Naturally
Some of our fair-weather friends have flown. Birds, especially insectivores, must stay ahead of the weather in order to guarantee that food will be available. The residents and those migrating bring me joy with their company. Suet feeders and birdbaths are busy places. Robins, blue jays, sparrows and cardinals take dips. It wasn’t a feeding frenzy; it was a bathing frenzy. The wet birds flew from the water to a sumac, a hawthorn and an ash to dry. Trees give us beauty, depth and dimension. They give birds comfort and food. The robins fed upon the haws (berries) of the hawthorn. Each day, I’m given the gift of wonder.
I watched one blue jay engaging in some form of strutting goofiness. I figured it must have been a male—one who thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips. Why do birds do what they do? Birds never have anything better to do.
The 26th Annual Winter Finch Forecast
Tyler Hoar compiles this forecast based on cone crops producing in cycles, with some years having heavier crops than others. What does this have to do with birds in Minnesota? Winter finches (purple finches, white-winged crossbills, red crossbills, redpolls, evening grosbeaks, pine grosbeaks and pine siskins) move according to this variable food supply. Essentially, if there isn’t enough food in Canada, they move south, and if there is ample food up north, they remain there. The cone crop in the boreal forest this year is mainly influenced by two important finch food sources: white spruce and tamarack. White birch and balsam fir also contribute to the food supply. One of those reporting on the cone crop said, “Basically, any plant with a berry produced this year.” Extensive areas of the boreal forest have an excellent berry crop for many species, including mountain ash. As the season progresses, significant winter storms and/or freezing rain events may be necessary to nudge some bird species out of the boreal forest this winter.
A big bird book
I keep “The Breeding Birds of Minnesota: History, Ecology, and Conservation” by Lee A. Pfannmuller, Gerald J. Niemi and Janet C. Green handy. It’s a shelf in itself at 11.5 inches by 11.5 inches and is a 2-inch deep, comprehensive, detailed, illustrated history of Minnesota’s breeding birds. It includes identification clues, color illustrations, location information and conservation commentary. Minnesota is unique among North American states, sitting at the convergence of four major ecological biomes: aspen parklands, prairie grasslands, deciduous forest and boreal forest. This book isn’t a field guide. It weighs over 8 pounds, which can be helpful for weightlifting. The book is based on data sampled from over 98% of the state’s townships and includes 9,100 10-minute point counts.
Q&A
A reader asked what the noise was that she’d heard in her yard in the dark of night. She sent me a recording she’d made with her phone. Some people might feel the identity of the whateveritis is no one’s business other than the noisemaker and the dark, but I’m not one of those. It’s an immature great horned owl that fledged earlier this year and it’s screaming because it wants its parents to feed it. Henry David Thoreau wrote in “Walden,” “I rejoice that there are owls.” So do I.
Mark Malepsy of Albert Lea asked how often a hummingbird’s wings beat. A ruby-throated hummingbird’s wingbeats are 50 to 80 beats per second in routine flight and up to 200 in a courtship display. It weighs .1 to .2 ounces, which is less than one large marshmallow. I had one land on my finger while I was puttering around the bird feeders. My finger felt lighter than it had before the bird landed. Its heart beats 250-1200 times per minute. If humans had the metabolism of a hummingbird, we’d need to consume approximately 150,000 calories a day.
“Why did the woolly bear caterpillar cross the road?” It was looking for a place to hunker down for the winter. A sheltered location found under plant debris fits the bill.
Thanks for stopping by
“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”―Margery Williams Bianco, “The Velveteen Rabbit.”
“The real things haven’t changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.”—Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Do good.
©Al Batt 2024
Guinea fowl, native to Africa, are often referred to as guinea hens and make good “watchdogs” by issuing loud warnings when a stranger, the UPS guy or a walnut falling from a tree is spotted. The hen makes “buckwheat, buckwheat,” “put-rock, put-rock,” or “Que-bec, Que-bec” sounds. A group of guineas is called a mob, and the lovely polka-dotted feathers of pearl guineas are used for crafting, jewelry and fly fishing. Photo by Al Batt.
Don’t forget to look up.
And always remember to laugh when given the opportunity.