Now, there is nothing wrong with using binoculars to identify birds and to peek-in on their behavior. I could hardly do without my trusty binoculars.  Yet, I find that I don't need them as much as I once did. Non-birders don't always need them, either.

I can view the activities of a flock of sparrows, like I did this morning, without magnifying an individual bird. In fact, I literally can't see what the flock is doing if I'm trying, often unsuccessfully, to focus in on one bird. It's like the reverse of old saw: "He can't see the forest for the trees." Sometime I want to view the activities of an entire flock of birds, the entire forest of them.

White-throated sparrows and house sparrows were flocked up this morning as I walked a path through a huge field of tall grasses on a brilliant sun-shiny day. The birds were fluttering here and there along the path pecking at the seed which was deposited along the path by the wind. I think the birds cannot feed within the thick tall grass of this remnant of Illinois prairie which spreads out on both sides of the path.

As I approached, the flock took refuge close-by in scrub brush growing here and there along the path but when they saw I was no danger to them, they returned to the path to feed. They can still find cover since autumn is just beginning and the trees and brush are still lush and verdant.

I didn't need my binoculars at all. I simply took in the entire scene of passerines feasting on seeds here in early autumn. This kind of flock behavior has developed over eons. The birds don't fight within their species and they don't compete across species lines. They have learned to cooperate.

 Maybe, we humans could learn something from inter-species flocking. We could at least learn to tolerate one another's presence.

The Case of the Disappearing Canaries.

The canaries were gone. Three males had simply disappeared from three separate cages.  Those canaries were “the control” part of an experiment in animal behavior at a major mid-western University some time ago. 

On a cool Saturday morning, I entered the laboratory where our department was studying how birds learn species-specific sound.  For example, is the song of the song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) innate or is it a learned behavior? Does the male song sparrow chick have to hear its species song before it can sing it, or will he sing a song sparrow song without ever hearing it sung by a mature male first? Researchers want to know these things.

Back to the canary controls.  Those  individual males were part of a research project of one of our graduate students who was studying bird song in canaries. The controls were kept in typical wire cages in the basement of our building. They heard one another sing. We controlled the light by timers and the canaries dutifully sang when it was light.

 The “experimentals” were male canaries housed two floors above the basement in  sound-proof cages with built in speakers where we could record their vocal efforts.

That Saturday morning, when the graduate student came to check on them, the controls were gone.  The experimentals, however, in their sound proof boxes complete with ventilation systems, were fine --healthy and active. 

  How could the controls have escaped? The door leading down into the basement lab was always locked and the graduate student and his mentor were the only ones who had keys. “They’ve got to be down there,” he said. “Help me find them.”

So, we went downstairs into the basement lab and, sure enough, the cages were empty and the small, metal access doors to those cages were still fastened shut.

We began searching behind everything in the basement. No birds.   Next, we checked the rafters. The concrete wall of the basement stopped just below the first floor where joists took over.  We got a ladder and began searching the dark spaces between the joists.

“Hey! I think I found one,” my friend yelled. “Up here, in the rafters!’   With that he shone a flashlight into the space and found himself face to snout with a boa constrictor.

The mystery of the disappearance of the birds coincided with the disappearance of a six-foot long pet Boa constrictor from a third floor lab which had gone missing two weeks before. Someone had left the terrarium open and the snake had slipped out, squeezed through the space around a recently repaired water pipe, got into the wall and followed the pipes to the basement.

Once in the basement, the snake sensed the canaries. He entered each cage by compressing himself between the wires of the cage, attacking the birds one-by-one, and then after constricting the life out of them, he consumed them.  He then sought a hiding place in the rafters to rest and to digest the birds.

The ex  The experiment was certainly compromised because the controls were critical to the validity of the experiment. Somehow, the graduate student saved the project, but he had to have evidence that his controls had actually existed. You can probably figure out what he had to do next. Nearly two weeks later, the boa deposited several tiny bundles of sad-looking, yellow feathers onto the floor of his terrarium.

There are no snakes indigenous to the Canary Islands or the Azores, the natural home of canaries.  Did our controls flutter and flee from the constrictor?  Did they know innately that this crawling thing entering their territory was deadly? My guess is that they knew. No parent had to teach them that an enmity was set between their offspring and the spawn of the snake.

By the way, our research concluded that canaries sing whether they've heard other males sing or not. However. It helps in their development if they have heard other males sing. Eventually, they get it right.

 

 

 

A Murder of Crows Woke Me up Today.

I am walking quietly in late autumn along a dirt path which meanders through a savannah. The field of goldenrod on my right waves deep yellow with every breeze. The trees and bushes are still green and lush.  Every few paces I flush a sparrow or two out of the bushes which grow along the way. It's a blue-sky day and the sun's rays fall on me like a blessing. It's quiet.

Then, they come: the crows. Their "kaw-kaw-kaws" announce to the wildlife world that I am there --at least it seems that way to me. A half-dozen crows fly high above me "kaw-kaw-ing"  like motorcycles coughing and sputtering as they glide slowly along. Crow calls are loud, irritating to my ears and to my soul.

Genus Corvus seem like the rogues of the bird world. They disturb the harmony of field and forest.  They ravage seed crops. They have been known to steal, and not only shiny things. A bunch of crows is referred to by the collective noun, "murder."  A "murder of crows:"an apt concept, isn't it?

From jackdaws to common crows to ravens, these scavengers make up a third of the members of the family Corvidae. To most people, they are simply crows and not welcome.

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" uses the image of this dark bird to express the melancholy Poe feels at the loss of "Lenore, nameless here forever more." The poem would never have worked with a song sparrow or downy woodpecker. The bold, insistent rapping announces the raven's presence.  Once let in, the raven brings a mocking gloom to Poe's soul. The thing speaks and vocalizes finality with its"nevermore" refrain.

Crows of any type flying over my head bring on a feeling of dread, like an omen of bad luck
So, my reverie this morning hasn't lasted long, a  murder of crows has startled me into another reality.





 

The White Robin of the Ozarks.

I once saw a white robin.  Now, I know that this might be hard for you to believe but I know what I saw.

There he was (she?) hopping around with his head cocked to one side, stopping every few feet to stare into the short grass of my front lawn in the Missouri Ozarks on a late autumn morning. I couldn't believe my eyes: He was cream colored with a few streaks of light brown here and there on his wing feathers.

I phoned a well-respected local birder with the news. He didn't take it too well and thought I was mistaking a robin for a mourning dove. He came over later that day and verified the sighting: The white robin was still acting like a robin.

It was the behavior of the bird that caught my eye. If it looks like a robin, if it hops and searches the ground like a robin, if it has the form of a robin, it's probably a robin --no matter its color.

In the wild, female cardinals don't look red at all. They are a drab green and brown and don't reveal the red color of a cardinal until they take flight and flash the underside of their wings. Red-bellied woodpeckers don't have red bellies and the yellow-bellied sap sucker's ventral area doesn't look very yellow to me. Let's not even talk about a titmouse.

Whether my morning robin was a rare color variation or a true albino, I'll never know for sure.  But, the behavior of my ghost-like morning robin, reminds me that you can't always judge a book by its cover, nor a bird by its color: By their behaviors, you shall know them.


 

Canada Geese Honk at Dawn.

"Not 'Canadian Geese' but 'Canada Geese,' please!"  With these words
I was corrected by a friend who tries to save me from embarrassing faux pas.

Regardless of what you call them, I think those geese are elegant looking in flight. Even on the ground they walk around with a confident air and are presentable in their formal blacks and greys.

Most of our geese (I live twenty miles from Chicago.) are gone now but some, of course, stay the entire winter. Locals feed them at a small park close-by where Canada Geese honk on and off during even the coldest weather.

Their "honk-honk" and an answering "honk-honk" tell me that a pair of Canada Geese are up there flying, even if I can't locate them right away this morning.

I hear and identify many birds by their calls and songs. I don't always see them. The high-pitched, sharp, location call of a Cardinal is easy to identify. Everyone knows the "caw-caw" of a crow.
The chirps of  house sparrows are omnipresent. (What a big word for such a small bird. And, perhaps I should reserve that word for the presence of the deity.)

This morning at dawn I first heard, then saw two Canada Geese flying over my house. They lifted my spirit somehow and made me feel part of something bigger than myself. I wasn't alone at dawn.  Others were waking, taking flight and honking for life.

A Windborne Bird.

My artist friend is now long gone but her art and poetry still startles me and warms me up sometimes.
Some event will happen in my life and suddenly her brush strokes reappear in my memory, strokes that I thought I had forgotten. She painted with words, too.

Here is one of her poems about love:

Love
is such a
Misused word.

I wish I
had another
to express
when
My heart is
A windborne bird,
When I see a
Strange wildflower.
                               (Kathryn Bradford Dyer)

See what I mean?

 

Goldfinches, Canaries and Late Summer.

Goldfinches swirl and dip around me as I walk a dirt path in the savannah of a Du Page forest preserve on a sunny and breezy late-summer morning. They startle me as they flush from a large bush and scatter into the sea of goldenrod to the left of me.

In the Spring, male Goldfinches are bright yellow with black streaks along their wings. Females are drab in comparison but show some yellow and the same dark striping along their sides. This morning the individuals in this flock all look pretty much the same. The non-birders call them"wild canaries." That's fine with me.

The domestic canary (Serinus canaria domestica) sings a loud warbling song while the wild goldfinch (Spinus tristis) settles for a short, musical chirping which passes for a song. Both species look great in sunlight.  Their yellow feathers shine. 

Years ago, in the early morning, as light began to stream in through my window, I used to have to cover with a heavy blanket the nesting pairs of canaries which lived in three cages in my dormitory room. Otherwise, the competing canary songs would make it impossible for me to sleep. I made them believe that it was suddenly evening again, so they went to sleep.

This morning's Goldfinch convention was the first sign of flocking that I have noticed.  Here it is September 6 and I should expect that from now on I'm going to see the finch families grouping up.

The goldfinches will leave soon. The juncos (snowbirds) will arrive; the house sparrows will stay and along with the cardinals, they will flock together. After all they are finches.  Theyall eat seeds, live close to the ground, and flit and bob here and there as they fly. So, what t'heck why not flock in peace.

I love the change of seasons. The absence of territorial bird song in the mornings and the thinning out of the species just offers me an opportunity to see flocking again.