sophieheny's Journal

On April 25th, from around 2:30 in the afternoon to about 5, I went on a long river bird-walk past Salmon Hole, through the Intervale, and then into the Ethan Allen homestead. These are primarily oak and beech forests on the riverside, but unfortunately I didn't see any waterfowl on this river walk. It was very sunny with few clouds outside, somewhere in the upper 50's, and there was less than 10% cloud coverage. iNaturalist isn't allowing me to upload photos right now--it says to try again later--but I do have three pretty blurry pictures of some Downy Woodpeckers from the walk.

I began my hike at about 10:40 in the morning (after Ornithology class was finished, of course!). I went for a hike with my partner/birding partner, and the two eyes proved very useful as we saw some very interesting birds on this walk. We began at my house near the hospital, seeing only common city birds such as American Robins and European Starlings, and walked down the road to the Intervale and then along the river for about a mile. This river path is dominated by larger trees such as oaks and sycamores, and has very little in the way of undergrowth except for some brambly patches. Almost immediately after getting to the river we saw a Red-tailed Hawk up in the top of a tree, pretty still, with its feathers fluffed up against the cold. After that we didn’t see any birds for a little bit, until we walked into a clearing and saw many Mourning Doves and a few American Robins pecking around in the ground. There was also a Downy Woodpecker on a branch, moving up and down in search of food. A Yellow-rumped Warbler was sitting in a tree calling pretty consistently for about ten minutes. Further up along the river we saw four Common Goldeneyes sitting in the water, diving for their food (which helped in my identification as Goldeneyes are well known divers). On the way back we didn’t see very much—and it was getting cold so we were hurrying—just a few more Robins and Starlings.
The Yellow-rumped warbler sitting up in a tree for a long time was a perfect example of mate selection behaviors. I believe that it was a male (because of its coloration and song) who was calling for a female to mate with (although it is very possible that I am mistaken here). If it were defending a territory here rather than calling for a mate, I think the territory it was defending was very good. There was a huge variety of plant life around it, which was easy to tell because trees and shrubs are just beginning to leaf and flower. It was also near a river, which usually indicates high biodiversity. Finally, because there were so many other birds in close proximity to it (the Mourning Doves, robins, and the Downy Woodpecker) this indicates that this was a good spot for foraging and probably relatively safe from predators (except for the Red-tailed hawk seen further back the trail).

I believe that the Goldeneyes I had seen were nesting on a small island hidden behind a fallen tree in the river. I couldn’t get a very good look at the island, but this just means that it was especially well-protected making it even more likely to be a good place for nesting. I wonder what the birds do as the river rises during spring rains, and if their nesting is affected by the rise and fall of the water. Another bird I observed nesting was the Robin in my backyard as I began my bird walk. It was picking up straw and possibly tiny bits of mud with the straw (I know that robins often have mud in their nests) from the back of my yard, which likely make a very sturdy nest.
Overall, it was a very successful birdwalk and I’m glad that spring means I’m getting to see more birds!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wqa0sVVtRlqBPujT9GTYoKgO7u3_2lRr_GT27s6Ovd8/edit

On April 14th from the hours of 9:30 am to about 11:30, I walked along the Burlington Bike Path. It was very sunny with a few clouds and surprisingly, some flurries of snow (these occurred about twice during my walk for no longer than 10 minutes). The two habitats I was observing were the edge of a lake and trees along the side of it, which are mostly oak and beech and well developed.

I left for an early morning bird-walk on the morning of April 7, 2020 at about 7 am. It was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but as the day progressed it warmed up to about 50 degrees. There was a little wind (enough to have the tops of the trees blowing pretty consistently throughout my walk) and very little cloud cover; no more than 25% coverage of cumulus clouds. I went by myself this time, and immediately saw four European Starlings on a tree right next to my house. European Starlings are a very interesting species to me as they are nonnative to the United states and were introduced by people who wanted America to resemble Shakespearean London. Because they’re so aggressive towards other birds they did very well and make up a good portion of the birds I see in Vermont. Most starlings in the United States do not migrate, probably because they are so aggressive and capable of outcompeting other native species during the winter.
After seeing the starlings, about ten minutes later in the walk I saw two American Robins pecking for worms in the ground, and one up in a tree near them. I did a little research on Robins and it seems as if they tend to migrate with food rather than season. Robins do migrate south during the winter into areas such as Florida and Mexico. The closest wintering area for robins in Vermont seems to be Florida, so doing a little math it looks as if they travel about 1,400 miles, which is a lot more than I expected from such a small bird. Apparently robins need the weather to be upwards of 37 degrees Fahrenheit for them to access their food (which I’m guessing is bugs in the ground that needs to be unfrozen), and the weather has been consistently this temperature for a couple of weeks so it makes sense that the robins have come back.
The next bird I saw was the Ring-billed Gull. There were upwards of 20 gulls on the field by the track. It had rained all night, so I am guessing that they were going after worms that had come out of the ground to escape the water. As these gulls live on the water I imagine that they would need to migrate when Lake Champlain freezes over. However, I know that Lake Champlain didn’t freeze over this year so I would imagine that these birds didn’t have a need to migrate. I also saw them all winter long—although some websites I saw said that these gulls do migrate, it may be very dependent on where they are migrating from.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see any obligate migrates on my walk. I followed the bike path down past the cow barn for quite a while and saw a few Rock Pigeons flying overhead. Later on I believe that I heard a blackbird (Possibly a Red-winged blackbird?) in a tree a little bit off the path. Looking at the breeding map it seems as if Red-Winged Blackbirds breed in Vermont and migrate from further south. The range maps show that these blackbirds head to Central America for the winter, making their migration about 2,600 miles. Other maps say that they migrate at minimum about 800 miles. It’s beneficial for these bird species to return in April because the temperatures are (relatively) consistently above freezing, meaning that water is available and the ground is thawed for food availability.

For the duration of this spring break I am in Oaxaca, which is a city-state in Southwest Mexico. I was lucky enough to travel to several different locations while I was here (the city, the plains, the cloud forest, and the lower cloud forest/central valley) and I saw a huge variety of birds across these different areas. I did a formalized “I-naturalist” bird-walk when I was in the lower valley in a region called Sierra Norte. My group was camped out near a river and this was a prime bird-watching spot for tropical birds.
I woke up at about 6am and went for a walk along the river, which was a relatively large (about 50 ft in diameter if I had to guess). It was about 76 degrees Fahrenheit that morning and there was very little wind (the trees were barely stirring at all). It was sunny and about 95% clear, with a few wisps of clouds off in the distance. Immediately, as I was walking to the river, I was greeted by about five Fan-tailed Grackles in the trees near the water. These birds were incredibly vocal, but I do not believe this is specific to the time of day as I have heard these grackles very loudly throughout almost all hours. It seemed to me as if they were foraging, because the trees they were in were all fruit and nut trees that grow commonly within the region—avocados, cacao, etc. Perhaps they were attempting to get their metabolism up as it was so early in the morning after they had been resting without eating all night. I also unfortunately noticed that the mosquitoes were more active in the morning than they had been at night—maybe the morning is a better time for foraging for small birds that eat bugs which may be more active during this time. It is possible that their circadian rhythms depend on the availability of food during this time.

As I side note on the mini-“spishing” activity—I have had a lot of luck spishing at smaller birds such as tits and sometimes finches, but I hadn’t seen many small birds in the valley where I was, so I figured that I’d give it a try on these grackles, which were about the size of large blackbirds. They didn’t react at all to me, or if they did, I wasn’t able to tell because they were already being so vocal with each other that my spishing was drowned out. Next time I try I’ll know not to go for such a vocal species—I know that spishing can often attract small birds because it can mimic the sound of a distressed bird that they feel the need to respond to, and I’ve had luck a few times drawing the attention of larger bird-eating raptors who were attracted because they thought I was a bird in distress that would be easy to eat. I think that medium sized birds are the least likely that spishing will work on, so I’ll probably stick to trying to communicate with smaller songbirds. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any for the rest of my walk so this will be an activity I pursue on future bird walks instead.
When I got to the water I sat down on a rock that gave me a good vantage point over the whole river. The previous night I had seen a flock of upwards of fifty cormorants flying upstream in the river, so I was curious to see if I would catch the same flock flying back down. I was hypothesizing that there was a difference in the place they roosted and where they went to forage. However, if the flock did fly down the river that day I don’t know because I missed them at that time. I did see a few straggling cormorants in the river bobbing around for fish, but there had been many more the previous afternoon, foraging and sunning themselves on rocks. After sitting and watching the cormorants for about 20 minutes, a Great Egret flew up the river the same way the cormorants had the previous afternoon. The snowy white of a Great Egret has always puzzled me just because it is so stark white in comparison to its surroundings. I would imagine that the pure white indicates a male is very healthy for breeding and allows it to be more noticeable to females during the breeding season. It is also interesting to compare the glossy white of the Snowy Egret to the iridescent black of the Fan-tailed Grackles from just a little while earlier, and really cool to think that such different birds with such different adaptations can live in close proximity to each other.
The Egret was pretty spectacular to see, but after it flew past I spotted a Green Heron foraging in the river not 20 feet from me. This was really exciting for me—I love seeing Green Herons in my hometown of Charlottesville, VA, and it was wonderful to see that they were so far South as Oaxaca. This bird was staring intensely at the water, and in the ~30 minutes that I watched it I did not see it catch anything, although it moved up and down the river close to me. The coloring on a green heron is again very much unlike the other birds I had seen. It was well adapted for hunting in the water which is likely why I hadn’t seen it for so long. The dark green of its wings and head blended in very well with the vegetation and the water, and the murky brown of its stomach was almost indistinguishable from the water around it. I ended up watching the Green Heron for the rest of the birding time period, but I did see what I think was a belted kingfisher, although it was moving so fast it was hard to tell.

I had decided to put off my bird walk for this project until Tuesday in hope of some beautiful weather and luckily enough, the waiting payed off! Tuesday proved to be the sunniest day we’ve seen in Vermont in quite a while, and thus the Burlington Bike Path was all abuzz with runners, bikers, skaters, walkers, and birds galore. I’m lucky enough to work almost directly on the waterfront, so after I got off work my partner and I walked down to the waterfront and began our search. Luckily enough he’s learning to be a bit of an amateur birder himself, so I’m always cross-checking my audio guesses with him. We managed to collect quite an exciting list between the two of us, and the afternoon felt quite successful.
The day itself was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and hardly windy at all (the breeze was slightly rustling the leaves, about a 4 on the Beaufort Scale). It started to rain around 5:00 so we were forced to bring the otherwise warm and dry bird walk to a close. It is possible that we saw so many birds during this time because they were gathering food before it got dark and started to rain. Immediately as we got to the edge of the water, we saw several male and female mallards swimming about 10 m away from the shore, dabbling in the water (truly exhibiting their “dabbling duck” capabilities). A little further along the boardwalk we saw four mallards—two males and two females—foraging along in a highly trafficked area. They didn’t seem to be bothered by people near them and were possibly looking for food that people had dropped. Given that the lake didn’t freeze over this winter water-birds such as geese, ducks, and cormorants didn’t need to search for other areas to overwinter, which is probably why we saw so many. After the mallards I saw a Double-crested Cormorant out on the water, and then a Canada Goose called and then flew overhead. It was really interesting to see how the Canada Goose was flying—it travelled a very long distance overhead without flapping, probably about 30 seconds. Possibly it was catching updrafts coming off of Lake Champlain.
After looking for water-birds, we went into the Urban Reserve and saw a lot of smaller songbirds. This area was made up of primarily smaller trees (a few birches and some taller sycamores) and scrubby brush. There were several robins and chickadees, and I got some good practice listening to American Robin songs for identification. I noticed that they made many different sounds, some of which I didn’t recognize at all and thought were a completely different bird until I was finally able to locate the robin that was making the sounds. As I was following a Robin, I heard it make a sound that must have been an alarm call, and a Peregrine Falcon flew overhead. This was a huge treat to see, especially in an area as populated as the waterfront. I imagine that these songbirds provide a large amount of the caloric intake for falcons during the winter. During the winter I imagine that most birds are resting and staying warm so as to not expend too much energy or foraging. After the peregrine falcon, we spent most of the time watching mallards, cormorants, and geese on the lake.

I went birdwatching at 15:30 on Tuesday, February 19th, 2020. The sky was a solid grey and cloudy, as I went right after a snowstorm and before another rainstorm was set to start. It was relatively cold, about 2 degrees Celsius, and the wind was a “strong breeze”, or about a 25 on the Beaufort Scale. I walked the whole of the Centennial Trail, which is a primarily White Pine dominated forest with some American Beech, White and Red Oak, and a few other trees interspersed. The ground was covered in snow that had recently fallen, which covered up any recent tracks.
Immediately, at the start of Centennial forest, I saw a huge murder of crows—taking the time to count them I got to 167, but there were likely many more. Because there were so many crows, I was able to observe several different patterns of flight. Most of them were flying westward out of Centennial woods, with slow, deep flaps and glides in-between. I saw several later in my walk and noticed that these were flying much more quickly with many more wingbeats. It was interesting to see how they flew differently when they were in a large group versus when they were on their own: possibly they had to manipulate their flight patterns because of the other birds around them.
For the next half hour, I did not see any birds, only heard the call of a Northern Cardinal. There are several possible reasons for why I did not see many at this time. A snowstorm had just ended, and the weather predicted that a rainstorm was about to begin. It doesn’t seem as if many birds would be out during a volatile like this. As the sun started to come out the birdsong picked up, and I heard more cardinals, a chickadee, a house sparrow, and many more crows. It is likely that they were gathering in an area near Centennial Woods, as they have been gathering in specific areas across Burlington for the past few months. I saw a Dark-eyed Junco near the end of the hike, which was very exciting, but overall, I didn’t see as many birds as I had expected. If I had gone in the morning, I bet I would have seen more birds, because that is when they are the most active, or if I had gone nearer to sunset when they are collecting food before going to sleep.