I am a swamp spirit. A fen fan. A Marsh maiden. And I like Bog birds.
Wilson’s Snipe
Snipe have mostly been invisible ghostly sounds to me. I hear male Snipe doing their display flights all spring and summer, their aerial dance is accompanied by tail feather music called winnowing. You can see their fancy tail feathers here. I sometimes see them as tiny fast and irratic dots in the distant sky but today I heard them singing so I went down to the swamp to look and 2 pairs were racing in and out of the Cat Tails and flying at high speeds through the rain.
Snipe are not actually forest ghosts like they pretend to be. Really they are bog birds. They wade in shallow water (their legs are very short) and dip their very long beaks in the mud. Their beaks are very sensitive to pressure and taste and they can feel and smell food moving in the mud. They suck insects and snails up their beaks like a straw.
There has been some noise in the mornings this week. I’ve thought a few times that the train folks were using jackhammers again, but it was the Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker back from his winter vacation hammering on the chimney to let us know he is home.
Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker
The Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker is one of the Woodpeckers that nests on my land. They don’t actually suck sap, they don’t have lips, but they do drill holes in trees and let the sap flow out. I’ve read that they do it because insects inside the tree get swept away in the deluge of sap and the birds eat those insects, but now that I’ve tapped a few trees I think I see what’s happening. Insects are attracted to the sap because it’s sweet. My Birch bucket is filled with little bees squirming and swimming and stuck in a stupor. The Sap Suckers can just scoop them up. I think they make holes as traps. Every inch of our Apple Tree is perforated with Sap Sucker lip shaped holes.
I’ve read that humming birds who arrive too early in spring before the plants flower and produce nectar follow the Sap Suckers around to sip their sweet tree drips but I suspect they are less interested in the sap and actually eating the insects.
I spent 2 hours in torrential rain, my camera in a plastic bag, to get this shot of a Prothonotary Warbler’s tongue just for you. I may have to buy a new camera. My lens is now home to a tiny rain cloud that comes with me everywhere I go, like a genie in a lantern that softens the edges of all my bird pics.
I really wanted to see a Tern. This was my first one ever. He is diving for a snack on his way home to breed as seen through the cloud in my camera.
The bird at the top of my wishlist to see this spring was a bird that was probably impossible to find, but that I probably did see, I’m not sure. The second was this, not particularly uncommon bird, the Red Bellied Woodpecker who I probably had never seen before, but I wasn’t sure.
Red Headed Woodpecker
Now, the Red Headed Woodpecker is rarer, he’d never come to my house, and some might say he’s fancier (I admired a bunch of them this year for the first time and their red feathers shine as if they were made of metal.) Sometimes the Red Bellied bird does show his brilliant firetruck red feathers around where I live, like once last year:
Hairy Woodpecker
I was sitting in the house with my camera on my lap staring out the window into space. Only it wasn’t space, I was staring at a Hairy Woodpecker, the one who is almost always on my feeder. Sometimes he even falls asleep there so I’m used to seeing him. Remember back in the day before social media when we were tired we’d just zone out and think about whatever and stare into space? That’s what I was doing. Then I noticed that the light shining through the Hairy Woodpecker’s red feathers was especially fiery today and I focused my eyes and IT WAS A RED BELLIED WOODPECKER! A bird I’d never seen before! One I had gone off chasing after other people’s reports around town. And he was on my feeder! My phone was in my hand and when I clued in I flinched and threw it into the air, it bounced of the desk onto the floor. I aimed my camera just as a Red Squirrel leaped across the deck, landed on the feeder and flushed the Woodpecker. I didn’t get a photo. I’d stared at this bird for several minutes and didn’t get a photo. I marked it as a lifer on my list but before the end of the day I’d questioned myself so much that I took it off the list. I mean, would a Red Bellied Woodpecker actually come to a feeder? He seemed far to fancy for that.
Red Bellied Wood Pecker
So, when I saw my next first RBWO on a feeder in the campsite this spring I stopped traffic to take a photo and I answered ‘Yes! Yes they would come to a feeder!’ and now I believe myself that I’ve seen a RBWO. Well, since this one I’ve seen lots of them. There were so many where I was birding this spring that I got to know their voices well and even found a tree where two parents were preparing a nest.
This is one of many warbler species that people flock to Point Pelee to see this week. They are migratory birds. They are made of tooth picks and cotton balls and tiny yellow feathers because yellow is the the lightest color. They are so small I could probably fit 3 of them in my mouth with only their tiny heads peaking out to sing. Most Warblers winter much farther south than here and summer much farther north than here so the only time I ever see one is if I am lucky enough to be looking right where one lands momentarily to catch their breath while they make their long journey. They pass through for a few days each spring on their way to breed. Spring is the most fun time to see them because they are wearing their party plumage and singing all the way.
Made of marshmallows
My first day at Point Pelee I walked down to the point, stepped out onto the beach and looked out at Lake Eerie. Its called the Angry Lake and is so big that it feels like a sea. It might even have tidal behavior. The wind and waves on the beach were so powerful they pushed me off balance. And I chocked on my breath from admiration that these tiny yellow birds of toothpicks and cotton balls sail between the heavy sky and the Angry Lake to touch down just where I am looking.
Killdeer are little wading birds cute enough to eat. If a Killdeer is nesting and she sees a predator coming (like me for example) she does something special. Something that would make your mouth water. Something that’s so utterly hypnotic to any one with K9 teeth that it becomes physically impossible to look away even though there is a little voice in your head begging you to look for the baby Killdeer near by that she is distracting you from.
Killdeer Mum standing between distraction displays
Baby Killdeer are probably dangerously cute. They are probably stripy cotton balls balanced on q-tip stilts. They probably have slapstick walks and probably wrestle like kittens. But nobody’s ever seen one because it’s impossible to look away from Mum’s hypnosis.
I tried once. I turned away from her and walked in the opposite direction from where she was leading me. She ran right up in front of me crying and stood at my feet. All of her 6 inches tall. She went quiet and she stared me in the eyes. So I did what she asked, I apologized and I walked away.
What a spikey beard. And such respectable spots. And stylish stripes. I love a black rainbow. Starlings are mimics. They don’t have their own song, but I recognize their voice because when I was 17 I raised one as a…. What do you call a Starling fledgling? A Starlingling? She had fallen out of her nest. (Perhaps she was kicked out by a parasitic Cowbird) She didn’t even have feathers yet! The local wild bird care center wouldn’t take her but instructed me on how to take care of her. Wow. It’s trippy being a bird mom! I fed her scrambled eggs constantly which involved pushing food into her crop with my baby finger. She looked at me like she expected me to teach her to be a bird. Starlings copy the songs they hear so Star and I would sing together and she would repeat the rhythms I’d make.
I wonder how I knew she was a Starlingling when I was 17. Before there was anything on the Internet. Bald babies are pretty hard to identify.
Now that I’m a naturalist I know that Starlings are an ‘invasive species’. They were introduced to Central Park because it would be cool if Central Park had all the birds mentioned in Shakespearian plays. The Starlings did very well and have spread all over the continent. It turns out that wild bird care centers are not allowed to care for them! Even if they are fatherless babies who have fallen out of a nest, hungry and looking for someone to teach them to be a bird!
I think they are beautiful. Look that those spots! Those Stripes! Those Rainbows! Have you ever seen a murmuration? When a large flock of birds fly in a formation that makes a twisted undulating shape of emergent motion? They were probably Starlings.
Dee dee dee dee dee dee deeeeeeeeeeeee! Presenting His Supreme Friendliness, Surveyor of the Feeder and Ultimate Birb: the Chickadee!
Black Capped Chickadee
Sit down and get comfy while I tell you about the best little bird. Chickadees are cryptically sexually dimorphic; These muffins all look the same to humans, but to a lady Chickadee, who can see colors into the invisible-to-humans end of the spectrum, the handsomest Chickadees have ultra violet mustaches!
Chickadees have a lot to say. Their language is complex. ‘Chickadee’ is only one of their calls. It’s one of their alarm calls! They say other things when they are alone (like ‘cheese burger’ and ‘squigledeedoo’) but when they see a human they say ‘Chickadee dee dee dee dee!’ And so we call them that because they call us that. We call each other that.
Chickadees have lots of alarm calls that signal different kinds of danger, where it’s coming from and how dangerous it is. For example they say one thing for a Snake and something different for a Hawk – the number of dees indicates the degree of danger.
Chickadees are non-migratory birds. They stay in the same home range their whole lives and get to know the place really well and you can find them all over North America. While a migratory bird who winters in the tropics and summers in the arctic is passing over my house, they are unfamiliar with the local predators, but they are familiar with Chickadees. Chickadees always know the local dangers. Migratory birds will often follow Chickadees to food and water sources and eavesdrop on their conversations especially their Chickadee alarm calls which can act as a call to mob. When Chickadees want to harass an intruder like a Crow, Owl, Hawk or me, they do a mobbing call that brings in lots of other Chickadees and lots of other species too.
If you’ve ever been out with a birder trying to see as many species as possible you might have heard them pishing. It’s a birding trick that calls lots of birds in. it sounds like this: “Psh psh psh psh psh psh!” To a migratory bird its sounds like the dee dee dee dee of the Chickadee call. If you do it in the spring, all the species around will hear you pishing and might think it’s a Chickadee doing an alarm so they send in a scout to see what the mater is. One scout from each species will arrive to take a look and you can stand still and check off a whole bunch of birds you might never have seen before.
I have a lot of respect for migratory birds who travel unfathomable distances every year to be in the most advantageous locations. Snow Dumplings summer in the Arctic and come south for winter. They are considered rare and dumpling hunting is made even more challenging by their Feathers, which on a non breading male like this look exactly like a snow covered corn field, where, like this one, they often stand. I admire their stealth skills, navigation skills and their foraging skills and today I even got to admire this one’s voice, but sometimes it’s hard not to reduce certain species to Sweety Muffins like this adorable birb with his rosy cheeks and dopey cartoon eyes.
Vultures have fancy antibiotics inside them that kill the bacteria that rots meat. They can eat bacteria that would kill most other animals. Being full of pathogenic bacteria makes Vultures inedible to most other animals. They have no predators and therefore have a very high survival rate for a bird. They can live to be 60 years old. They don’t start laying eggs until they are 6 and then they only lay 1 egg every 2 years.
I’ve been reading about decomposition and Tibetan sky burials, where human remains are fed to Vultures. If a body is put out and the Vultures don’t take it, it’s assumed that the person had a bad life and will have a bad rebirth. This is happening more and more lately because people make biocide. What? Why would we do that? Why do we even have a word for that? People put out poison that kills anything that comes across it, because humans hate rats and mice and anything non-human. Those things die and the Vultures come to clean it up and recycle the nutrients back into the system like they always do, but the rat poison kills them so they’re not around help us be reborn into good humans.
The Biophilium 