April 22 Journal Entry

Date: April 22, 2020. 3:30-5:00 pm.
Weather: Mostly overcast with temperatures in the upper 30s to low 40s, with high winds.
Location: Medium sized planned forest in Essex Vermont.
Habitat: tall, uniform conifers, with lots of low underbrush, but very little vegetation between the floor and the canopy.

This time around, I got unlucky with my area selection choice. A friend and I went out to a small trail in a little planned forest for timber harvest. The area was very interesting for humans, but my guess is that this would be poor habitat for many bird species, and the heavy wind certainly wasn't encouraging flight. The trees were tall but sparse, providing little cover, and swayed heavily in the wind, creating a very unstable canopy. I did not see many birds, but I will d omg best to analyze those I did see.

First, the only bird I saw that seemed like it might be in the business of mate selection or territory defense was one singular robin. It was sitting on low branches and singing near us for a while, and I heard its song nearby for a while afterward. It didn't seem to have a mate, which has not been the case for most other robins for me this year, and it could be due to the poor territory. Since I did not see any other territory-defending birds out today, I decided to do some research on the mating habits of corvids, since I had such an interesting experience with them today (I actually managed to identify a raven because it was next to 3 crows). We had learned in class that crow tend to flock in the winter, and I wondered if that was true for the breeding season as well. All About Birds says that generally these flocks tend to split into smaller family groups, who work together to raise young, and they did not mention defending territories. Ravens, however, seemed to follow the common model more closely, defending large territories and generally practicing social monogamy. It seems unlikely that either of these species would have nested in this area, as tree branches were not large enough to give a lot of ample support, and windy conditions moved the trees too much to be stable.

For my mini-map, there were not a lot of interesting sounds around. I did my best here, but I don't know some of the species. The light green was either a crow or a raven, and the blue in the left corner was the robin. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vzFArBYo9nfTR7K4au585aolx2Vh_WQO/view?usp=sharing

Posted on April 23, 2020 01:37 AM by lucasferrier