|
Monday, 03 December 2012 18:23 |
|
by Neil A. Case
A swan is a big, white, beautiful bird, unless it’s a black-necked swan or a black swan. But those are birds of south of the equator, the black-necked swan of South America, the black swan of Australia. There are only seven species of swans and the other five nest far north of the equator. And they’re all big and white.
Two of the white swans are native to North America, two are native to Europe and Asia and one, originally a bird of Europe and Asia, has been introduced in North America and now nests in America and Eurasia. Last spring and summer and the year before and the year before that a pair of these non-native swans has nested in our marsh. They’ve nested and they’ve raised a brood, two young the first year, four the next and five this year.
|
|
Wednesday, 28 November 2012 16:04 |
|
by Neil A. Case
We went driving last Sunday afternoon, touring country roads, looking for lakes and ducks. We didn’t expect to see many. Most of them, nesters in our area and migrants traveling through would already have gone south. But we thought we’d see some, buffleheads perhaps, wigeon, green-winged teal, redheads, canvasbacks, pintails, mallards at least.
|
|
Tuesday, 06 November 2012 19:37 |
|
by Neil A. Case
Leaves that shaded our lawn last summer and earlier this fall are now on the ground. A few leaves still cling to the branches overhead but most of the leaves of the maples, oaks and other deciduous trees that stand in our yard are scattered across the lawn or blanketing our flower beds, trapped there by low fences, or piled in corners around the house.
These are the leaves that provide an outdoor calendar of the seasons. Last spring the buds on the trees unfolded into shiny green leaves, as brightly colored and as much a part of that season as the lengthening days, warmer temperatures, warblers and other migrating birds passing through, robins and bluebirds returning after spending the winter farther south. And as the leaves grew, robins and other birds that remained with us after their winter in the south sang and mated, built nests, laid and hatched eggs and began to raise the young birds of another generation.
Through the long, hot, dry days of last summer, through the days of every summer, the leaves on the trees held a canopy of green around and over part of our house and over much of our yard. The drought and heat caused some of the maple leaves to fade, becoming yellowish green, and the leaves of our tulip poplars turned yellow, before the summer ended. Still, green was the primary color of the tree leaves through the summer season.
Then came the fall, not yet by the calendar but announced by the leaves. Those of the silver maples in our front yard turned yellow. The leaves of the sugar maples at the south side of our house turned a beautiful tawny red and the leaves of the lone red maple in our yard turned red, living up to the name of the tree. The leaves of the tulips that hadn’t already become yellow did so and also the leaves of the walnut tree by the barn. The leaves of our burr oaks became brown.
Now the leaves are scattered across our lawn or piled in sheltered places where they whirled before the wind and are now sheltered from the wind. From the branches of the trees last spring and summer and fall they announced each season. Stripped from the trees by wind and rain, stiff and crisp, when it hasn’t rained and they’re not wet, they rustle beneath my feet as I walk across the yard.
I won’t rake the leaves off our yard nor will anybody else. But I will hurry their disintegration by having the yard mowed one last time. The grass doesn’t need mowing. But mowing will chop up the leaves, make them settle more closely to the ground where worms and insects and soil microbes will make them decompose more rapidly than if they remain above the ground, even if only an inch or two, on the grass.
I was wandering about the yard one day recently, our dogs running around me, looking for birds as I always do. But the only birds I saw were the most common birds around our home, the year-round residents, cardinals and blue jays, white-breasted nuthatches and black-capped chickadees, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, house sparrows and house finches. No robins. No red-winged blackbirds. Not even any mourning doves or starlings. But there were the leaves beneath my feed.
We collect papers and plastic, cans and bottles and take them to places from which they will be transported and recycled. That, I realized is what will happen to the leaves in our yard. They’ll settle to the ground where they’d be worked on by worms and other little animals of the earth. They’ll decompose and become part of the earth.
The leaves will be recycled, just like the papers and plastic, cans and bottles we collect. But the leaves are recycled naturally. by Neil A. Case Leaves that shaded our lawn last summer and earlier this fall are now on the ground. A few leaves still cling to the branches overhead but most of the leaves of the maples, oaks and other deciduous trees that stand in our yard are scattered across the lawn or blanketing our flower beds, trapped there by low fences, or piled in corners around the house. These are the leaves that provide an outdoor calendar of the seasons. Last spring the buds on the trees unfolded into shiny green leaves, as brightly colored and as much a part of that season as the lengthening days, warmer temperatures, warblers and other migrating birds passing through, robins and bluebirds returning after spending the winter farther south. And as the leaves grew, robins and other birds that remained with us after their winter in the south sang and mated, built nests, laid and hatched eggs and began to raise the young birds of another generation.
|
|
Tuesday, 23 October 2012 10:54 |
|
Sparrow Hawk, Grasshopper hawk, Mouse hawk and Windhover
by Neil A. Case
I like the name sparrow hawk. I know, that name is incorrect. The correct name is American kestrel. But sparrow hawk was the name when I was a boy and learned to recognize this little hawk. That wasn’t just the name that was commonly used then, it was the name in bird books. That’s the name in the 1947 edition of Roger Tory Peterson’s “A Field Guide to the Birds,” the first edition of Peterson’s famous bird field guide that I had.
Sparrow hawk isn’t even an appropriate name. I’ve had people tell me of seeing a sparrow hawk, or kestrel, catch a small bird, such as a sparrow, at a bird feeder, but I’ve never seen one. In “Birds of America,” the author of the article about the sparrow hawk wrote, “Small birds are sometimes captured (by these hawks), but so rarely that I have not in many years observation seen the deed performed. . .” The only reason I can think of for calling them sparrow hawks is size. They are small compared to most other hawks as sparrows are small compared to robins and many other song birds.
Interestingly to me, “Birds of America” lists other names for birds and for sparrow hawk two other names are grasshopper hawk and mouse hawk. Those names are appropriate because these little hawks commonly prey on mice throughout the year and on grasshoppers, crickets and other larger insects when and where those insects are out and about, summer in our area, year-round farther south.
One reason I like the name sparrow hawk, other than that it was the first name I learned for this little hawk, is that it’s an American name. Kestrel is a European name, derived from Old French according to Edward S. Gruson in “Words for Birds.”
There is a kestrel in Europe. It’s very similar to our kestrel, or, since it was named earlier, ours is similar to the European bird. It too is a small hawk and the two are similarly colored. So similar are the two in appearance and in habits that they were considered the same, one species, for a time.
The kestrel is a hawk but it’s a falcon too. Falcons, however, are simply hawks that are streamlined, more slender than a red-tailed or other large hawk, with more slender, pointed wings instead of broad wings with rounded ends. The red-tailed and other big hawks are noted for soaring, falcons for speed. Think peregrine and that winged white predator of the Arctic, gyrfalcon.
The kestrel is not nearly as fast as a peregrine or gyrfalcon. But it doesn’t hunt like those winged speedsters. It perches where it can see the ground, often on a power line, watches until it sees a mouse or large insect, then launches from its perch and plunges down with feet and legs extended, landing on its prey. Or, beating its wings rapidly, it hovers over a field like a leaf caught in a whirling updraft, stops and partly folds its flailing wings when it sees prey below and plunges down. For this the kestrel has another name, windhover.
I saw two kestrels this morning as I drove into town. Each was perched on a power line along the side of the road. At 55 miles per hour with a car behind me, I felt I couldn’t slow or stop I could only glimpse their color but kestrels are easy to identify. They’re only slightly longer than a robin but they have a much larger head proportionate to their body and they perch upright. Further, though I only had a glimpse of their colors, they were rusty-brown and black, not the colors of any other birds of our area that I commonly see perched on power lines.
Kestrels are birds of many names, grasshopper hawk, mouse hawk, windhover, and for me, sparrow hawk
by Neil A. Case I like the name sparrow hawk. I know, that name is incorrect. The correct name is American kestrel. But sparrow hawk was the name when I was a boy and learned to recognize this little hawk. That wasn’t just the name that was commonly used then, it was the name in bird books. That’s the name in the 1947 edition of Roger Tory Peterson’s “A Field Guide to the Birds,” the first edition of Peterson’s famous bird field guide that I had. Sparrow hawk isn’t even an appropriate name. I’ve had people tell me of seeing a sparrow hawk, or kestrel, catch a small bird, such as a sparrow, at a bird feeder, but I’ve never seen one. In “Birds of America,” the author of the article about the sparrow hawk wrote, “Small birds are sometimes captured (by these hawks), but so rarely that I have not in many years observation seen the deed performed. . .” The only reason I can think of for calling them sparrow hawks is size. They are small compared to most other hawks as sparrows are small compared to robins and many other song birds. Interestingly to me, “Birds of America” lists other names for birds and for sparrow hawk two other names are grasshopper hawk and mouse hawk. Those names are appropriate because these little hawks commonly prey on mice throughout the year and on grasshoppers, crickets and other larger insects when and where those insects are out and about, summer in our area, year-round farther south.
|
|
Wednesday, 17 October 2012 15:50 |
|
by Neil A. Case
We rode horses on a trail through a land that I thought appeared to be decorated for Halloween. Trees had leaves of green and of yellow, orange and red. When we came out from under the trees into fields we rode through grasses of many shades of brown and patches of goldenrod and New England aster and many other wildflowers that I didn’t recognize. Puffy white clouds drifted across the sky above dragging shadows across the landscape and us below. It was a beautiful fall afternoon and I enjoyed riding and the fall colors overhead and on the ground around me. But I was looking for birds, hoping to see birds and to hear them.
The back of a horse, even an old slow horse such as I ride, is not the greatest place from which to see birds. But I should at least hear some birds I thought. Then I thought of a newspaper article sent to me by a friend recently. The heading read, “Where have all the birds gone.”
South is the easy answer to that question. But not all of the birds that migrate and leave us in the fall have gone south yet and some birds don’t migrate. They stay with us all winter. Then there are birds that nest farther north and only fly south as far as where we live, then stay with us through the winter.
After a time I did begin to see a few birds. First were two crows that flew over. They didn’t call as crows so often do and I wouldn’t have seen them if we hadn’t been in a field and their shadows moving over the ground before me alerted me to their presence. Then I saw goldfinches at the edge of the trees ahead, flying up and down, from weed heads to the trees and back, chittering as they flew.
Back among the trees, I heard a red-bellied woodpecker call. It sounded rather close but I couldn’t find it. It must have been on the other side of the trunk of a tree or a large branch from me. I heard then saw a downy woodpecker. It flew from one tree to another, across the trail ahead.
I heard a blue jay scream, then another, ahead of us. They continued to call and we rode closer and closer and eventually saw them. There weren’t two as I thought when I heard them calling but five or six, flying from branch to branch among the leaves and branches that shaded the path before us.
The author of the newspaper article asking where all the birds had gone was obviously not a birder. But he had talked to birders, as he wrote, and been assured the birds weren’t all gone. However, they had also told him that bird numbers are indeed down, that there aren’t as many birds as there usually are this time of year.
That’s my opinion, too, though I haven’t any numbers, I haven’t made or read any bird counts, that prove there are fewer birds this fall than there usually are. But assuming it’s true I wonder, as the author of the newspaper article did, why are there fewer birds. Is it because we, and most of North America, have just experienced such a hot summer? Is it because of the drought that effected eighty percent of North America? Could either or both of these conditions have reduced the number of young birds that matured and flew from their nests this year? What birds are effected? Certainly not starlings or house sparrows or Canada geese.
Those are interesting questions. I thought about them as I rode a gentle old horse following my older daughter and two friends on their horses on a bridle trail through woods and fields decorated with fall colors, decorated as if for Halloween. by Neil A. Case We rode horses on a trail through a land that I thought appeared to be decorated for Halloween. Trees had leaves of green and of yellow, orange and red. When we came out from under the trees into fields we rode through grasses of many shades of brown and patches of goldenrod and New England aster and many other wildflowers that I didn’t recognize. Puffy white clouds drifted across the sky above dragging shadows across the landscape and us below. It was a beautiful fall afternoon and I enjoyed riding and the fall colors overhead and on the ground around me. But I was looking for birds, hoping to see birds and to hear them.
|
|
