The haunting voice of our banshee in the woods

Written by Jack Sanders
Thursday, 01 December 2011 14:43

The other day, Thanksgiving visitors were remarking on the beauty of a Blue Jay, which was visiting a feeder in the back yard and glowing in the wonderful sun we had daily for the long holiday weekend.

“Yeah, but they’re bad guys,” said one guest. “They eat baby birds.”

Blue Jays and their close relatives, the crows, often have reputations tainted by the fact that they are opportunistic omnivores that may, on occasion, take a hatchling as a meal.

Does that make them “bad”?

If so, the Eastern Screech Owl that Alex Brannan photographed last week must be a super bad guy. All it does is kill living things — including birds, young and old. But few people would label an owl a bad bird because it is a predatory carnivore. And few should feel that way about Blue Jays, which are largely nut eaters and, in fact, may do more to help plant trees than even squirrels.

They ring the trees with sweet traps

Written by Jack Sanders
Wednesday, 23 November 2011 11:28

Two readers in recent weeks have sent us photos of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, a sometimes controversial bird with a colorful name.

These woodpeckers seem to be most often spotted as they are passing through in the spring and fall, but that can be spotted any time of year since they may nest in our area and may overwinter. Although the Connecticut coast is about at the northern edge of their winter territory, ranges, as well all know, are changing with the gradually warming climate (enjoy last Sunday’s 68 degrees?).

As their name suggests, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers eat sap. They do so by drilling orderly little holes in the bark of a variety of trees. They drill hole after hole, one after another — evenly spaced and encircling the trunk. Any time you see rows of holes around a tree, you know a sapsucker’s paid a visit.

For the least, it was more, but not much

Written by Jack Sanders
Thursday, 17 November 2011 13:24

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection reports generally good news about two of our endangered shorebirds.

DEEP — what used to be DEP — said last week that 52 pairs of Piping Plovers nested along the Connecticut coastline during the 2011 breeding season — nine more than last year. However, the number of young that fledged — reached flying stage — was 71, 11 fewer than the 82 plovers that fledged in 2010.

Watching the Red-tail kids

Written by Sally Sanders
Thursday, 10 November 2011 13:31

For years Bernd Klopfer has had families of hawks on his Ridgefield property and has enjoyed observing the youngsters’ behavior each season.

“This summer we were again entertained by the antics of young Red-tailed Hawks,” he writes. “They first showed up on the front lawn, screeching constantly and annoyingly loud until their mother showed up with a never-ending supply of chipmunks and squirrels. I’m surprised there are still any of either left in Ridgefield. The youngsters would tear into their meal and the other one would try to steal it, sometimes successfully.

How high can a bird fly?

Written by Jack Sanders
Thursday, 27 October 2011 11:16

Since essentials like food and water are found on or near the surface of the Earth, birds usually do not need to fly very high, except during migration. However, most birds can apparently survive at altitudes far beyond what humans can endure.

In his book The Secret Lives of Birds, journalist and naturalist Pierre Gingras reports the altitude record for a North American species may be an unlucky Mallard that collided with an airliner at 20,900 feet in 1963. The species was identified from feathers stuck to the aircraft.

That’s nothing compared to the Ruepell’s Griffon, a kind of vulture, which crashed into a plane over East Africa in 1975 at 37,900 feet — more than seven miles up!

What is a bird and what good is it?

Written by Jack Sanders
Thursday, 20 October 2011 11:07

Just what is a bird and what do birds contribute to the world?

Although an ornithologist could offer a tongue-tying official definition of a bird, here’s a simple one: A bird is an animal with feathers. No other kind of creature on earth has feathers, and no bird on earth lacks them. Thus, if you see something moving with feathers on it, you can be pretty certain it’s a bird.

The blue and the gray: What do we see?

Written by Jack Sanders
Thursday, 13 October 2011 14:16

Jim Hood, who lives near Brien McMahon High School in South Norwalk, spotted a Black-throated Blue Warbler at his feeder recently and didn’t know what it was.

In describing the bird as it appeared in an accompanying photo, he said, “its feathers are not bluish but more a charcoal gray.”

Jim’s description of the color was interesting for what may be a surprising reason to many. He was describing a “blue warbler” as not blue, but gray. In the photo, the bird actually looks bluish to me, but to his eye seeing it live, it wasn’t blue.

Why most migrants head north for summer

Written by Jack Sanders
Thursday, 06 October 2011 11:09

It’s the height of the migration season, a time when billions of bird calories are being burned to get from one place to another.

When we think of migration, we typically think “north-south.” And, in fact, the vast majority of the world’s birds migrate from south to north in the spring, and vice versa in the fall. But many fewer do the opposite — go south when it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

Inspect a globe and the reason becomes clear. The Northern Hemisphere has much more land mass than does the Southern Hemisphere. Many more migrants that winter south of and around the equator will head for the “wide open spaces” of United States and Canada than for the narrow tail of southern Argentina and Chile. In fact, while many birds that winter south of the equator fly north for the summer, not one species that winters north of the equator flies south for the Southern Hemisphere’s summer.

Post-Irene: The case of the disappearing chicks

Written by Jack Sanders
Thursday, 29 September 2011 10:59

Photographer Kevin Doyle, whose pictures of eagles and ospreys have accompanied this column and appeared on Audubon Web sites, was one of the many people who observed one of the indirect effects of Tropical Storm Irene on birds.

“On Sunday after the rain stopped and the sun came out, I found a cardinal’s nest about six feet off the ground and upon further investigation found three chicks in the nest. I thought it was too late in the season for them to have chicks, but apparently I was wrong. From my observations they were either hatched on Saturday before the storm or Sunday. One still had its eyes closed; the other two had open eyes so maybe they were a little older ... but the parents were nowhere to be seen.

How do storms affect the birds?

Written by Jack Sanders
Thursday, 15 September 2011 10:21

How did our birds handle Irene? Probably a lot better than we did.

A number of people have expressed concern about the tropical storm and whether it harmed — or at least affected — the local bird population.