busconews.com

by Neil A. Case

A red-winged blackbird swooped in to my bird feeder on the 10th of this month, February, and began picking at the seeds I’d stocked the feeder with. A male redwing. A minute or so later a second redwing, another male, joined the first.

I’ve seen red-winged blackbirds in winter in northern Indiana before.  But not this winter. Since I hadn’t seen any this winter I didn’t expect to see any until the end of February at the earliest and probably not until March. Redwings are among the earliest birds to arrive in spring, as much harbingers of spring to me as early robins, but the second week of February is still winter.

This has been a mild winter in northern Indiana.  In other years when the winter has been mild I’ve occasionally seen redwings on and off throughout the winter. But, as I said, not this winter. These, I thought, must be early migrants, two of the redwings that came to my feeder daily last fall.

I have seen bluebirds occasionally this winter.  None have come to my bird feeder but bluebirds never have. I’ve seen them perched on power lines along country roads. I’ve seen them perched in bushes and I’ve seen them flying. Did they sense somehow last fall that this was going to be a mild winter?

I’ve seen great blue herons this winter. That isn’t surprising. These birds feed primarily on fish they catch and for this they need open water, water that has not frozen over. There has been open water in the area all winter. The marsh at the west side of our property and the pond at the east have frozen over but they’ve only been ice covered intermittently. The ice has never been thick enough for me to walk out on, nor has it lasted more than a few days.  Rivers and streams in the area have not been completely covered with ice all winter. Did the herons also sense that this was going to be a mild winter?

A friend called recently to tell me he and his son had seen a buzzard, a turkey vulture, earlier that day. Was that bird another early arrival like I think those two redwings were? Or has it been in the area all winter?  If our marsh has not frozen over solid enough for me to walk on roadside carcasses would not have frozen solid enough for a vulture to be unable to tear into their flesh and feed.

I’ve seen mallards occasionally all winter, usually two together, a drake and a hen. Mallards, like many ducks, pair up where they spend the winter which is usually farther south than northern Indiana, then the pairs fly north together in spring. So did those pairs I’ve seen this winter get together late last fall and then not go south?

To confuse the issue more than it already was, two weeks ago I saw a flock of mallards. Nine of them, drakes and hens. With an uneven number they couldn’t all be paired. So were they early arrivals, one of them still without a mate? Or have they been around all winter? If they have they’ve not been where I saw them.

I have one other bird to consider while wondering if a few of the earliest feathered migrants haven’t already returned. The day after I saw the red-winged blackbirds at my bird feeder I saw a male hooded merganser on our marsh. That bird has not been in the area this winter I’m almost certain. If it had somebody would have seen it and I would likely have heard about it.

So were the redwings at my bird feeder winter survivors or early spring migrants? What about the great blue herons I’ve seen, the bluebirds and the mallards, the hooded merganser?