Our Environment: “Snowbirds Arrive” by Scott Turner
Sunday, December 29, 2019
Snow both softens and levels the landscape, while concentrating the critters that twitter and pad among us.
Take yesterday morning, when I stepped out the backdoor to find roughly three-dozen American Robins surging in all directions over our small snow-mantled backyard. These robust songbirds were feeding on the fruit of trees growing by our home—crabapple, hawthorn, juniper, and ornamental pear.
Compared to us, songbirds have high metabolisms. The heart of a chickadee, for example, beats some 540 times a minute. To sustain such metabolic rates, songbirds need to eat when it’s cold outside.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTWith the ground snow-covered, robins don’t pluck earthworms. Nor do the birds find other insects, given the winter-like temperatures. So, they consume berries.
Robins may have been the most-numerous species of birds in the backyard but they weren’t the only ones. All sorts of other songbirds were in the shrubs and trees by our bird feeders, which offer three courses for wintering birds: black oil sunflower seed, Niger thistle seed, and suet.
Birds present included one or more of the following: Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Downy Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Mourning Dove, American Goldfinch, Northern Cardinal, Song Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Carolina Wren, European Starling, and House Sparrow.
Many of the birds were taking turns at the feeders. The goldfinches, however, were feeding on the cylindrical, drooping tan-and red male flowers, called catkins, of an adjacent black birch tree.
Besides finding the frenetic avian movement enchanting, I received a call and song primer. Singers included the wren, Song Sparrow and nuthatch. The robins also produced several calls, while the Red-bellied Woodpecker repeated its diagnostic “churr.”
Out of the blue, I heard what sounded like a bark in the northeastern sky. In an instant, I recognized the sound as the honk of a Canada Goose, and it was not alone. Many geese calls were now audible overhead, and they were approaching.
To my astonishment, a skein of geese, numbering more than 120 birds appeared in a dizzyingly wide wedge heading southwest. On the ground, geese are in a flock. In the sky, they’re a skein. And over my neighborhood was the mother of all skeins.
As the geese vanished, I was brought back to earth by the arrival under the feeders of a trilling, twittering flock of Dark-eyed Juncos. These little birds from the North are sometimes called snowbirds, because they arrive at the time in fall, when the first snowflakes fly.
A trait of juncos is their bright-white outer tail feathers that flash open from time to time, when the birds are in flight. Well, these were not only vocal juncos, but showy ones. Their tails appearing to streak a bright white above the snow and vegetation. The juncos arrived with the fanfare of plume-waving marchers at a Mardi Grad parade.
Stepping out the door this morning was like walking into a surprise party. I was amazed, thrilled, felt like I didn’t deserve it, and won’t forget the experience for a long time.
Scott Turner is a Providence-based writer and communications professional. For more than a decade he wrote for the Providence Journal and we welcome him to GoLocalProv.com.
COVER PHOTO: Ryan Hodnett/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
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