The chickadees are the only ones that sound so cheerful after the snowstorm except maybe for some happy individuals who earn income from clearing driveways and sidewalks.
The Black-capped Chickadee, a bird almost universally considered “cute” thanks to its oversized round head, tiny body, and curiosity about everything, including humans. It is notable for its capacity to lower its body temperature during cold winter nights, its good spatial memory to relocate the caches where it stores food, and its boldness near humans (they can feed from the hand).
The Black-capped Chickadee is the state bird of both Maine and Massachusetts.
This immature pheasant better hide behind the round hay bale instead of standing on top of it since the hunting season is still open. The ring-necked pheasants are native to China and East Asia, but they have been successfully introduced in other parts of the world, including North America when introduced in 1881. In very bad weather, pheasants are known to stay on a roost for several days without eating so he before fill his tummy before the snow comes.
To close out this week’s ‘hunting for spring’ theme, I figured I needed a picture of the robin since they say that it’s not officially spring until ‘it has snowed on the Robins’ tail three times.
With the sun out melting the snow today, the ‘hunt for spring’ fever continues this week and one sign that spring has arrived is the song of the Red-winged Blackbird as they hang out in the cattails.
The male Red-winged Blackbirds will do everything they can to get noticed, sitting on high perches and belting out their conk-la-ree! song all day long. Course they want the girls attention as the male Red-winged Blackbird may have as many as 15 female mates but with that many females, he apparently doesn’t watch them closely enough as a quarter to half of the nestlings are sired by a different male!
The birds were busy visiting the bird seed feeder today, even the young nuthatch, who took multiple tries to land on the feeder. The nuthatch get their common name from their habit of jamming large nuts and acorns into tree bark, then whacking them with their sharp bill to “hatch” out the seed from the inside.
Cooler temperatures have finally arrived after an unusual hot summer. It finally is cool enough to spend time outside watching birds again but some birds have already left for the year. I guess the snow is coming soon since the wrens, grosbeaks and orioles have disappeared in the last week.
It was a special year for watching orioles as one built a nest with some of the red strings I had put out and it was low enough to the ground that I was able to mount my camera on a long pole and by turning the video on, I was able to peek inside the oriole nest and see what the eggs look like. It was the first time I saw oriole eggs and later I found a ladder tall enough to peek in the nest at the babies.
I spent one day putting the babies back in their nest but it was apparently their escape day as they didn’t stay long in the nest and I was trying to watch out for them so they didn’t get eaten by the stray cats. But apparently they survived without my help as the feeder was full of baby orioles last week, apparently filling up for the trip south. I sure will miss their bright colors until they arrive back next May.
I had a different photo planned for today but when I was feeding the fish in my pond this morning, I had a tree swallow coming straight for my head. While that is common if I am by their nest as they try to chase me away but what shocked me was when the swallow landed on my head. I have had other birds land on me but never a swallow as they seem like they are always on the go. I imagine it was a new baby testing out its wings and the flight across the pond probably tuckered the poor thing out.
It did seem a little creepy feeling the toes grabbing my hair and I was just hoping that it wouldn’t be potty break time too! Since it didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave, I was going to resume feeding the fish but when I looked, all the fish had scattered since there was a bird close by (like on my head). It’s amazing the fish could pick out such a small bird compared to my big body but they did.
And since I couldn’t feed the fish, I reached up and put a couple of pieces of bread on my head to see if the bird was hungry. It didn’t take the bread but what surprised me was that it didn’t fly away when my hand was that close. So I just continued to stand there with the swallow on my head and no one else around to take a picture of it. Eventually rest break was over and the tree swallow flew off.
