Gone Again

Once again a house wren brood has fledged and once again I managed to miss it.

As was the case with the first brood back in June, the young started getting antsy. One chick again stayed close to the nest box opening to intercept a parent bearing food. This chick at one point leaned so far out of the box the parent pushed it back inside. But the chick kept looking out, watching for food but also, to me, curious about the world outside the box.

Yesterday, I had my binoculars on the box when a parent came with food, shoved the one chick out of the way and allowed me to see the open mouth of its sibling. The parent fed that chick, checked for poop and left.

Empty nest, July 27, 2024
(Margo D. Beller)

I told myself I should get my camera, sensing things were about to change. As usual, I just sat there.

Later in the day, back from various Saturday errands, I took advantage of the less-humid weather to do some very necessary weeding, including clearing out crabgrass from between paving stones and pulling out ragweed before it could develop pollen that would make me sneeze more than I already do.

One of those areas was at the other end of the yard where ornamental grasses and other plants deer generally avoid are in an unnetted plot. Behind me I heard house wrens. They later flew to a shrubby area just beyond my compost pile, the same area where the first brood hid after fledging. Later, I rested on my porch and saw no activity at the nest box.

Unlike in past years, however, I do not feel sad at seeing the empty nest. I did what I intended, which was to help maintain the house wren population, even though house wrens are far from endangered. This year a pair had one chick and then a second (or the same?) pair had two chicks. With any luck the chicks will grow, fly south to the wintering grounds in Central and South America and then fly north to breed. Big ifs. Life is perilous for all birds, but especially for young birds that somehow know how to migrate without parental help.

I can only hope for the best. The box will be taken down and cleaned out in October, then stowed away for next year.

A Wren by Any Other Name

As we approach August, families have been passing through my yard - small flocks of robins, flickers, grackles, chipping sparrows, all pecking at the ground for food. Birds are also flocking to the cherry tree, where the berries have become ripe enough to consume. The robins, catbirds and jays have been joined by raucous families of titmice as well as the occasional house finch.

Over at the house wren box, the young - I'm guessing there are at least two in this brood - are now big enough that the parents feed them from outside, except when one (usually the female) goes in to remove poop. I can hear the cheeping of hungry young through the open window while I sit on my enclosed porch.

Northern House Wren, aka one of my backyard birds.
(Margo D. Beller)

Many types of birds, including the house wrens and the robins - have multiple broods in a season. Many more are one and done. At this point of the summer, some species of birds are already heading south to their winter feeding grounds. More will be on the move in August into September, including warblers, shorebirds and raptors.

At that point it will be time for people like me to prepare our gardens for winter and put out feeders for the birds passing through and those that will be spending the cold months in and around my yard.

It is at this point of the summer that the American Ornithological Society's (AOS) Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of North and Middle American Birds publishes its "check-list supplement." This benign-sounding document in reality contains what could be radical realignments of the way birds are categorized. Many types of birds previously considered separate species can be "lumped" into one - decreasing the number of birds to record on a Life List. Other birds have been found to be separate species and so are "split," thus increasing the number of birds to be sought by birders.

Here are a couple of examples.

The small common redpoll, which I've seen only during some winters in New Hampshire when they come farther south because of the lack of food in their usual territories are now considered the same species as a paler redpoll I've never seen and is considered a rare visitor to northern U.S. states, the hoary redpoll.

Meanwhile, the Audubon's shearwater, a bird that looks like a large gull and lives its life over the open ocean, is now five species of shearwater, only one of which (the Sargasso shearwater) is found in North American waters. The cattle egret, which is found in farm fields rather than at the edges of water, is now the Western and the Eastern cattle egret. AOS says they are different in plumage. The Western is what is found in the Americas, the Eastern in Asia and Australia.

Normally these changes in taxonomy don't interest me because they involve birds I don't see often or are not likely to see unless I travel to a completely different part of the world.

But the change to the house wren did interest me.

Where there was once one "house wren" there are now six: the northern house wren, the southern house wren, the Cozumel wren, the Kalinago wren, St. Lucia wren, St. Vincent wren and the Grenada wren.

According to the press release announcing the changes:

This split was a long time coming. Some of the island species, in particular, look and sound very different. Some sound so different that people who are intimately familiar with House Wrens from the mainland don’t even recognize their songs as being from a wren! Indeed, that was my experience on my first visit to Cozumel. Speaking of the island species, it was very nice to see this sentence in the acknowledgements of the supplement: “We thank Kalinago Chief Lorenzo Sanford and the Kalinago Council for permission to use ‘Kalinago’ in the English name for the newly recognized species Troglodytes martinicensis.”

Note that “Brown-throated” Wren of Mexico and the far sw. United States is included in Northern House Wren, so there is no additional species for the ABA Area. Northern and Southern house wrens switch over in Veracruz and Oaxaca, where they look different (warm “Brown-thoated” Northerns vs. grayish Southerns) and use different habitats (highland vs. lowland). Kalinago Wren was originally found on Dominica, Martinique, and Guadeloupe but persists on only the first island. The other species are found on their namesake islands.

So the birds in my yard are Northern House Wrens. 

Of course, the birds don't know what we humans call them. If they could understand the human need to classify they likely wouldn't care either. Neither do I. I'll continue to call the birds in my yard "house wrens" even after they fly south for the winter.

Heat, Humidity and House Wrens

When it is so hot and humid outside I must stay indoors with the air conditioner on for most of the day, I try to imagine what it is like for the house wrens in my yard.

This past week the western half of the United States has been baking under brutal heat, with wildfires sparked. Meanwhile, in my half of the United States, we just got through more than five days where the temperatures were in the 90s and the humidity made the air feel like 105 degrees F.

House wren (Public domain photo)

Weather like that is dangerous. Weather like that keeps people like me inside and extremely uncomfortable unless I have the air conditioner on.

In weather like that I can't even keep a water dish outside because when the sun hits it late in the day the water becomes undrinkable. I can only go out to walk in the very early morning when the air, while still humid, is 20 degrees cooler than what it is forecast to hit for the high. If it is raining in the early morning, as it has for a couple of mornings, I am stuck inside and start to feel caged and anxious, not the best company for my husband.

In weather like that I feel sorry for the First Responders and others who must be outside to do their jobs. I used to travel to work but I would leave in the early morning, sit on a (usually) air conditioned train and then walk into an air conditioned office. The heat would not become an issue until my walk home from the train. But I was younger then and didn't think twice about being in an inferno. Now, I do.

This most recent heat wave wasn't the first this summer. There was a heat wave in June. And there will be a new one starting July 14. And August is weeks away. You can blame El Nino, La Nina, climate change, global warming - whatever you want to call it, it's hot. The Earth won't cool anytime soon without drastic actions.

So I look at the house wrens with amazement and admiration.

I could tell when Mother Wren was sitting on eggs because she would zip into the box and disappear for long periods of time. If it was especially hot, she would sit at the edge of the box and stick her head out of the opening. Then, she'd fly out to get herself a meal while her mate called from nearby, watching the nest.

She sat inside the box because that is what she has to do to protect her young. She keeps cool by panting, sitting by the box opening but also by flying into the shade to hunt for her food. Unlike people, she doesn't have any choice in the matter of how she spends her days. 

Two days ago I could tell the eggs had hatched because she started making more trips into and out of the box. Even Father Wren came to the opening and leaned in, feeding young. More recently he has gone in and out of the box, tho' not as quickly and surely as his mate. They are regurgitating food into the young birds' mouths and taking poop out to keep the nest clean.

Just as I saw with this year's first brood, soon the young will get big enough to move around the inside of the nest and will start jostling each other to get the food when the adults bring it.

Meanwhile, on the other side of my enclosed porch, I've seen only one hummingbird, a male, back in June. It came to the pink coral bell flowers, ignored the feeder I had out and flew off. I've seen none since. Usually I see females in July, when they are also seeking food for their young. Unlike the house wrens, male hummers don't hang around once mating is accomplished.

Where are the hummingbirds?

Toad, 2024 (Margo D. Beller)

So far this month I've seen nothing, and the pink flowers that had been blooming have faded and are mostly done thanks to an unusually hot summer that prompted many of my flowers to bloom at the same time instead of one after the other. The apple tree that provided me with enough fruit to make eight cups of sauce had its last apple plucked by a squirrel on July 5, about a week earlier than usual. Over the years the last apple day has been getting earlier and earlier as the weather has gotten hotter and hotter.

Luckily, the hot weather has also brought out another important source of food for young birds - insects, as well as insect eaters such as dragonflies. And toads.

Last week, a day after several weeks' worth of grass growth was finally cut, I went on the patio and pushed at the cover on my charcoal grill to tuck it in. Something jumped. It was an American toad, common in the east. It was dark and blended into the black cover's folds in the shade where I had put the grill. When I moved the grill it jumped out to the paving stones. 

I am guessing the combination of losing the long grass and the high heat and humidity forced it to find shelter where it could. It hung around for long enough to determine I wasn't going to bother it (I was watching from inside) and then it was gone.

This is not the first time we've had a toad visit our patio in July. 

(RE Berg-Anderson)

In fact, this American toad showed up on the fourth of July 10 years ago, tho not in the folds of the grill cover. It had somehow gotten into the bottom section of the composter I keep on the patio. When I moved the composter to sweep out leaves that had gotten behind it, out jumped the toad.

I can't imagine how this 2014 toad, bigger than the one I discovered last week, managed to get inside the composter. But out in the wild, I guess any port in a storm will do. I expect Mr. Slither to show up any day now, basking in the heat of the paving stones.

Road Scholar

When I retired from the journalism business I wondered what I was going to do to fill the time once spent working. Do what you enjoy, I was told by friends and magazine articles.

Well, that means birding. But what kind of paying job could I get in the birding business? Not many that I would want to do, as it turns out.

Hitting the road. (RE Berg-Andersson)

I have great admiration for people who study birds for a living. I don't mean everyday birders like me, I mean those with hard-core knowledge. They know a primary from a secondary (a bird's outer and closer to the body flight feathers), a mantle from a tertial (feathers on a bird's back) and a gape from a gonydeal spot (the fleshy edges at the base of a gull's mouth and the spot, often red, on some large gulls).  

All these definitions come from Richard Crossley's field guide to Eastern birds. Crossley is hard-core. So is David Allen Sibley. So was Roger Tory Peterson. They don't just look at birds and identify them, they know their every part. All have written extensive guides.

Other hard-core birders go beyond identification and want to handle the birds in the cause of science. So I looked into becoming a bird bander. It turns out there are rules - a lot of rules.

I found a free, online course in bird banding offered by the U.S. government. Once I registered I looked at the study materials in each module. For instance, there is the 69-page North American Banders Study Guide published by the North American Birding Council. It begins with a Code of Ethics and then goes on to detail such things as the permits needed for banding (migratory birds are protected by federal statute), how to handle a bird, how to open a bird's bill, capturing and extracting birds from mist nets and how to prevent bird injuries and fatalities, among many, many other things.

Duck banding at Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge.
(Public domain image from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

I would also have to go through the Handbook of Field Methods for Monitoring Land Birds by C. John Ralph and others from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This book is 47 pages.

When I started the course I discovered I would not be watching a video of a person talking to me and handling actual birds, but listening to a script as I followed along with notes put up on the screen. I quickly got bored.

OK, says I, I don't want to go through the process of becoming a registered, licensed bird bander. What about volunteering to help out the bird bander?

A contact sent me the link to the Ornithology Exchange listing all kinds of jobs. Most of them require experience as well as advanced science degrees no way covered by my Bachelor of Science degree. The closest hotspots to me for those who monitor, trap and tag migratory birds are on Lake Ontario or Lake Erie. 

Here is one such place, in Erie, Pennsylvania. The job would be an assistant to the bander and would pay about $5000 for seven days a week over eight weeks of work starting in September. I would need my own car to get me from the office to the field site. Nothing is mentioned about where I'd be staying for those eight weeks.

Then I read on and found this:

The most successful of candidates will also: Have previous environmental interpretation experience and/or teaching skills. Be comfortable using various social media platforms to relay information regarding EBO’s banding program in a manner consistent with NABC guidelines. Hold NABC certification at the banding assistant level or higher. 

Applicants should possess a positive attitude, be comfortable interacting with the general public on a frequent basis, be prepared to work long hours in sometimes adverse conditions (heat and humidity, biting insects), be meticulous in record keeping, and be in good physical condition. Successful candidates will have experience extracting, handling, and banding songbirds. This includes: 1) At least one season at a high-volume station (2,500+ birds/month). Volunteer experience also acceptable and 2) Successful solo extraction of 400 birds minimum. (emphasis added)

So much for that bright idea.

I also considered the Cornell Ornithology Lab's online ornithology course on comprehensive bird biology (for which I'd need another expensive textbook). But I had no interest in that, or even in the Lab's more general online bird-related courses.

Pete Dunne in 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

I was an average student, and I went into a field where having a BS (and an ability to cut through the BS) was enough. Everything I learned after that has come from actual experience, the University of the Street. And I remembered that the great Pete Dunne, a man I've met, the author of many books and once the sanctuary director of New Jersey's Cape May Bird Observatory, did not have an advanced degree in ornithology. He was just some guy with a great interest in birds who, according to his "Tales of a Low-Rent Birder", lucked into the job. 

The same is true for the writer Kenn Kaufman, who started birding as a young boy and then, as a teen, hitchhiked all over America to see every bird he could find. He wrote about that in "Kingbird Highway," which became a bestseller and led to a career as a bird guide, then as a writer and illustrator and editor of field guides.

Leg band (Public domain image from the
Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

Do I expect to become a famous birder like these guys and many others, or even a YouTube influencer for fun and profit? No. But I can't see myself trading in the time I've missed by working indoors staring into a computer for time spent indoors following an online course. Life is too short. I'd much rather be outside in the field, scoping out a hotspot or even just walking along a road in my town, learning from life.