juliecal's Journal

For this assignment I went to the Ballard trail in Norwich, Vermont on April 7th, from 1:30-3:00pm. The weather was sunny and about 50 °F. I walked through my neighborhood to get there, so the habitat for the first and last 10 minutes of the walk was a paved road surrounded by houses, lawns, and trees. I saw a Blue Jay at a feeder and I think I heard a Brown-headed Cowbird but I’m not certain. While I was on the street I also heard House Sparrows, Black-capped Chickadees (both call and song), Northern Cardinals, and American Crows.
The Ballard trail follows a stream through the woods. Most of the area I was in consisted of tall coniferous trees, with some scattered deciduous trees. I only heard a few faint bird sounds at first, but I think that was because the noise from the stream made it difficult to hear. The first birds I saw were three small sparrow-sized birds that were on the ground and then flew up into the trees when I approached. I was able to find one with my binoculars and it looked like an Eastern Phoebe. Later I saw four more small birds hopping around in the branches of smaller coniferous trees. Two birds, a Black-Capped Chickadee and an Eastern Phoebe, were perched right next to each other and pecking at the branch they were standing on. I think their sides were touching, which I was surprised about since we learned that birds like to have personal space. Both species eat insects, so maybe they had found some food on the branch that they were both trying to get to. I didn’t see any birds for a while after that but started hearing more. On my way back, when I was closer to the stream again, I saw a White-breasted Nuthatch and an Eastern Phoebe in a tree between the path and the stream. They moved up the trunk and along the branches for a couple minutes, and then followed each other to a few more trees along the stream before flying apart.
One of the year-round resident species I heard was a Northern Cardinal. Northern Cardinals are able to survive the winter without migrating because much of their diet consists of seeds, which they are still able to find in the winter. One behavioral adaptation they have for overwintering is that they forage in flocks during the fall and winter, rather than sticking only with their mate as they do in the spring and summer. Brown-headed Cowbirds are facultative migrants. The one I saw was probably coming from south of Vermont, maybe around Connecticut, and is probably heading to northern Vermont or Canada. Part of their diet includes insects, which are coming out now that it is getting warmer, especially snails because females need a lot of calcium due to the large number of eggs they lay. Eastern Phoebes also migrate, but they go farther into the south of the US and even Mexico. They are one of the first migrants to return, which could be advantageous because they get to pick out niches and overhangs for nesting before other species arrive. A drawback of arriving early could be that their main food source, flying insects, are still less abundant due to the cold. The migration of a Brown-headed Cowbird and an Eastern Phoebe together could total around 1,800 miles.

These field observations were made on April 14, 2020, from 8:00-9:30am in Norwich, Vermont. The weather was sunny and around 40 °F. For part of the walk I was on streets bordered by trees and lawns, and I mostly found birds in trees. There was one house with a few bird feeders where I found six different species, which moved around on the lawn and nearby bushes as well as on the feeder. I also spent about 40 minutes walking around the edge of a field. The field is used for recreation so the grass was cut, and it was bordered by trees with a stream along one edge. Most of the birds were found in the trees, but I saw three American Robins out on the grass, an American Crow on a nearby tennis court, and two Eastern Phoebes flying in and out of a baseball dugout. I also saw a Red-tailed Hawk flying high above the field and being chased by a crow. There was also a small pool of standing water in the trees, maybe a vernal pool, where I saw an Eastern Phoebe perched on a branch sticking out of the water.

For this entry I observed birds in Norwich, Vermont, on April 21st, 2020, from 8:30-9:00am. The weather was sunny and around 40 °F. I was in a grassy area between a main road and the Connecticut River. The area was down a small slope from the road, and had scattered trees, with a few clumps around the edges. There was a steep slope from the grass to the river which was covered in small brush/bushes. One side faced a wide area of stiller water where a stream meets the river, and there was a marsh-like habitat there. The bank across the river was forested.
I saw and heard a lot of Red-winged Blackbirds, which I expected since they like marshy areas. I saw seven males, but no females. I am guessing that there were females around, but they were probably in the vegetation around the marshy area, since they tend to stay lower and don’t try to attract attention like the males. I saw three geese on the water and four flying above the river. A juvenile Bald Eagle circled above the river for a minute, and then kept flying along the river and out of sight. I saw four blue jays total, two of which were together.
I think the Red-winged Blackbird songs were territorial behaviors in preparation for mating. The males perched in trees and on the grass and sang loudly and often. They were probably defending their territories where their mates were nesting. They usually nest in marshy areas or low vegetation, so it is likely there were some nests and females nearby. If the females were in the lower vegetation or shrubs collecting materials for nests, they would probably use grasses, stems, sticks, and other plants. Red-winged Blackbirds also use wet leaves, decayed wood, and mud to stick the nest together and shape it. They could find all of those in the marsh habitat, so if they were nesting there they wouldn’t have to go far.
Blue Jays, which I also heard singing, use different nest materials- mainly roots and twigs from trees. If the Blue Jays I saw were nesting in the nearby small trees, they probably wouldn’t have the prime habitat. This probably means that they have relatively low fitness compared to others of their species, since they are not able to claim and defend prime habitat. Nesting would be better near the marsh or across the river, where the trees were denser and larger, so they would have thicker and taller branches to build a nest on.

Link to sound map:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AQCPVhh6MWnP2_6RvPCPPHgdRAcRSdmCMiI0ulT0xwU/edit?usp=sharing