Naturally

Crows announced my arrival.
I followed trembling leaves down a trail while leading a nature walk. As I pontificated to those nice enough to join me, house finches sang. The birds are permanent residents, but some undergo a short-distance migration south. Males sing throughout the year, except during a period of molt (late July to October). I spotted a hermit thrush on a picnic table near the trail. Considered by many to have the most beautiful song of all birds, its soul-stirring sound is flute-like and ethereal, and led to it being nicknamed the “American nightingale.” It doesn’t do much vocalizing during migration.
At home, there were playground scuffles among the native sparrows scratching beneath the feeders. I saw a white-throated sparrow without a tail. When a hawk or cat tries to capture a songbird, the songbird has a trick called a fright molt, which is what it’s called when a bird loses feathers due to sudden stress. This usually involves feathers near the tail or rump, where birds are likely to be attacked as they flee. It can be a lifesaving technique when a bird is about to be caught—similar to a lizard dropping its tail. There is a downside to having your tail scared off. A tail assists the bird in turning and balancing in flight, but if dropping feathers allows the bird to fly another day, it’s worth it. It will make do until a new tail grows back.

Q&A

“How rapid are a hummingbird’s wingbeats and heartbeats?” On average, a hummingbird flaps 60-80 times per second in normal flight and up to 200 per second at top speed, and its heart beats 250 times per minute when at rest and up to 1,220 beats per minute when flying.
  “A meme claims ravens have one more flight feather (pinion) than crows, making the difference between the two birds a matter of a pinion. Is that true?” Both birds have the same number of primaries (10), but crows have five evident finger feathers, whereas ravens have but four. So in flight, the difference between the two could be a matter of a pinion according to Kaeli Swift, Ph.D. and her corvid research.
  “When do deer carry antlers?” A white-tailed buck’s antlers begin growing in late April and usually reach full size by mid-August. While they’re growing, the antlers are covered with velvet, a fuzzy layer of flesh that supplies blood to the bony growths. Once the antlers are fully grown, the velvet dries and the deer removes it by rubbing his antlers against a tree. The main shedding period in Minnesota is around mid-January to mid-February.
“Gray fox or red fox?” Gray foxes have black-tipped tails, while red fox tails are tipped in white.
  “How do native bees survive winter?” Native bees hibernate and overwinter as fully formed young adults in their cocoons or as diapause larvae, emerging as adults the following spring or summer. They may live in the ground or in cavities of hollow plant stems or holes in wood left by wood-boring beetles. Only the new bumblebee queens survive by wintering underground and nonnative honey bees overwinter in their hive or nest.
“I saw civet cats when I was a boy in Minnesota. Are they related to raccoons?” I saw them, too. Those were spotted skunks. Minnesota has two skunk species, the striped skunk and its smaller and less common relative, the increasingly rare eastern spotted skunk. Skunks and raccoons are from different family groups. Skunks are from the family Mephitidae, which consists of skunks and stink badgers. Raccoons are from the family Procyonidae, which is a New World family including ringtails, olingos, olinguitos and others. The spotted skunk is also called a civet cat, but this mammal isn’t closely related to the true civets of the Old World. The prevalence of small farms in the early 1900s may have been a factor in facilitating the range expansion of the eastern spotted skunk, which was once common around farms, where it denned under houses or outbuildings and fed on stored crops, rodents attracted to stored grain and small farm animals such as chickens and their eggs.
“How big is a cardinal’s breeding territory?” Studies found it could be as much as 6.4 acres.
“How much bigger are ravens than crows?” On average, our largest songbird, the common raven (croak) is about half again the size of an American crow (caw).

Thanks for stopping by

“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher standard of living is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free.”—Aldo Leopold.
“To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.”—Aldo Leopold.
Do good.

© Al Batt 2022

The voice of an eastern screech-owl, a bird about the size of a pop can, features whinnies and soft trills. The descending, horse-like whinny is used to defend territories and the extended trill is used to attract mates and maintain contact. They produce soft hoots; sharp barking calls indicating alarm or agitation; screeches when defending nests or fledglings; a chuckle or rattle denoting annoyance (as when being mobbed); a clacking sound made by snapping the bill when annoyed; and a hiss as part of a threat display. Photo by Al Batt.

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