The frost begins to burn off on this pumpkin in the Amphimeadow in Catch the Wind.

Apparently caught with their pants down, these two mating crane flies were still alive and thawing nicely when I came upon them atop the pumpkin.

And down in the Wetlands…

A frosty morning on the boardwalk.

The Wetlands Overlook was steaming.

As if on fire, mist streams off the top rail of the overlook.

The morning sun quickly turns the frost into vapor.

In the bird news, both White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos have arrived. The sparrows came in last week, the juncos with the same cold front that brought the frost. I saw a dozen or so Chipping Sparrows last week as well but they typically don’t stick around, in and out.

Have good one.

Cooper’s Hawks and, since the second week in September, Red-tailed Hawks have been seen consistently. Some are locals and some are migrating through – I’ve seen adults and immatures of both species. An adult Sharp-shinned Hawk was seen 29 November.

A true sign of winter’s arrival, or at least it being at the doorstep, was the appearance overhead of an adult male Northern Harrier in the clear blue sky of 26 November. The nearly all gray adult males are the last in line to migrant through, following the brown-hued immature and female harriers. It was the first of its kind that I’d seen at the Museum.

Harriers are birds of open country – extensive farmlands and coastal marshes are more likely places to see them. There, they cruise low over the vegetation watching and listening for small mammals and birds to prey upon. Harriers have an owl-like facial disk (B&W image at left) which aids in picking up faint sounds coming from potential prey below them as the hawks sail and hover a few feet above the fields and marshes. It’s not likely you’ll see a Northern Harrier at the Museum except in passing, so keep at least one eye skyward, especially after a few days of northerly winds!

Crows are well know for harassing hawks and owls whenever they can. So, it’s no surprise that on November 29, a small group of crows (about 5) couldn’t resist ganging up on a Barred Owl when they spotted it perched in a Loblolly Pine in the swamp just below the entrance to Catch the Wind on the back side of the Explore the Wild/Catch the Wind Loop. The owl, after several minutes of cawing and badgering by the crows, was rousted from its perch and took off flying with the crows in hot pursuit – much to the amazement, and delight, of Ornithopter Operator John as the owl flew within ten feet of his head.

A pair of these dark-eyed owls were spotted earlier in the period by two of the Museum’s Animal Keepers near the main entrance to Catch the Wind. Keep an eye out for these birds as you stroll along the Explore the Wild/Catch the Wind Loop!

The resident female Belted Kingfisher has been spending considerable time at the Wetlands. Even when she can’t be seen splashing and diving in the water for fish, her raspy rattle of a call can usually be heard somewhere back among the trees on the far side of the Wetlands.

While standing on the Wetlands Overlook video taping the local Great Blue Heron gently preening its long blue-gray primaries, I heard a splash in the water to my right. As I turned to see what had made the noise, the kingfisher was already up and flying towards the boardwalk in front of the Black Bear Exhibit. It had something large in its bill. A kingfisher is not a small bird, a little over a foot from end to end. As the bird landed on the railing of the boardwalk I could see that it had a sizable Golden Shiner in its bill (image at left). The fish was easily half, or more, the length of the bird.

After several unsuccessful attempts to flip the fish head first so that it could swallow it, the kingfisher flew off to the far side of the Wetlands to perch on a low willow branch. Through the eyepiece of the video camera I could see the bird again and again try to turn the fish around, all the while the fish struggling to get free of the bird’s grip. Finally, the bird lost its hold on the shiner and it fell to the water below, the bird crashing in behind. When the bird flew back up to its perch, only scales remained in its long dark bill. Apparently, the fish was not mortally wounded by this encounter. I’m not sure whether the bird could have swallowed such a large fish had it been able to hold on to it, but it would have been fun to watch it try.

There was a flurry of bird activity with the approach of a low pressure system on the last Saturday of November. Birds often feed heavily ahead of impending inclement weather. Among the birds seen was a Brown Creeper (photo at right), the first I’d seen at the Museum since last January. These small, secretive, brownish birds creep up tree trunks gleaning small invertebrates along the way. Their presence is often given away as they fly from a high point on one tree to the base of another to start a new ascent.

Also seen feasting that day were Brown-headed Nuthatches, Hermit Thrush, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, several sparrows including Chipping Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, and Dark-eyed Junco (image here), Pine Warbler, and a lone Common Yellowthroat. With the cooler weather and the lack of flying insects to hawk, the Myrtle (Yellow-rumped) Warblers have been feasting on Wax Myrtle berries.

A wandering of Cedar Waxwings sailed over the Wetlands on 20 November. You don’t often see waxwings alone; this group consisted of about twenty-five individuals. Unless there’s a reason to stop, like a good supply of berries or crab apples to eat, these traveling bands of birds are usually seen flying overhead in search of the same.

The in-flight flocks look a bit like starlings as they wheel and whirl about. Although noticeably lighter in color, in outline the individual birds appear starling-like as well. However, that’s where the similarity ends. Cedar Waxwings are one of the most elegant of birds (image at left). Their soft fawn-beige plumage fading to yellow on the belly, their yellow-tipped tail (sometimes orange), black facial mask, and crest make it hard not to find them attractive. They appear to never have a feather out of place, always neat and trim. The name waxwing comes from the small, red, wax-like spots on their wings (not shown).

Closing Shot

As anyone with a bird feeder in their backyard can tell you, Northern Cardinals are usually the first to arrive and the last to leave the party. The photo at left shows a female grabbing one last meal of sunflower seeds from the feeders in Catch the Wind before calling it a night.

For nearly a week after the passage of the cold front that moved through on the 18th/19th of October the skies were mostly clear with high cirrus clouds making it easy to pick out high flying birds. The 18th and 19th were busy bird days with lots of familiar avian visitors returning from the north. Warblers and other passerines rode in on the back of the front. The rest of the week was busy as well, mainly with high altitude hawks, but with a few other bird types as well. A flock of 13 Double-crested Cormorants in classic echelon formation flapped their way south on the 23rd of the month.

Turkey Vultures and Black Vultures sail over Explore the Wild and Catch the Wind daily, but on the 23rd they were truly soaring high. A group of 8 Turkey Vultures glided by at “little black speck” altitude with a few Black Vultures mixed in. Turkey Vultures (TVs) and Black Vultures (BVs) are fairly easy to separate (images at left). TVs have relatively long tails and soar with their wings held above the horizontal (dihedral). Additionally, TVs tend to teeter, or rock back and forth while soaring, giving them an unsteady appearance in flight. BVs have very short tails and although they sometimes hold their wings in a dihedral they are not consistent in doing so. They also tend to flap their wings rapidly, then glide, rapid flaps, glide. There are other differences, but at great distances these two characteristics are easy to see.

The 23rd was an interesting day for raptors. A Sharp-shinned Hawk and at least two Cooper’s Hawks (at left) were seen soaring high above. Cooper’s Hawks were seen each day following the front. Red-tailed and Red-shouldered Hawks were both up and soaring high and were fairly easy to pick up visually with the lofty cirrus clouds as a backdrop.

For the past few weeks, at least six of our local Blue Jays have been busily flying back and forth over Catch the Wind. They’ve been observed daily flying to large Willow Oaks well behind the Ornithopter, each with an acorn in its bill on the return trip, and probably several more stuffed in its throat. They’re burying, or caching, the nuts. Willow Oak acorns are small and, although I don’t know for sure how many acorns these Blue Jays can stuff into their gullets (perhaps 5 maximum), they’re likely carrying more than one at a time. I once watched a Blue Jay cram 16 sunflower seeds into its throat and one in its bill before flying off to cache the seeds.

I haven’t determined where they’re going with all of those acorns, where they’re burying them, but the cache must be quite large considering the amount of trips observed. Blue Jays will fly several miles to cache nuts. Many of the nuts cached by birds (and squirrels) are never relocated, leaving them to germinate and grow into trees. In effect, the birds (and squirrels) are planting trees. In a paper I read many years ago, one researcher theorized that Blue Jays played a significant role in the reforestation of eastern North America following the most recent period of glaciation. Some have suggested that squirrels were the real heroes of the reforestation story, but squirrels don’t carry acorns far from the mother tree before burying them, perhaps fifty yards if at all. While it’s true that acorns don’t fall far from the tree, Blue Jays will take them there (far from the tree, that is).

Picture the landscape 15,000 years ago when much of North America was under a thick sheet of ice at least as far south as Long Island, NY (Long Island is a terminal moraine). At that time the great eastern deciduous forest was much further south, hundreds of miles south of where it is today. Moving north from this ancient deciduous forest you would probably encounter boreal forest with spruces and other conifers (remnants of which can be seen today on the highest mountain peaks of western North Carolina), scrublands, perhaps steppe or vast dry grasslands, tundra and finally the glaciers themselves, a much different landscape then we see today. As the climate warmed and the glaciers slowly retreated northward at the end of the glacial period, those habitats or biotic zones moved north with them. But how did they move north, and so fast (10-12 thousand years is not a long time)? The trees couldn’t simply uproot and walk north.

As noted, most seeds or nuts that fall from trees, fall directly under the tree. Even the maples, ashes, and poplars with seeds that are carried by the wind and “helicopter” to earth don’t travel very far from the source tree. Left to their own devices deciduous trees would have taken perhaps hundreds of thousands of years to move north to their present locations. Squirrels would help somewhat by carrying off seeds and burying them at least some distance from where they fell to earth. And, as alluded to, it’s well documented that squirrels (or birds) that cache nuts don’t relocate many of the nuts (more than half, if I remember correctly), those nuts later growing into trees. Even with the squirrel’s help, this reforestation would still be a very slow creep north.

A bird that could carry nuts and seeds perhaps half a mile, 2, 5, or even 10 miles from where they originated, and of course, later forget where they were buried or simply just not have enough time to recover them all, would quicken the process considerably. There are many studies showing that Blue Jays will and do carry vast amounts of acorns and other nuts miles from where they were gathered, to be buried and subsequently forgotten, or in which the nuts buried germinated on their own before being used as food. And, the birds don’t put all of those nuts into one hole, but spread them out over the area so there could be many trees sprouting over a relatively wide area. In one study observers witnessed a group of jays move 133,000 acorns. In another, 150,000 acorns in just under a month’s time. That’s a lot of nuts! How many of those were never dug up and eventually grew into trees?

I saw the first-of-the-season Winter Wren and Golden-crowned Kinglet on the 18th of October. I consistently see Ruby-crowned Kinglets foraging with groups of warblers.

A Hermit Thrush was seen on the 29th and was the first one of the season. This bird, and perhaps a few others, will stake out a claim at the Museum near a good source of berries and stay the winter.

If you like sorting through hundreds of warblers, the 18th and 19th of the month was the day to be at the Wetlands. Magnolia Warbler, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Yellow-rumped (Myrtle) Warblers, and Palm Warbler, were all seen on those two days. Butter-Butts, or Yellow-rumped Warblers, arrived en masse on the 18th, making it difficult to sift through them all to pick out the other warblers in the bunch.

Yellow-rumped Warblers should be around for the duration, or at least until they’ve devoured all of the Wax Myrtle berries at the Museum (see Wax Myrtle, Explore the Wild Journal, September 1-15, 2008). While they do quite a bit of flycatching, these warblers can stay farther north than most of their fellow warblers, which for the most part, are strictly insectivorous and need to follow the season south. Besides feeding on the Wax Myrtle, you may catch a glimpse of a Yellow-rump at the bird feeders slurping suet along with one of the the local Pine Warblers.

Yellow-rumped Warblers are named for the yellow patch of feathers on their rump, just anterior of the tail (image above). Although much less colorful in their drab winter plumage, they also show a patch of yellow on each side of the breast. The yellow on the breast varies in brightness according to the age, sex and current plumage of the individual bird but there is usually al least some yellow present.

A few sparrows also showed up during the past few weeks. Chipping Sparrows arrived with the warblers on the 18th of October and a Field Sparrow was seen the following day. Several Song Sparrows were also observed. White-throated Sparrows have returned (see image), and should be with us until early May.

A male Rose-breasted Grosbeak flew in on the 18th and flocks of Red-winged Blackbirds were seen winging by overhead.

There are many young American Goldfinches about. For the past month they’ve been seen at the bird feeders and foraging among the ripening seeds, especially the Tick-seed, alongside the path in Catch the Wind. While the adult Goldfinches have molted into their drab winter plumage making them difficult to separate from the immature birds, the young finches can be differentiated by their buff, or tan-colored, wingbars.