I went for a walk around campus and the neighboring streets on April 8th around 4 pm. It was cloudy and the temperature was around 35 degrees. It started to snow later into the day. As I began my walk around campus starting from my house, I saw an American Robin which was on walking around on the grass until I was close enough that I scared it away. I then continued my walk up to campus and entered the waterman parking lot on the South Williams Street entrance. Here I saw an American Crow pecking (maybe eating) at a tree and later saw it fly from on tree to another with a small stick it seemed to playing around with. I thought this behavior was very interesting to observe. After a while I decided to move along and my next bird encounter was seeing a flock of European Starlings fly about 200 feet in front of me then quickly disappeared over a rooftop. My next sighting was slightly off main campus on a residential street where I heard then saw multiple House Sparrows in a hedge/bush chirping away. It looked like they were getting ready for the night at this point and gathering in a safe place. They were very interesting to listen too and watch bounce around as soon as I would get too close. I then ended my walk with seeing two Mourning Doves in my backyard along with three Dark-eyed Juncos in a small/medium side tree/bush.

I was surprised I didn't see any spring time migrants on my walk. My next walk I hope to set off in the mourning so that I can catch the birds at a more active time in the day. My one suspicion as to why I haven't seen any spring migrants particularly facultative migrants is because the weather has taken a dip and has snowed later into "spring" than expected. Thus, this could through off or delay these facultative migrants into returning. The birds I did see however were some on the same ones I have been seeing all winter. I believe that these birds have adaptions that allow them to forgo migration. Some of these adaptions might include a wide range of diet that is available in all seasons or perhaps warmer down feathers to add onto the physiological adaptions that allow for birds to keep warm during the winter months. This would probably account for when I did the mini activity I didn't see a migration pattern or line because these birds all have migration maps depicting that they are there all year round.

Posted on April 11, 2018 10:54 PM by