Looking Out My Back Door

This morning I found it had snowed a bit overnight and the roads were shiny with ice. I had thought about going to one or more places to do some birding - not expecting much now that migration is long over, but maybe finding something that has flown south to my area and will now hang around for the winter.

Cardinal in a past winter. (Margo D. Beller)

But since my fall I try to be more careful about where I go to walk. Ice on the road means ice on the paved paths I usually walk.

So I put out the feeders, brewed some coffee, put a cup in a thermal mug and took Merlin outside to listen.

This blog is called Backyard Birding for a reason. It was in my backyard that I first realized the diversity of the winged world. The birds coming to the feeders. The birds calling from the trees and bushes. The birds flying overhead, some of them looking to make a meal of a bird or squirrel.

When weather won't allow me to go out, or even if I am just restless to do something, I either sit on the enclosed porch or I stand on the patio and wait. At this time of year, when I seem to be the only one offering birds something to eat, the yard gets very busy, very fast.

I must be careful where I walk on snowy days.
(RE Berg-Andersson)

Take today, for instance. In no particular order the yard had hairy woodpecker, downy woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, yellow-bellied sapsuckers (two, chasing each other around the dogwood tree), house finches (too many), mourning doves (at least eight, all picking up what the finches dropped), blue jays, cardinals, titmice, a black-capped chickadee, a goldfinch, white-breasted nuthatch, house sparrow and, unusually quiet in a nearby hedge, a mockingbird. (Once in a while a robin or a Carolina wren will pass through, but not today.)

Lately, I've hosted several visitors from the north: white-throated sparrows, juncos and, most unusual, red-breasted nuthatch. This nuthatch is smaller than the white-breasted nuthatch I see more often, and is more comfortable hanging upside-down on the suet feeder. One day we had two birds, a male and female. Both have a black and white face pattern, the male's breast a darker red than the female's. These birds are usually found in pine forests, so perhaps they were attracted to the sheltering branches of Spruce.

The more commonly seen white-breasted nuthatch (top) with
titmouse. (Margo D. Beller)

As for the "...and Beyond" part of my blog title, this afternoon the temperature rose and the wind died down, making it feel like spring, albeit a cold spring. My area was clear of snow. I drove out to the park I would've visited earlier in the day. The path was still covered with snow and the parking lot blocked. 

So I turned around and drove home, content to resume my backyard birding. 

The Upside-Down Bird and the Creeper

Another winter, another brown creeper (Margo D. Beller)

I see here to-day one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course. This has no black cockade, like the nuthatch.

-- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, Nov. 26, 1859

It is almost the same day 159 years later and the brown creeper I am watching is doing the exact same thing Thoreau saw in his woods, living up to its name by creeping deliberately up a stout tree.

I am in a small park in my town, carefully walking in the frozen slush, and I have stopped to watch some robins. Then I see movement against the brown-gray of the tree and there is the creeper, almost perfectly camouflaged, the movement of its head showing the white below and thus giving it away.

I stand and watch it a long time as it carefully climbs the tree, sticking its long, decurved bill into every crevice. It makes a faint sound that, because I only seem to find these birds in late autumn into winter, is not as familiar to me as that of the nearby white-breasted nuthatch, whose call sounds like hank. 

Creepers, according to the bird people at Cornell, build their nests behind peeling tree bark. Is this bird looking for food or a nest site? The range map shows this bird is a year-round resident of northern New Jersey. They mainly eat insects but will also come to suet feeders. I've never had one there.

That is not the case with the white-breasted nuthatch, which I see at my sunflower seed feeders every day they are out. This bird is not quiet, shy or easily missed like the creeper, it is a pugnacious little bird that stands out. It will fly to the house feeder, cling to the roof, dip its head down and grab a seed even as a larger bird such as a cardinal is sitting inside and eating. When a nuthatch flies in, the house finches scatter, as do most of the smaller birds.

I went to the oaks. Heard there a nuthatch's faint vibrating tut-tut, somewhat even like croaking of frogs, as it made its way up the oak bark and turned head down to peck. Anon it answered its mate with a gnah, gnah.
-- Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1856

White-breasted nuthatch (Margo D. Beller)

Watching the creeper now, I see the nearby white-breasted nuthatch uses an entirely different technique. It does not start at the bottom and work its way up, it flies high and goes up the tree or turns its head around and goes down. For that reason it is called by some the "upside-down bird" because few birds will travel a tree with head down. Even the woodpeckers, climbing trees with their tails bracing them, will go backwards but will not go down head first.

The white-breasted nuthatch, despite having a whole tree at its disposal, now flies at the creeper to force it away so it can examine that spot. The creeper flies to the other side of the trunk, where I can no longer see it. Another nuthatch, on a nearby tree, calls and this one answers.

Unlike the creeper, the only one of its type, there are three types of eastern nuthatches, the white-breasted, the red-breasted and the brown-headed. (I have seen all three.) The brown-headed is found as far north as Delaware, although occasionally one hitches a ride on the Cape May-Lewes ferry and shows up to thrill birders in New Jersey. Its call is high-pitched and squeaky, more like a mouse than a bird.

The red-breasted is a bird of northern, piney woods but in some years, such as this one, it can't find enough food and so moves south. This phenomenon is called irruption, and we have them most winters although the birds flying south may vary. (One year it was snowy owls.)

Besides the red breast, this bird is easily identified by the black line that runs through the eye. Its call is another pitch entirely from the white-breasted nuthatch and usually faster. This year I saw several in the larches on the outskirts of a dog park near me for one bright morning, but it was only that one day.

If I am lucky, a red-breasted nuthatch will come to my feeder, too, but usually it is quickly chased off by the slightly larger white-breasted. That has been the case so far this season - a blink-and-you'll-miss-it visit by a red-breasted nuthatch that was just figuring out how to take a seed when it was chased off by the white-breasted. I hope it got a chance to come back and get a seed or two before heading for a pine forest.

White-breasted nuthatch about to force off a titmouse.
(Margo D. Beller)