Category Archives: For the Birds column

For the Birds: Blue jays need to eat too

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Photo by Chris Bosak A blue jay perches on a branch in New England.

It’s no secret that Facebook is rife with links to a lot of really dumb articles. Many of the links are either clickbait or gateways to completely useless drivel. 

I learned a long time ago to not even bother clicking on the links because they inevitably lead to disappointment. But, I came across an article on Facebook the other day that I just had to click on. The headline for the post read, “Why You Should Avoid Inviting Blue Jays into Your Yard.”

I know some people have issues with blue jays, but I had never seen an article devoted to keeping blue jays out of people’s backyards. I’ve seen plenty of articles on how to keep squirrels, bears, house sparrows and grackles away from feeders, but never blue jays.

Blue Jays are strikingly beautiful birds and native to the U.S. Why would anyone want to keep blue jays away from feeders?

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For the Birds: Spring lives up to the hype

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Photo by Chris Bosak – A chestnut-sided warbler perches in the brush in New England, spring 2024.

It was one of the better spring migrations I’ve had in a long time. I got out there more than in previous years and visited a greater variety of places.

The big week, of course, was the visit to Erie, Pennsylvania, during the peak of the migration season. I was there for my niece’s wedding but arrived several days in advance of the event to stay with my brother and visit Presque Isle State Park, a birding hot spot. We saw over 70 species of birds over the three separate visits.

I also hit my local New England spots several times a week during migration, starting in late March and going into June. It’s always interesting to see how the spring migration starts with a trickle of very few species and peaks with several dozen species all moving through at once. 

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For the Birds: gnatcatcher nest find highlights walk

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Photo by Chris Bosak – A blue-gray gnatcatcher collecting material for its nest, Presque Isle, 2024.

The birdwatching had already been fantastic as Baltimore orioles, gray catbirds, yellow warblers, and even bay-breasted warblers were overly abundant. The walk got even more exciting as we watched a blue-gray gnatcatcher fly back and forth from a branch to a bush about 30 yards away.

A nest must be up there, I thought, as we now watched two blue-gray gnatcatchers going back and forth to the branch. Blue-gray gnatcatchers are small migratory birds with blue-gray plumage, as the name suggests, long tail and white eye ring. A peek through the binoculars confirmed that a nest was on the branch. I was surprised that the nest had been built in the middle of a dead branch with very little cover from the leaves above.

It took binoculars for confirmation as blue-gray gnatcatchers are tiny birds of only four or five inches. Their nests are just as small as the birds themselves, even a bit smaller at only two or three inches wide.

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For the Birds: Thrushes captivate in appearance and song

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Visions of warblers, tanagers, orioles and grosbeaks may dance in the heads of birdwatchers in May, but the woods and fields are filled with a myriad of other types of birds as well.

While birds such as vireos and flycatchers continue to fascinate (and confuse) me, it has been thrushes that have captured a large portion of my attention so far this spring. 

Wood thrushes in particular have been plentiful and conspicuous on my walks. By conspicuous, I mean I hear their flute-like songs several times as I wander through the woods. They can be amazingly difficult to find even as the song makes it seem like the bird is right in front of you. My actual find rate on wood thrushes is embarrassingly low — about on par with my batting average from my high school baseball days.

When I do find the bird, I can’t help but stand there and marvel at it. How can that awesomely musical song come from a relatively nondescript bird about seven inches long? Lang Elliot, who is well-known for his bird recordings, wrote: “The song of the wood thrush is undeniably one of the most beautiful of all forest melodies.”

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For the Birds: Brown thrasher spices up early spring walk

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Photo by Chris Bosak – A brown thrasher perches in New England, April 2024.

The Merlin app really came through this time.

I have written about the smartphone application that identifies birds by their songs and calls a few times before. I always stress, and I’m sure the app creators would agree, to confirm identifications by sight if you can find the bird.

The other day I was walking at a park, and the app showed that a brown thrasher was singing nearby. The app included a red dot by the species name, signifying that it is a rare bird to be seen where I was walking.

My immediate reaction, as a skeptic, was to not believe the app and assume it was a mockingbird instead. I have seen mockingbirds where I was walking several times. Brown thrashers are mimics like mockingbirds, so the misidentification would be understandable.

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For the Birds: Warbler time has come

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Photo by Chris Bosak A chestnut-sided warbler sings from a lower perch in Ridgefield, Conn., during the spring of 2017.
Photo by Chris Bosak A chestnut-sided warbler sings from a lower perch in Ridgefield, Conn., during the spring of 2017.

I saw a yellow-rumped warbler, a few pine warblers and several palm warblers on my last bird walk. That can only mean one thing: time for my annual spring warbler column.

The aforementioned warblers are the earliest to arrive in New England in the spring. The rest will follow shortly.

But first, what is a warbler? A warbler is a small Neotropical songbird. Many are colorful but not all of them. Yellow is a common color among warblers, but white, black, orange, brown and tan are also found frequently on warblers. While some spend their winters in the southern part of the U.S., most migrate farther to Central or South America, or the islands south of the U.S. A few stragglers may be spotted in New England during the winter, but it’s not common.

Warblers breed throughout the U.S., mostly in the northern states and into Canada. By late September and into October, warblers do their southward migration. In April and May, they pass through the area again — this time in their fresh spring plumage. 

Many warblers will remain in New England to raise families, and others will head farther north. Yellow warblers and common yellowthroats, for me anyway, are the species most commonly seen during the summer raising their families. I’ve also found the breeding spots of American redstart, ovenbird, pine warbler and a few other species. 

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For the Birds: Rain, rain go away – or not

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The weather icons on my iPhone showed rain starting at 8 a.m. I figured that would give me about an hour of dry weather to look for some early spring migrating birds.

No such luck. The rain started even before sunrise so my hour of dry weather wasn’t going to happen. Instead of rolling over and going back to sleep (a very tempting option) or mindlessly scrolling through social media, I decided to head out into the rain anyway. OK, I did take a few minutes to do Wordle quickly before heading out.

The walk started in a light rain, and a lot of birds were out singing. Immediately, I heard robins, cardinals, blue jays, song sparrows and a field sparrow in the distance. Field sparrows have a very distinctive song that sounds like a ping-pong ball bouncing on a table with the time between bounces getting progressively shorter, just like a real ball would do.

As soon as I committed to a trail leading me farther into the woods, the rain picked up. It never turned into a downpour, but it was a good, steady rain. Thankfully, the temperature was a very manageable 55 degrees, so I just got wet instead of wet and cold. I like birdwatching in all types of weather, but a cold rain is probably the worst. Heavy wind is not much fun either, but I would take it over a cold rain.

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For the Birds: Winter wrens not just another little brown bird

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Photo by Chris Bosak A winter wren sings from a perch in New England, March 2024.

The average person most likely would not understand my excitement. Anyone who has more than a casual appreciation of nature, including everyone who is reading this I’m sure, will get where I’m coming from.

From an outsider’s perspective, a winter wren is not much to get excited about. It’s a small brown bird – even smaller and more nondescript than a sparrow. Big deal.

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For the Birds: Those magical, fleeting moments in nature

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Photo by Chris Bosak An eastern bluebird perches on a branch in New England, Jan. 2022.

Beautiful sights in nature can be long-lasting or fleeting. Sometimes a split second is all it takes to leave an impression.

A beautiful view from a mountaintop is always there. You could hike to the top of Mount Monadnock or Mount Washington and enjoy the panoramic splendor today, tomorrow or next month. The view will always be there. Sure, it will change with the seasons and weather, but the mountain isn’t going anywhere. You could plan months or even years ahead and count on seeing the beautiful view.

An awe-inspiring sunrise or sunset is more fleeting. First of all, there is no guarantee a gorgeous sunrise or sunset will happen at all. But when you do happen to catch one, the view lasts for 20 or 30 minutes. You could grab a seat and watch the show until it is either dark or light, depending on whether it’s a sunrise or sunset.

With birdwatching, most memorable sights are fleeting, and unless you are visiting a zoo or nature center, there are no guarantees. There are some almost certainties, such as a hawk watch location in the fall or a bald eagle watching spot in the winter, but those sightings are mostly fleeting. During a hawk watch, the bird is spotted as it approaches, observed as it flies overhead and then disappears into the distant sky. Eagle watches can offer a longer view as the large birds rest in trees near the water, but they can take off at any time.

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For the Birds: Crows, cardinals and more

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Photo by Chris Bosak An American crow in Danbury, CT, winter 2019.

Crows are exceedingly smart, timberdoodles are back and cardinals just may be nesting already. Those are some of the interesting email topics I have received recently.

Don from Laconia wrote to say he has observed some interesting behavior from crows that hang around his yard. When the crows find a piece of food that is too big or hard, they carry the food to a nearby puddle and dip the food into the water to soften it and make it more manageable.

It has long been known that crows and other corvids, such as ravens and blue jays, have a high degree of intelligence. There is a video on YouTube with close to 10 million views that shows an experiment with a crow figuring out how to access food from tubes using water displacement. The pieces of food are floating on water in a tube just out of reach of the crow’s beak. In a series of tests, the crow has to figure out how to raise the level of water enough to reach the food. The crow eventually aces all of the tests and gets to the food each time.

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