Bald eagles!!

I got your Spring showers right here, chump

My favorite fact about that capricious whistlepig, Punxsutawney Phil is that, as with most progrnosticating animals, he is wrong over half the time. And that's with a 50/50 shot of being right. Today my mom and I spotted this beefy white-chinned woodchuck fiercely defending its cozy little drain pipe.

On my way home from CCV today I decided to drop in at Salmon Hole and see what avifauna all that open water might have brought out. And boy was I delighted! After watching the gulls hunting fish, I spotted a mature eagle hanging out on the ice down stream. I went home to get my camera and convince my mom to come out and join us. When we got back to Salmon Hole the eagle had left already. In its stead was a beautiful assortment of water loving birds. Bonus challenge: Spot (and name) all four species in the photo below?

Can you spot four different species in the above photo?

After hanging out for about 20 minutes, the gulls just went berserk and all those standing around chittering with each other burst up into flight. Sure enough, flying straight towards them from downstream was the eagle! The gulls scattered and circle around until the eagle disappeared in the distance (it flew over My Web Grocer towards St Mikes). 

Peregrines at Rock Point

On April 6, I wrote an email to the Vermont Bird Listserv:

I was out at Rock Point yesterday afternoon when I heard a peregrine falcon! This was exciting enough, but it got even better. I watched it fly out over Apple Tree Bay a couple of times before returning to the cliffs below where we were perched. We then watched it swoop out and hover low and fast over the ice about a half mile out to the fracture line in the ice. Along the fracture (which runs from Lone Rock Point out to Appletree Point) there are a few gaps that have open water.

When the falcon got out to the fracture line it landed and we realized that there was already another peregrine out there. They seemed to be watching the open water, maybe for fish in search of higher oxygen concentration? After a few minutes the same falcon took off and flew back directly towards us, it got to the cliff where we were sitting and started to land before it noticed us. It turned and flew back to the ice, mounted the other bird, mated awkwardly while she slipped on the ice, then flew back about 4 seconds later, as is the economy of mating in birds, before landing at the thrust fault. It continued to shriek, and make return visits to the icy (though never mounted the other bird) for about an hour.

Over the past few months we've been able to watch from a distance the peregrines nest building, hunting off the cliffs, carrying food back to the nest, and now successfully fledging two young falcons! The young are easily distinguished by their incessant screeching and begging. I was able to photograph the dramatic playing of the young as they half-heartedly swooped down at a family of mallards at Mink Bay. 

Signs of spring

It's been an exciting couple o weeks here in Burlington. In addition to the dramatic sighting of a moose in our yard!!, we've had a number of other visitors. This morning a catbird was singing. Yesterday, a house wren. And persistent throughout has been the large flock of juncos and white-throated sparrows (some chipping sparrows mixed in as well). 

Female dark-eyed junco (females have more brown on sides than males and are less bicolor)

Chipping sparrow

The aptly named white-throated sparrow. Song is a whistle-y "Oh Sweet Canada Canada Canada"

Paddling an actual Great Lake

Rough outline of trip (~75 miles total)

What: I cut my teeth lake paddling on Lake Champlain, but by Great Lake standards it just ain't the same as real lake paddling (Lake Champlain has been recognized as a Great Lake by Bill Clinton and later "unrecognized" by Leahy and congress). I went to college in Chicago, but never got to explore it by boat. With my time off I wanted to return to the Windy City and find some of the hidden wildlife popping up along the water's edge.

I drove in to Chicago Monday afternoon. Shortly after arriving I went for a jog with a couple of other reluctantly declared "former" runners, definitely not yet ready to call ourselves joggers. We ran along Lake Michigan's shore and the lake looked angry. It was one of the few times I've ever turned down a post-run swim. The wind was strong and out of the north. The length of the lake runs a little over 300 miles from north to south and, at the southern edge, a long northerly wind can build up powerful and dangerous swells, certainly nothing I'd want to paddle in. I decided to play it by ear on Wednesday - if the wind and water had calmed significantly I would give it a try, otherwise I'd look to paddle elsewhere.

The weather played in my favor and had died down significantly and the wind switched directions and was coming out of the east. The swells continuously shrank and by dusk were a pleasant roll. My primary concern was the daunting conditions around Navy Pier. The tourist boats throw up large wake and threatened to capsize my boat or flat out run me off. I hugged the break wall, where I got to hang out with impossible willows growing out of rock, nesting red-winged blackbirds, and acrobatic barn swallows.

My first stop after leaving 57th St beach was at Montrose Beach on the north shore. I ate a late lunch and rested for a couple of hours (about 15 miles of lake paddling is exhausting). I had some really wonderful conversations with curious folks; a handmade boat is a great conversation starter. People were both surprised at the length of my trip and that I was actually paddling in the lake. On my whole trip I didn't see anyone else paddling a boat they owned (I saw a few folks near the few 1/2 hour rental spots).

The evening section of my first day's paddle was surreal. Dusk swept across the sky in dramatic fashion. To the north a deep purple settled over the distant suburbs, while downtown shifted to a glowing orange from the sodium vapor lights. The waxing moon rose as the sun sank and I had the great fortune of seeing the gulls making their daily migration to roosting spots. As I followed their flight over my shoulder I heard thunder, which turned out to be a fireworks display downtown. Perhaps the ubiquity of gulls renders us blind to these amazing birds, but nobody seems to know or at least write about this daily phenomenon. I enjoyed watching the gulls, both ring-billed and herring, in their elegance diving for fish or hawking insects over the water. Poet and storyteller Martin Prechtel says that each species has its own eloquence that manifests at different times of year. Watching the gulls reminded me of that elegance that seemed so far from the domesticating scavenging I'm more familiar seeing. The hundreds (maybe thousands) of gulls seemed to be heading off in two directions, one to the south (possibly the break wall off the shore from downtown) and one to the east (possibly the water cribs in the lake). Their flight was quiet and mirrored the stillness of the lake. I was transfixed.

I continued on to Evanston and camped out at Northwestern's campus. Sometime in the middle of the night I awoke surrounded by a family of 6 raccoons. They scared what I think was a chipmunk right into me. I threw some sticks at them in my stupor and fell asleep too tired to secure up my food bag. I got lucky and woke to find all of my stuff still in place.

With a sunburn heating my skin and a sore left elbow I ate breakfast, packed up, and heading north on the lake to Lloyd Park beach in Winnetka. I took my time consolidating my gear as I knew the 2 mile portage in the heat of the day to the North Branch of the Chicago River was going to be a long one. The North Branch, in short, is majestic. It is a true refuge for wildlife and wildness in a city that can seem relentlessly urban. Amongst the chorus of catbirds, indigo buntings, and awkward grunts of great blue herons, I felt an older wildness welling up inside me. The chorus of sirens, cars, and trains faded into the background and became part of the noise of the woods. I felt my rhythms slowing. I relished my encounters stalking the young of raccoons out foraging or being graced with the presence of a young buck watching me intently from the banks.

While it feels old, I know it's young. This wildness is enclosed by a relatively immature forest akin to Vermont's riparian corridors and floodplains (e.g. boxelder, silver maples, cottonwoods, black willow). The river bends and winds in what feels like a natural meander. Walking a short distance from the banks in parts reveals old meander scars and tiny oxbow "lakes", though much of the even wilder stretches are heavily channelized and reinforced with rip rap, and I know that the story of how the river got its shape is a long and complicated one, the intersection of glacial geology, massive industrialization at its zenith, and human health concerns.

Because Chicago gets its drinking water from the lake, the Chicago River, which in its native form drained into the river, carried all of our urban effluent into our drinking water supply. In reaction to outbreaks of disease, namely cholear, in 1885, Chicago undertook a massive effort to reverse the flow of the river through a series of locks and dams. The city was then able to send its waste water to the Mississippi River rather than the lake; it's always worse downstream. There are a few tiny dams and a couple larger ones on the North Branch that, along with sections that were reinforced and deepened, increase flow of this section to more efficiently move water out of Chicago. These dams were a minor annoyance on the paddle as though only a foot or so drop required me to get all my stuff out and "portage" across the gap.

Next to the gulls, my favorite part was dusk on the second night. Around the time I reached Addison the green herons and great blue herons started packing it in for the night and heading to bed as the black-crowned night herons came out in droves. There were dozens of them, their eloquence on display. They're as graceful as great blue herons in all the ways GBHs are, and graceful in all the ways they are not. I loved the few encounters I had where they flew right over my boat as if to say hello.I couldn't help but be concerned for all these birds (great blue herons average life expectancy in the wild is about 15 years) eating fish out of these polluted waters.

The sun set lazily and, wearing just shorts, the warm wind was my blanket. My arms and body totally fatigued from the 30 miles of paddling and the 2 mile portage, I dreamily paddled from Belmont to downtown. I felt alone - though not lonely - like a voyeur looking in on a city's dirty secrets. Signs lined the river warning me not to let my skin come in contact with it, the Morton salt plant had left a crystalline patina on the surface of the water, and a weird foam oozed in great swirling patterns somewhere else along the way. Perhaps fear is why people only enjoy the water from the comfort of a brief stop on an overpass. Condos line the water's edge, the windows open to the river, giving glimpses at private worlds, someone on an exercise bike, quite conversations on balconies, the Miami Heat winning the championships. And while so much of me intellectually understood the gravity of the waterway's impaired health, I couldn't help but feel past this and see this totally wild, totally beautiful ecosystem thriving in this big forgotten expanse cutting through the heart of the city

I finished my paddle at Navy Pier sometime around 1am, greeted by the US Coast Guard trolling around asking where my life jacket was. I backtracked a bit and found a boat landing where tour boats park along the channelized edges (the concrete banks are about 10' high in places). I pulled my canoe up next to me as a visual block and camped out for the night, the lights from Navy Pier casting shadows across the water. I felt so safe down in my tiny hideaway. After all, I'd been almost completely undetected for about 30 miles and people rarely deviate from the beaten path so I felt confident I wouldn't be detected. Plus, I planned on getting up with the sun.

Sunset greeted me in full splendor. I ate a hasty breakfast and then portaged my boat 3/4 of a mile south to the Chicago Yacht Club (the lake is blocked by a dam, again to control flow of the Chicago River so it doesn't drain directly into the lake). It was actually frustrated trying to find a publicly accessible boat launch here. All the retention walls are super high and the closest beach was a mile north and out of the way.

The last 7 miles or so of my trip were easily the longest. The warming weather must have come in on a warm front from the south. The winds were stiff and the lake had become choppy. I was totally drained and had to continuously paddle to avoid getting blown backwards. I chose the less wise path of cutting the tangent from Shedd Aquarium rather than hugging the coast to save on distance and risk capsizing. It worked out, but had I tipped I would have been in big trouble. Progress was slow and the winds continuously strengthened to maybe 20 mile an hour perfect headwinds. I pulled into shore exactly where I had started about 48 hours earlier, having traveled a little over 70 miles by water and 4 miles by land. I was totally spent, sunburned, and in a complete state of bliss.


Birding wasn't my primary focus so I probably missed quite a few, but I did keep an informal bird list while out on the trip. With the canopy fully closed now it's hard to identify most species visually so I wish I were a better birder by ear. With the exception of a couple, all of the birds below were identified visually.

Bird List:

1. black-crowned night heron
2. green heron
3. great blue heron
4. turkey vulture
5. ring-billed gull
6. herring gull
7. common tern
8. Caspian tern
9. chimney swift
10. barn swallow
11. cliff swallow
12. tree swallow
13. eastern wood pewee
14. eastern phoebe
15. mute swan
16. Canada goose
17. mallard
18. wood ducks galore!! So many fledglings everywhere
19. pigeon
20. mourning dove
21. American crow
22. blue jay
23. northern cardinal
24. downy woodpecker
25. hairy woodpecker
26. yellow-shafted flicker
27. red-bellied woodpecker
28. European starling
29. common grackle
30. red-winged blackbird
31. catbird
32. American robin
33. house sparrow
34. house finch
35. killdeer
36. belted kingfisher
37. indigo bunting
38. eastern kingbird
39. great-crested flycatcher
40. song sparrow
41. Cooper's hawk
42. red-tailed hawk 
43. red-breasted nuthatch
44. blue-gray gnatcatcher
45. cedar waxwing
46. Baltimore oriole

Yellow bellied sapsucker

Male yellow-bellied sapsucker (females lack the red "beard")

What: One of my students found a yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) that had died near her house (no sign of predation, perhaps flew into a window). The next day we got to watch a sapsucker drilling holes in a bitternut hickory (Carya cordiformis) and licking out the sap. I propped open the bird's mouth with an elderberry twig to show the bristles that line the tongue. Birds can't "suck" like we can from a straw, so having the hairs allows the woodpecker to lick up much more sap than a smooth tongue would be able to. The hairs work via capillary action, which is the ability of water and other liquids to overcome the force of gravity via intermolecular attractive forces to solids. This can be seen readily by holding the tip of a napkin in water and watching the water travel up the napkin. So all that surface area acts as a magnet of sorts and the little birdie can lap up even more liquid.

Ecological notes: Sapsuckers make distinctive horizontal rows of sapwells. It's interesting to note that we had tapped a bitternut hickory and hadn't gotten any flow. The sapsucker showed up just as the sap started dripping into our buckets. While the sapsuckers miss the better flow of maples, they have been recorded utilizing over a thousand different species, so there's plenty for them to go after.

I was also impressed by the incredible sharpness of the claws. I could easily perch the bird on my finger from just one of its claws. It's feet kept getting caught on everything because they were so sharp. Must be an adaptation for gripping a tree as the bird fiercely bangs its head against it while making its sapwells.

Where: Rock Point, Burlington

Bird a day - Blue jay

What: There's a family of 5 or so that moves through this area making a total ruckus. I keep getting my hopes up, thinking that all their alarms are directed at a predator (I've seen a Cooper's hawk nearby on quite a few occasions in the last couple weeks). But every time it's the same: nothing.

Here I couldn't figure out what the bird was doing until I looked at the picture later. Initially it looked like it was peeling bark off the tree and eating it. Turns out it had found a peanut too big to swallow whole and it was tearing it into manageable sizes to swallow. It was gripping it with its feet and ripping up with its head. Pretty neat to see it solve the problem of size.

Where: Silver maple in my yard

Other notes: Tis the season for wildflowers. Skunk cabbage, hepatica, coltsfoot, and squill are all up. Wood frogs eggs are starting to fill the ponds, spring peepers are singing at Shelburne Pond, and buds are starting to bust!

Bird a day - White-breasted nuthatch

What: Perhaps one of my favorite birds. I think I like them so much because of their adorable little tushies, that little red ring around their cloacas is adorable. The photo below is classic nuthatch posture when it feels slightly nervous or when it's looking for greener pastures. They're one of the few birds that can move downwards along a tree's trunk. In the photo above I happened to catch it mid-hop!

Ecological notes: I watched the nuthatches "drumming" on the trees - they seemed to be prying bark off to get at little insects underneath. I watched them on super cold days doing this and wondered how much of their behavior is based on blind luck. Since insects wouldn't be moving around (temperatures where subfreezing) then they couldn't hear them. They'd have to smell them (most birds can't smell), see them (they were peeling the bark off to get underneath where the bugs were), see sign of their presence (like entry holes, feeding sign etc, indicating the birds are awesome trackers), or rely on dumb luck that peeling off enough bark will ultimately yield enough calories to stay warm.

Where: Silver maple in my yard

Bird a Day - Hairy Woodpecker

What: These are a couple of shots of the female hairy woodpecker. For notes on the difference between this little gal and the very very similar looking downy woodpecker, see yesterday's posting. In short (or long), the hairy woodpecker's bill is considerable bigger relative to body size.

Where: The silver maple in my side yard

Other notes: I remember reading Sam Thayer saying that he only wrote about wild edibles that he had tried himself. I really like that perspective, and I was reflecting on what I've included in this blog. A lot of it has been citations of the work of others, stuff that I hadn't observed in person. I think reading this has pushed a lot of my thinking, but it also has substituted for actual experience. While observing the hairy woodpecker feeding on the maple, I realized how little of substance I had to say about this creature and felt bad. I suppose that's my challenge over the coming weeks, to better know the hairy woodpeckers that are my neighbors.

Bird a Day - Downy Woodpecker

What: Female downy woodpecker above. Male shown below, note the visible red blotch on his nape. Sex is pretty easy to determine for most of our woodpeckers. General rule: If it has red on its head it's a male, if not it's female. Beware, as this doesn't always work (as with pileated woodpeckers - both have red on their head).

Hairy woodpeckers (coming tomorrow) can be really difficult to tell the apart from downys. A hairy woodpecker is beefed up downy woodpecker (hairys are about the size of robins, downys are just slightly bigger than titmice). My old roommate, and fantastic naturalist, Emily Stone, used the following mnemonic:

    "What bill??" - downy woodpecker
    "What a bill!!" - hairy woodpecker

Note that the downy has a thin narrow bill shorter than the bird's head is; hairys have thick chunky bills longer than the diameter of the bird's head.

Where: Silver maple in my backyard

Bird a Day - Cardinal

What: We've had cardinals successfully - and unsuccessfully - fledge young in our backyard. This male has been courting a couple of females, so hopefully this will be a "successful" year. Females have the same body shape, but are a waxy yellowish color with dustings of red on the sides. Their songs (and both males and females sing) are simple, but variable. They have that same sweetness to them that the titmouse has, but cardinals tend to sound more like a toy laser gun. Birdie Birdie Birdie Pew Pew Pew Pew.

Where: The silver maple!

Other notes: Their nests, which certainly aren't the tidiest of affairs, are often placed in super shrubby thickets where they have access to lots of cover (which is partly why they like honeysuckle so much). They always use strips of grapevine bark in the outer layers of their nests. Not sure why, perhaps to help conceal their nests from predators. In Medicine Quest Mark Plotkin describes eagles that select medicinal twigs to line their nests with (supported by research from Ohio Wesleyan). I looked up medicinal uses of grapevine bark and couldn't find any references, maybe the cardinals know something we don't?

Birds can't produce red pigment on their own, so in order to display a red plumage a cardinal needs to ingest foods with red in them. The pink of a flamingo is variable with the the amount of brine shrimp and blue-green algae in their diet; the more algae relative to crustaceans, the deeper the pink color. Both of these food sources contain carotenoids, and a redder coat may advertise to potential mates a healthier individual.

Male cardinals need to ingest foods with red pigments to get that brilliant color of theirs. Similarly, the better they are at procuring food the redder they'll be. Cardinals molt in the fall and so their spring coloration is due to what their diet consists of in the fall when they're replacing their feathers. All those fall berries (dogwood, barberry, grape, honeysuckle, etc.) provide the pigmentation the males need to say, "Yup, I'm fit and healthy and don't have a darn bit of trouble feeding myself." Males will also feed females as part of their courtship, as if to say, "And I can feed you to."

Other questions that come up for me:

• Why risk being red when you can just sing? 
• If you're already red to advertise your fitness, then why also sing? 
• If they have similar diets, how do females avoid turning red?
• Given their different colors, what's the difference in predation rates on males vs females?

As I was writing this I thought of an obvious possible explanation for why red is a common pigment among cardinals (and related species in the finch family Fringillidae and grosbeaks, which includes Emberizidae). Members of these two families, as evidenced by their bills, are granivores/frugivores (seed and fruit eaters). Plants advertise when their fruits are ready (which coincides with when the plant is done growing the seed and everything it will need to germinate and begin a new life) by changing colors. Most start green and turn a red, purple, or other color to signify to animals that they can eat the fruits now. The pigments used to signal this are, you guessed it, carotenoids.  Plants readily produce carotenoids to a) protect exposed surfaces from the sun, b) aid in photosynthesis, and c) advertising when fruits are edible. So the birds rely on the plants to tell them when to eat them and the pigments that tell them that to give them their coloration!

Bird a Day - House Finch

What: There's been a house finch singing around my property the past couple of weeks. Here's a shot of the male mid-song. The females have the same patterns on their bodies, but as with other finches (Fringillidae family) and grosbeaks (Emberizidae family), they are a drab brown.

Ecological notes: House finches are more recent "introductions" to the eastern US. According to Cornell's Lab of Ornithology's website, All About Birds, the story goes that they were being sold illegally in pet shops in NYC (can't sell migratory song birds under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918). Fearing prosecution, shop holders released their charges into the wilds of Long Island. They quickly spread out of the city and now cover much of the US (map). In the east, house finches stick more to urban and suburban areas, and in these places have begun replacing the native purple finch, which bears a similar red to the house finch.

Where: My backyard

Bird a day - Titmouse

What: The silver maple has provided me endless entertainment these past couple weeks. We've got a local flock that will swoop through and feed on it for about a half hour before moving on. My room's on the third floor, so I'm more or less "in" the canopy of the tree. While working the other day I snapped some photos of them li'l birdies and will post one species a day this week. The photo I didn't get in time was of a pileated woodpecker! It didn't stay long, which I hope indicates that the tree is in relatively good health.

Bird notes: The little guy above is a male tufted titmouse. They're similar in a lot of ways to black-capped chickadees, but their alarm calls are a much raspier: phweeet phweeet phweeet! and their songs a very sweet "Peter Peter Peter" akin to a cardinal (so much so it has caused much confusion for me). They've got an adorable little crest, slaty blue back, orange sides, and a white belly. There's a pair in this flock.

Where: My backyard

Starling murmuration

    What: On Friday, Brian, Meryl, Julia, Cecily and I went down to Snake Mountain for my sister's birthday. On the way back, we spotted a murmuration of starlings at the intersection of Mountain Rd and Rte 17 in Addison. 

We were mesmerized. Even watching the video, I kind of just sink into this lull where time dissipates. My naturalist mind drifts in and out, and I occasionally puzzle through how and why these brilliantly colored birds congregate in such a way, but my mind drifts just as quickly back into the gentle rhythms of the birds moving like fish through the sky. It's one of the most dramatic and muted winter events. Perhaps their banality (there are about 2/3 as many starlings as people in the United States) makes something like this easier to ignore.

Ecological notes: We watched them flying endlessly back and forth in these beautiful organic, fluid streams for about 45 minutes. The smaller flocks would drift in and out of one another, occasionally number in the 400-600 range, then splinter back into groups of 20-100. Very rarely would a starling be flying by itself. One of the more beautiful moments was when a flock would fly over the cattle barn, with a smaller group slipping off into the barn to roost. By the time we left (5pm) there was a cacophonous roar coming from the thousands of starlings in to roost for the night.

It seems like energy conservation is particularly important during the winter, and so this seemingly extravagant display appeared out of place. My initial guesses felt off - could they be socializing? having fun? bonding? vying for rank? Crows roost in such large numbers to stay warm, to socialize, and as I forgot while looking at the starlings, to avoid death by owl. It wasn't until a Cooper's hawk showed up that it started to make sense. When the starlings flap their wings it's visually confusing, and makes it hard to focus on any one bird. They constantly shift directions, in near perfect unison, and as they do their bodies go from fat round silhouettes, to thin slivers barely visibly against the flat light. The Cooper's hawk was there nearly as long as we were and made about a dozen attempts at catching a starling, each time returning to apex of the roof empty taloned.

I doubt it's as simple as predator avoidance (this works similar to dazzle camouflage which I wrote about in my post on locusts). The grace and elegance of the birds flying has it's own peace and quieting energy. Their movements etched these soft liquid lines in the still dusk air of winter, and it just felt good to be in their presence. Maybe it's the goodnight story of the starling. Maybe they do it simply because it's beautiful - like the revival chorus of songbirds in August, or the midnight singing of the hermit thrush, or the fall peeping of the spring peepers. Whatever the reason it was another way to fall in love with winter.

Where: Addison, VT. There's a considerable number of cows in that area (here's a link to where we saw the starlings).

Other notes: My sister, Meryl, is a fantastic film maker and cut together the video from footage she shot with her iPhone. For more of her work, visit: http://www.meryloconnor.com/

Hummingbirds

Female ruby-throated hummingbird (note white tips on tail)

Visiting purple loosestrife

What: The second half of the last post is a delightfully little bundle of energy! Ryan and I had headed down to the powerlines after Jon told us about how many hummingbirds there were. I have been waiting for the spotted jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) to blossom, as each summer around mid/late August we get a flush of ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) feeding on the nectar.

Ecological notes: Any hummingbird gardening guide lists jewelweed as a must (apparently ruby throated hummingbirds prefer spotted jewelweed to yellow jewelweed, I. pallida). Bumblebees and some butterflies also visit jewelweed flowers, but they're not nearly as effective at pollinating the plant, indicating that an evolutionary relationship might exist between the morphology of the flower and the feeding behavior of hummingbirds. I found some interesting notes about the relationship between the two, with unsupported claims that the weak petiole of the flower allows the plant to bend away from the hummingbird's advances, thus protecting the plant's ovaries from the long sharp piercing bill of the bird. Problem is that the complex shape of the flower places the ovaries at the back of the flower, well out of reach of the bird.

Research out of UMass Amherst indicate another, more likely possibility. Jewelweed flowers have flexible pedicels (stems) that allow the flower to bend readily. When feeding, hummingbirds flick out their tongue to slurp out the nectar. Each time the bird does so the weak pedicel allows the flower to recoil back in response and before flapping back forward. As it springs forward the flower dusts its pollen across the upper bill of the bird. It all happens in a brief second, so it's difficult to observe, but the tight relationship is enough to ensure successful pollination. To test this relationship, the researchers immobilized some flowers by wrapping wire around their pedicels. The rigid flowers were far easier for the hummingbirds to suck nectar from (visits were 25% shorter to these flowers), but significantly decreased pollen transfer (by about 50%). They also found that the stems of the flower didn't move when visited by bees, indicating that this is indeed an adaptation specific to hummingbird foraging behavior.

According to the researchers, there may also be a link between the shape/size of the spur (the hook at the back of the flower) and which pollinators (bees vs. birds) go after the individual flower.

Where: Centennial Woods, powerline

Other notes: Summer is coming to an end - you can feel the first crisp coolness of the night air. Queen Anne's lace is going to seed, morning glories and bind weed flowers are out in full force, fruits are ripening (go harvest wild grapes!), Jerusalem artichoke is flowering, and the birds are getting antsy ready to head south.

Late season nesting

What: Last week I spotted a female robin (Turdus migratorius) bouncing around in the slippery elm (Ulmus rubra) at the corner of my house. It was so neat to watch because the bird almost had an architectural eye when looking at the tree. I imagined it looking at angles of branches, sturdiness of limbs, relative hiddenness of the entryway access to food and water. She investigated for quite awhile, bouncing every so often to a new vantage point to reassess the quality of her new domicile. I had followed her to the spot because I heard a male robin singing and I hadn't heard one in a while. When I went to investigate I saw the female in my driveway picking up nesting material and then dropping it (female robins alone build the nest and incubate the eggs). It was like she was doing a full inspection of the territory for quality of supplies and location. This week I checked in again on her progress and she is now sitting on some eggs (not sure how many yet, will report back later).

Robins nest made mostly of mud with
twigs, grass, and bark strips (Ruby Mtns, Nevada)

Ecological notes: Last year a pair nested on the light outside our neighbor's door, the year prior they nested on the floodlight on my garage and fledged three young. I was bummed this year when we didn't have any nesting robins for most of the spring. What a treat though to have this pair, and so late in the year too. Most birds are done nesting by now and have started flocking together in larger groups (Monday I spotted about 50 geese honking and flying towards the lake).

Robins can have two to three clutches in a year, so I'm assuming that this is the second or third for this female this year. In general male robins are a darker gray, with a darker patch of slate on top of their heads, females tend to be browner. Lots of sources I read just parrot other sources, so I don't know how reliable they are. Apparently males have more robust streaks on their throats than females, but I don't know how reliable this is since it's a relative comparison. I'm in out of town right now (the photos are a couple days old), but when I get back I'm excited to look closer at their throats. Since the females are the only ones that sit on the eggs, that should be a pretty easy thing to study. The one sitting on the  Males are definitely the only ones that sing though.

Where: My backyard

Other notes: Robins are one of three types of birds we have that use mud to build their nests, phoebes and swallows being the other two in Vermont. I've watched a robin dip a stick in mud and carry it to the nesting site. You can see in the above photo that the nest also incorporates twigs, grass, and strips of plastic. Phoebe and barn swallows are pictured below:

Phoebe nest made primarily of moss, (Shelburne Farms)

Barn swallow nest made mostly of mud and grass (Bread and Butter Farm)

A gaggle of nouns

A deer stopping for water in the 90 degree heat

Where: Winooski River (still). Zac and I just got back from another paddling adventure to complete my last trip from Bolton to Salmon Hole, this week from Salmon to Skinny Pancake. Another perfect day of paddling!

An outburst of water striders

Other notes: This time of year has the most overlap across life stages for animals. You may have noticed not just one crow perusing the lawn for food, but a mini-flock of 4 or 5, or a sudden flush of 30 robins sweeping through a honey suckle thicket. As nesting season winds its way down (com on goldfinches, hurry up and finish nesting already), lots of family groups are out and about feeding, the males are less territorial trading the stress of land disputes for the comfort of extra sets of eyes to be vigilant. It was hard enough on the trip to identify the many different species of birds, flowers, and trees I was passing by. Throw into the mix the different names for males, females, juveniles, and even collective nouns, and I was a bit over my head trying to keep it all straight. I got curious about what the different names for groups of different animals might be (and is there a term for a herd of cottonwoods? a "stand" is so boring, "grove" gets better, but there's a whole world of opportunity here).

  

A scuttling of mergansers

A motoring of ducklings

  

A ring of ring-bills

A dastardly of F-16s

I've long been fascinated by names and the naming of things. I was first introduced to the quirks of latin names by my love of gray squirrels, and indeed Sciurus carolinensis was the first scientific name I learned. Turns out Sciurus derives from the Greek words skia (shade) and uros (tail). The Greeks must have thought that squirrels their tails much like one might find respite from summer heat under the cover of a parasol. They were wrong, but thanks to the convention of naming things, their error is preserved in our scientific lexicon.

A flapping of kingfishers

Contemporary naturalists seem to have a certain fondness for collective nouns used to describe groups of animals. Being able to call a flock of crows a murder, starlings a murmuration, or vultures a committee is a sure sign of esoteric adeptness when it comes to being naturalist. It's like the painfully obvious difference (to those in the know) between a tourist ("Bar" for Barre, "Shar-let" for Charlotte) from a Vermonter ("Bare-ee", "Shar-lot"). There is delight, beyond proving ones worth in the often ridiculous and colorful phrases. Some are probably grounded in some sense of the animal's natural history, while others, it appears, are from the fanciful imagination of the 15th century British author Dame Juliana Berners, or at least were first recorded by her. She was the prioress of a nunnery, where she kept up her passion and dedication to fishing, hunting, and other outdoor pursuits. Her book, The Boke of St Albans, is damn near impossible to read (much like Canterbury Tales). It includes three sections - on falconry, hunting, and heraldry. In her section on hunting she publishes a lengthy list (3 pages worth!!) of collective nouns. The most famous to make it from her pen to our vernacular is murder of crows, but the rest are just as inventive.

A lonesome of bald eagle

It might be easy to chalk the lengthy list up to the poetic musings of one more skilled in writing than shooting, but I think Berners, like other hunters, had stories that got bigger and bigger with time: "I once caught a fish th-------------------------is big." I imagine that sport hunting was a hobby for the finer and fancier of folks, a well-educated bunch that would lounge around the hearth in their parlors recounting hunting tales from days of yore. "If you think today was good, you should've been here yesterday, we caught a suit of mallards, a muster of peacocks, a covey of partridges, and a bevy of girls."

A hawking of kingbirds

Language reflects what's important to the culture that uses it. Thus, the Yup'ik Eskimos, for example, use the word kanevvluk for fine snow particles, natquik for drifting snow, aniu for snow on the ground, and have other distinct lexemes (like a root word) for variations of snow. So if your culture values hunting and the pride that comes with it you might expect a distinct lexicon to accompany it, much like any subculture develops its own language to describe shredding the gnar, sick pow-pow, etc.

An awkwardness of herons

Since her writing, many more collective nouns have sprung up, some useful and serious, others amusing and useless (a clutch of auto mechanics). In the captions for each picture, I've thrown my hat into the ring, vying for a few new collective nouns.

A flotsam of jetsam

As a side note, the publishing of Boke of St Albans made Berner the first published woman in England.

Berner's list of collective nouns in its original format