lydianapell13's Journal

For this field observation, I went to the bike path down by the water in between the skate park and North Beach. The weather was cold and windy, which is again probably why I didn't see many birds. I saw 1 American Crow flying overhead, 3 Black-capped Chickadees, and a Dark-eyed Junco.

I noticed that the Black-capped Chickadees looked very chubby, which I can only assume is the result of fluffing up their feathers to keep warm. I would also assume that both the chickadees and juncos are probably spending most of their time foraging for food. I think the crow was probably doing the same thing, but they seem to spend a lot more of their time looking for food while in flight, whereas chickadees and juncos seem to stay much closer to the ground and in evergreen trees when they can.

I saw 18 snags on my walk, 6 of which had cavities in them. I didn't whack them with a stick for fear of disturbing something too much, but a lot of the snags seemed to have woodpecker holes in them and I was wondering if the woodpeckers got to the tree before or after it died. I think the things most likely to use the cavities in the winter would be owls and squirrels. I guess smaller birds could use them too, I just used to think they stayed in evergreen trees but that definitely doesn't have to be the case.

The date for my birdwatch was 3/14/19 from 1:30-2:30. The weather was sunny and warm, but very windy. There is lots of interaction between the birds, usually fighting over who is at the feeder. The most frequent communication is birds arriving onto the feeder are fighting with the bird that is already at the feeder. It also seems like the Black-capped Chickadees are definitely the most vocal, although I also definitely heard the cardinals, White-breasted Nuthatches, House Sparrows, and Tufted Titmice.

The chickadees are also much braver than any of the other species, they seem to not care as much when humans are sitting around. I think they're probably watching each other's backs in the event of a predator, and communicating that nobody is making threatening moves towards them. The chickadees have a blueish gray color to them, as do the white-breasted nuthatches. I'm assuming they evolved that way as they can blend in pretty well in the winter when there isn't much color on the landscape. I was wondering the significance of the cap on chickadees though. What advantage does that have?

There was a chickadee that was foraging for food which is super important for something that has such a high metabolism and stays during the winter. I would imagine that they do this for the majority of the day in order to survive.

The pishing was an interesting activity, the chickadees were really interested in what I was doing. However, I couldn't quite seem to figure out the right frequency, so they kept disappearing and reappearing. I have no idea why that sound would be enticing to birds.