Ecological Physiology

On March 6th, I decided to bird watch at my parents house in Topsham, VT. The house is in the middle of the woods far from neighbors and we have a bird feeder set up in a tree roughly 20 feet from the house. I decided to start my walk at 2:00 by sitting on our porch to see what birds will happen to come by the feeder on that sunny afternoon. This is where I saw Red-breasted Nuthatches and White-breasted nuthatches. They were all very actively trying to eat the food that was presented at the feeder. A common action was to fly away to a nearby area and then come back to move another bird out of the way. They were all pretty active climbing up and down the tree pecking away at the bark along with checking out the feeder for food. I then decided to enter the woods because I heard an American Crow. During my walk through the woods, I saw two Downey Woodpeckers (a male and a female), one Hairy Woodpecker, and Black-capped Chickadees. The woodpeckers were active up and down the trees pecking the bark for which I am assuming was for insects.
Some of the evolutionary aspects that I witnessed that keep them alive during winter was the fluffing of the feathers to keep heat in. This behavior allows for the birds to have an insulated layer between them and the cold when they are not actively moving. The Black-capped Chickadees really exemplified this evolutionary behavior when they were perched on a branch. The woodpeckers were also very active searching for food. This behavior aids in survival during the winter because with all their caloric expenditures they need lots of food and can possibly cache their findings when sources are scarce. The White and Red-breasted Nuthatches were also utilizing the abundance of food at the feeder in order to keep their caloric intake high.
From my observations, these birds were budgeting their time to mostly finding/eating food. But, I can conclude that they are balancing this time to sleeping/not actively moving in order to preserve energy during these colder months. In warmer seasons, they wont necessarily have to devote as much time to finding food and preserving energy but rather reproducing which takes up a lot energy and time. Their food sources in warmer times will also be different because insect populations and vegetation are more abundant than in winter. During my walk, I noticed that there were a couple of dead pine trees (snags) with hallow holes in them. I was unable to check to see if anything was living inside because they were to high for me to reach. I did not notice any size of snag and size of hole correlation because there was only two to base my prediction on. However, I can conclude that the Downey and Hairy Woodpeckers may utilize these spaces to overnight in order to have some protection from the elements and keep their body temperature up.

Posted on March 9, 2018 07:17 PM by cdenagy