I decided to go for a bird walk around where I live in Burlington to see what birds are living around me. I wanted to compare and contrast from what I have been seeing in heavily forested habitats to a more urban site. Thus, I went for a walk on March 15th around 4 pm and it was still light out and not too cold. I started my walk at my own house where I saw Dark-eyed Juncos hanging around the large tree in my backyard. They were all perched on separate branches bouncing around. I had a hard time hearing them communicate because they were a good distance up the large tree. From what I observed, there was limited communication between them but I then decided to make the pshh sound to see what they would do. After some time passed, they became more vocal seeming to communicate about me, not to me because they became more activate in a way to investigate.

I then furthered my walk around neighboring streets with little luck except for seeing some European Starlings. They were definitely more social than the Dark-eyed Juncos because their proximity and vocalization were much more prominent. I saw them fly up from a lawn and fly in a group formation which was very interesting to see because of the sophisticated communication that occurs in order to do fly with their particular movements. I then decided to down to church street to see if there were any birds hanging around rooftops and other spots. I came upon Rock Pigeons who were on Church Street high on a rooftop resting. They were close to each other but not touching, I did not hear any vocalizations to indicate any communication in that form but their body language did. It's interesting to notice how some birds will have their own personal space when it comes perching while others don't mind touching.

On my way home I came across a flock of American Crows perched in a tree with some coming and going. There was a lot of vocal communication occurring among all of them, it was quite noisy. They seemed to be taking a break of sorts because the ones in the tree were not pruning, eating, or directing interacting with others. They were stationary yet vocally active. My best guess as to what they were "talking" about, was where they were going to perch for the rest of the night because at this time the sun was about to start setting when I came across them. This made me think about their dark black plumage almost making them look a part of the tree because it was getting darker. This could have been an evolutionary adaptation for camouflage during night time. In contrast, the Dark-eyed junco also had interesting plumage but in a different way. Its light feathered stomach and dark head made it hard for me to locate them in the tree while looking up. Their white stomach looked like the sky while the dark parts looked a part of the tree branches. This makes an excellent evolutionary adaptation because if a predator is looking up into the tree it will have a hard time locating the bird as well as if it was looking down from the sky it would only see dark feathers which will blend into the tree.

Posted on March 27, 2018 01:32 AM by cdenagy