was eager to experience, I think it provided some interesting perspective—enabling me to think about ecosystems and bird communities in ways that I hadn't considered before.  I'm sure that the birds appreciate the much warmer temperatures that have followed this historic event, though!

Fox Sparrow seemingly enjoying the sun!