Young birds are extremely vulnerable to predation and an abundance of other hazards. Thankfully, nature evens the playing field to a degree by giving some parents clever defense mechanisms to protect their young.

Among the most interesting of these tricks are performed by waterfowl.

While walking in the woods the other day, I heard a frantic splashing in a nearby beaver pond. Upon further inspection, I saw a female mallard flopping around and generally causing a racket.

The duck appeared to be injured as it held out a wing as if it were broken. It looked as if the duck was trying to fly out of the water, but just couldn’t.

The mallard was perfectly healthy. It felt threatened by something and went into defense mode. I don’t know if it was me on the trail that threatened it or something else lurking along the pond’s edge. The chicks remained hidden in the vegetation while the adult flew to an open space and caused the scene.

Ask me what my favorite bird is and I’ll likely give you a different answer every time. Truth is, I have lots of favorite birds. Now I just say “that’s one of my favorite birds” when I see one of the dozen or so species that fit the category.

The American oystercatcher is one species that has long fit into that category – probably from the first time I saw one. While many shorebirds blend in with the sand or rocky habitat and look nearly identical to each other, the American oystercatcher stands out with its larger size, contrasting plumage and, of course, its large orange-red bill.

Aside from its cool appearance, oystercatchers have a high-pitched call that may be heard from a great distance. I have often visited the shore and thought I struck out in my quest to find an oystercatcher only to hear that call on a nearby sandbar. The call is often made in flight so it’s easy to find them and track them to their landing spot.

As a follow-up to my recent column on butterflies, here are a few more photos showing butterflies with wing damage. Here’s the column in case you missed it.

Our wrinkles, scars and other blemishes make us who we are. They are our story.

The same is true for butterflies. Not all butterflies look like the perfectly drawn or photographed models in field guides. In fact, most of them don’t.

I found this gem during a walk through a field today (Monday, Sept. 4, 2023) in southwestern New England. This black swallowtail clearly favored red clover as it bypassed all the other flowers in the field and landed on every clover it could find.

There’s nothing like hummingbirds to unite and excite North America.

Last week’s column on the timing of hummingbird migration apparently got ranked high on a popular internet search engine and blew up. I was wondering why I was suddenly getting emails from across the country and Canada. An editor from a New England newspaper emailed me to say the story had become the paper’s most popular story of 2023 overnight. The power of hummingbirds, I guess.

Emails came from British Columbia, California, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York and each of the New England states. Even my aunt from Virgina texted me out of the blue to say she was directed to the article as well. Some of the regular For the Birds readers responded as well. I appreciated all the emails. Here is what some of the hummingbird fans had to say:

Carolanne from Atkinson, New Hampshire, said she recently became interested in hummingbirds as her “life has slowly quieted down” with her children now grown. She has more time to sit on her deck and watch the wildlife, and hummingbirds became a favorite of hers. She was amazed that hummingbirds fly across the Gulf of Mexico during migration and wondered why they don’t just remain in Florida. It’s an interesting thought, and researchers are discovering that some hummingbirds do indeed remain in Florida or Louisiana instead of making the trip across the Gulf.

Somehow this story got caught up in the Google machine. I’ve received emails from California, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Indiana, Ohio, each of the New England states, and Canada. Funny how things like that happen sometimes.

One of the editors at The Sentinel told me it’s the most popular story on their website for 2023.

I’ll post the column here in the next day or two.

Saw this future monarch butterfly on my walk this afternoon. The fields were filled with milkweed, but this was the only caterpillar I saw.