Maine Nature News

Archive for the ‘Bird’ Category

A mourning dove (Zenaida macroura) resting in a balsam fir.

July was a busy time for us as we flew out to California to a grandniece’s wedding and a mini vacation.  Although I’m certainly not an experienced air traveler, but here’s a little advice:  have a little patience with the confusing guards and regulations and go with the flow.  If you like to gawk out the window (like me), select a seat before the wing, and remember flying to the west coast is the reverse of POSH (Portside Out, Starboard Home), otherwise the sun is a nuisance.  The flight was educational in many respects.  Across the Great Plains each piece of land stood out, a symbol of the property rights promised in our Constitution.  Each piece represented a unique idea; an investment in time and money and hope for increased prosperity.  How unlike the social insects, like bees and ants!  But with people, this is the system that seems to work best for all.

Stellar's Jay

Next came the mountain states, with snow still evident in many places and finally a landing at San Jose, and then fearfully off to compete in the notorious California traffic with an unfamiliar car to the Santa Cruz area.  The weather was very comfortable.  A typical day starts heavily overcast with a temperature about 60 deg, but around noon the clouds clear and it warms to the lower 70’s.  The spring rains had been heavier than usual, and the streams in the mountains were still high from the melting snow, but any ground not artificially watered was hard and dry, as it would typically abstain from raining until November.  Somehow most woody plants would adapt, and I made several whistles as sap had loosened the bark, but the grasses and others of their ilk exhibited discomfort and the hillsides were brown.  The coast had many of our familiar Herring gulls, but more of the smaller Heermann’s gulls (thanks, Herb), and the little birds at the picnic table were mostly Brewer’s blackbirds.  A few sanddollars, miscellaneous shells, and stems of giant kelp 2 inches in diameter dotted the beach.  The inland birds were Barn, Tree and Cliff swallow; California towhee; Stellars jay, Raven, Crow, Bushtit, Junco, RB Nuthatch, Turkey Vulture and Robin. Visiting the few ‘Sloughs’ (swamps)we saw  Coot, Longbilled Curlew, Yellowlegs, Pelican, GB Heron, one frightened snake that scooted away, heard some Bullfrogs but saw no turtles, lizards, leeches or salamanders.  We did see some deer.  Our White tail deer are much more handsome than those California deer.  There were essentially no biting insects, and I saw some honeybees and three unidentified butterflies.  But the trees!  Ah! Magnificent!  The redwoods went straight up into the morning mists and beyond, and even stumps of trees cut a 100 years ago looked dramatic, as did some of the carcasses left behind.  But time was short.  Those that were scheduled to wed got married, we said our farewells to old friends and relatives, and, remembering my seating advice, boarded the plane in the airport in San Jose, surrounded by the brown hills, and flew home.

Aphrodite Fritillary

The following weekend we did the next portion of our Nature Notes here in Maine where we participated in the annual Entomological BioBlitz at the Schoodic Education and Research Center of Acadia National Park. This year the focus was on Lepidoptera, and in a frenzy of collecting from noon July23rd to noon July 24^th, our group of about 110 dedicated net sweepers managed to collect and identify over 320 species of moths and butterflies.  I’m still not very good at understanding the complexities of nature, and insects add another dimension to the confusion, because there are so many and they are small, and the way they do things seems so strange.  For example, how does the tongue of a moth or butterfly work?  I can’t even identify most of the moths.  I guess I’ll have to buy more books.

Robin during our recent snowstorm eating barberry berries.  An interesting different color pattern but a guy robin just the same.

by Fred Gralenski

Male Pileated Woodpecker. I don't know if this was the guy that made the hole or not.

I like to watch critters to see what they are doing, and this time of year most are looking for something to eat.  Bird feeders are a good place to start.  We use black oil sunflower seeds in one feeder, fine cracked corn in another, Nyger seed in another and a cage with suet.  We also put out the foodscraps that we don’t compost, like fat and bones.  This buffet attracts Blue jays, Chickadees, Red-breasted nuthatches, Mourning doves, Crows, Juncos, now and then a Hairy woodpecker and, of course, Red squirrels.  Our sock of Nyger seed gets the least use, as the Finches and their irruptive cousins haven’t visited us, but the Chickadees and Nuthatches might land on it if everything else is empty.  In the barn I may put out meat scraps or slices of old hotdogs left in the back of the freezer, and quite a few different critters will help themselves, including Red squirrels, Deer mice, Weasels and Shrews.  I was reminded of this the other day when I was filling my chain saw and a shrew ran by my boot.  We have five species of shrews here in the Quoddy region, but he didn’t seem to be a Short-tailed or a Pygmy or a Water shrew, so he must have been a Masked or a Smoky shrew.  Besides hotdog parts, this time of year shrews eat insects (cluster flies hibernating in my barn) and anything else they can find,  including each other.  Pretty secretive critters, I plan to study them more sometimes.  Outside, shrews are usually at the snow/ground interface foraging for any bug or critter. Shrews may surface when crossing my driveway and, if the snow is soft, will push through and make a little tunnel.  They have pretty weak legs and don’t normally hop.  The shrews may prey on voles and Deer mice under the snow cover.  The voles are living on plant parts that they have stored and are also digging down to bulbs and chewing the bark off of woody shrubs in the flower garden.  They also may surface to cross a driveway to find some other goodies.  Deer mice are living on seeds some of which they might have stored themselves.  They are a little more apt to come into buildings than voles or shrews.  Jumping mice are hibernating, unless they come into a building and find a sap (like me) to feed them.  Whatever that critter is, it doesn’t like peanuts.

Hole where a Pileated got his dinner. The hole is 2" wide by about 3" high and the bird had to go through 2" of solid Red Spruce to reach the punky area where the ants were hibernating. Imagine the work going into that? The hole was about 2 1/2 feet up from the ground, and was out of the snowline because it was right on the side of my driveway, and this is why I cut it down. I felt that it would blow down at an inopportune time. The woodpecker did find some ants, but there were many more closer to the ground.

The deep snow is great protection for the small animals, but bad for the foxes, bobcats, coyotes and other predators like hawks and owls.  I think that even Pileated woodpeckers are having more of a problem.  Pileated woodpeckers eat Carpenter ants during the winter.  Ants may hibernate ten to fifteen feet up in a dead tree, but in my experience the great majority of hibernating Carpenter ants are within two feet of the ground.  With two feet of heavy snow on the ground, many of the hibernating ants are not having nightmares about the ‘Cock of the Woods’ rapping on their bedroom door.

And, of course, with heavy snow we have to worry about the deer, and there have been articles about whether or not we should feed them.  When we lived in Northern New Hampshire the deer would browse the cedar quite heavily, and the browse line could be noticeable.  Cedar is one of the better foods for the deer in the winter, and probably the mainstay of their winter diet, but I notice the deer especially like tree lichens.  If cedar is the bread and butter for deer then tree lichens might be considered their cake, or here in Maine, Whoopie pies.

So looking into my (ice) crystal ball, I’ll make a prediction for the coming summer:  Mice and voles will be more numerous, as many will survive the winter and their predators will be fewer, but I don’t predict a plague;  deer will be OK around here as the food seems to adequate and the predators few, but further inland the deep snow will have a detrimental effect;  owls will take a beating, but the survivors for the summer will have easy pickings, and my Pileated woodpeckers?  I hope they make it OK.  I’ll cut down on my ration of ants just so they can have more, even though Pileateds seldom come to the feeders.

On February 15 I looked out the kitchen window and saw a gray object on the stand a few yards away where we put left-overs of one sort or another. Thinking it was a gray squirrel I didn’t pay much attention. After a few minutes I decided to take another look. It was a Barred Owl. I had left a piece of chicken there which was frozen in place and he was after that. Didn’t get my camera out in time for a photo. JF

by Fred Gralenski

Red-breasted Nuthatch on a suet feeder (bait bag from a lobster trap).

Even though I dearly love the Black-capped Chickadee, the Maine State Bird, I think the Red- breasted Nuthatch is my favorite winter bird.  The nuthatch sounds so contented when he’s on the bird feeder  and telling the world how lucky he is, with his nasal, “nyank, Nyank, NYANK!” and subsequent twittering.  How does a tiny bird make a nasal sound?  That’s one of the interesting mysteries the animal world.  Another mystery is how quickly this contented bird can make a loud untranslatable squawk at some other bird that he deems is trespassing in his space.  I think we are pretty fortunate that feistiness is often inversely proportional to size.

We have two kinds of nuthatches here in the Quoddy region: the Red-breasted Nuthatch, Sitta canadensis, and the White-breasted Nuthatch, Sitta carolinensis.  From their scientific names one can  correctly guess that the Red-breasted is the more northerly of the two species, and is more common in coniferous forests.  The White-breasted Nuthatch is bigger, but sometime the Red-breasted Nuthatch is mistaken for a White-breasted if its colors have faded in late winter.  An unmistakable trait of the Red-breasted is the dark line through its eye.  Nuthatches are pretty acrobatic birds and prefer to forage on trees upside down, and work down headfirst from higher up.  All woodpeckers and the Brown Creeper check out trees by going up, and they can’t come down headfirst.  It is thought by some ornithologists that this ability gives Nuthatches a little different perspective of the bark of a tree and they might find food that a woodpecker has missed.  The climbing ability of both types of birds is an interesting study in dynamics that has never been completely explained to me.  Most woodpeckers have two toes facing forward and two toes facing back and they keep their feet side by side and when holding onto a tree lean back on their stiff tails.  Woodpeckers move with a jerking motion, but keep the same stance.  This indicates that they must sort of jump forward, and the instant before they release their grip on the tree, their tail tilts them forward. They still must have to reach out and grasp the tree, and the distance traveled per jump is pretty short.  Nuthatches have it a little more complicated, as they don’t rest on their tail.  As a matter of fact, they have hardly any tail at all.  To compensate for this when foraging they keep one foot a little ahead of the other and the rear foot acts like the tail of a woodpecker, but with the added feature that it can grip. The Nuthatch then can fight gravity with its strong legs in either the head up or head down position.  Our Nuthatches usually stay around here all winter but may move if the food supply gets too low.  This time of year Nuthatches are usually in the company of Chickadees and a Downy or so and sometimes an erratic Brown Creeper.  I used to see them with Golden-crowned Kinglets, but Kinglets don’t seem to be as common as they once were.  Red-breasted Nuthatches readily come to feeders and love sunflower seeds and suet.  Nuthatches haven’t learned to hold a sunflower seed to a branch with their feet and whack at it like chickadees. They wedge the seed under a piece of bark then whack at it there.  Nuthatches also store seeds for future use.  They store these under bark or in stumps or any place handy, and somehow remember most of these hiding places.

By early May the Red-breasted nuthatches will pair up and make a small cavity in a dead tree and start to raise a new generation.  Just outside of the cavity entrance the nuthatch usually smears pitch from a pine or spruce, apparently to deter predators or any other unwelcome company.  They supposedly will nest in birdhouses, but I’ve never seen any evidence of this in the many birdhouses I have put up.  But I’ll try again this year.

SPRING REALLY IS COMING!
Watch the Blue Jays feeding each other.  This is a sign of courtship, as is their call.  Listen for the ‘squeaky clothesline’ call.

Bar Harbor (Map 16)

A herring gull found an easy meal at the town pier in Bar Harbor. We spotted the bird when it was trying to tear apart a starfish. We watched it shake the starfish repeatedly for about a minute. When it finally broke into two pieces the gull swallowed the part with three legs after a few tries, then downed the second piece with two legs easily.

Going out for seconds!

Looking in the rock weed. Nothing here.

Success! The gull had to go all the way to the end of the pier before it found another starfish.

The gull repeated the process of shaking the starfish until it tore into two parts. It took the gull a full minute to tear the starfish in two but just a few seconds to swallow its meal. When it was done it walked to the top of the pier and napped in the sun.

Talmadge (Map 45)

I have a hummingbird feeder outside my window. The buzz of a male zigzagging back and forth a few inches behind a female caught my attention.  She watched him over her shoulder, her head moving back and forth with him. After 30 seconds of this he knocked her off the feeder. She flew up off the ground quickly and back to the feeder and he knocked her off again.  She stayed down a minute or so and is now sitting on a bench, panting.  It’s 87*. When the male returns she crouches down, closes her beak and doesn’t move.

Thursday, May 20, Rangeley, (Map 28)
On my round about way to the post office this morning, I went up woods road and saw a bittern standing in the road. This time, my camera was close by and I was able to get a few shots. KB