Birds Of A Feather

As part of our Wildlife Management activities, we hired Jesse Huth, a local bird expert, to conduct a bird species census on our property. He and his mother, Jaci Kroupa, who served as scribe, came on a Saturday morning after it had been raining all night. We were going to start at 7 am, but were delayed until about 10:30 am, when the rain stopped.

It was misty, windy, and a cool 68 degrees. We were out for about 2.5 hours and there wasn't much activity for the first 45 minutes. Jesse explained that the birds were still hunkered down after the night's rain, but would need to start moving around and feeding soon to maintain their metabolism.

He made quite a few of the identifications by hearing the bird's call. I was fascinated by the experience and his ability to identify the bird calls. He had binoculars and made many identifications visually too.

In total he identified 31 species in that morning. Here's the list:

• Crested Caracara
• Northern Cardinal
• Carolina Chickadee
• American Crow
• Mourning Dove
• White-Winged Dove
• House Finch
• American Goldfinch
• Lesser Goldfinch
• Blue Jay
• Dark-eyed Junco
• Killdeer
• Golden-crowned Kinglet
• Ruby-crowned Kinglet
• Northern Mockingbird
• Eastern Phoebe
• Greater Roadrunner
• American Robin
• Chipping Sparrow
• Field Sparrow
• Black-crested Titmouse
• Tufted Titmouse
• Spotted Towhee
• Wild Turkey
• Black Vulture
• Turkey Vulture
• Yellow-rumped Warbler
• Yellow-throated Warbler
• Golden-fronted Woodpecker
• Ladder-backed Woodpecker
• Bewick's Wren

Jesse explained that the birds form mixed species foraging flocks. The birds take turns feeding and serving as the eyes of the flock, issuing warning calls as trouble approaches. We encountered several of these in our hike. There would be little or no bird activity and then we would walk into the middle of one of these flocks and the activity would pick up tremendously. Then, either because the flock was moving or we were walking, the activity would die down.

They were quite excited to encounter the Golden-crowned Kinglet. They considered this bird quite rare and we had many of them. Jesse said he'd found gold on our property!

Many of these birds live here year-round, but some of them just winter here. I'm looking forward to conducting the bird species census again in the spring to see how the identifications differ.