Gift of the Ice Storm

Winter Storm Landon's been an absolute brute. Here in southeast Ohio, it's dumped many inches of cold rain which, thank goodness, was rain and not snow. Thoroughly sick of moving through, dealing with, shoveling, and stumbling around in snow! The rain washed away almost all of the 16" of snow that had fallen over the last few weeks.  Thing is, it was still raining hard as February 3 turned to night, and the birds went to bed damp. Huddling in their roost cavities or in the cover of tree branches, those wet feathers froze to the substrate around them. 

So on wakeup, this white-breasted nuthatch was doubtless frozen to the inside of his cavity. His wet upper tail coverts and at least one wing feather were stuck. As he struggled to get free, they were pulled out. But the ice kept them glued to his tail all day long. 

What you see, then, is this weird plume-tailed variant of a white- breasted nuthatch. The odd shape of the feathers owes to the fact that upper tail coverts are quite long, running down the back and over the top of the tail. The black one is a wing feather, though. So he was pretty good and stuck--wing feathers are a lot harder to pull out than coverts or tail feathers-- but he got out.

Here's an unfortunate mourning dove who is wearing her tail on her wing. Rats. 

Long pointed tails are nice for maneuverability in flight (and dove flight is amongst the speediest around), but they're a liability in ice storms. 

Last but not least, my dear Bob the hand-raised song sparrow is back to looking like a ping-pong ball. Dang it!! 

Yes, he's still here with me, and I'm so glad of that. Released in September at 27 days of age, he's hanging in there, almost five months later!  I know he'll be well-fed through whatever the winter of 2022 throws at us. But dang. Ice storms--I hate them, and not because I usually lose power. I hate them because they're so tough on the wildlife I love. 

Losing a tail isn't quite as bad as it looks. A brush-loving species like a song sparrow can adapt. Even a mourning dove can fly just fine without a tail. It's harder, for sure, but they survive. And they should have a decent new tail within three weeks. Since the feathers were pulled out, the empty follicles are already gathering themselves to make more. 

I corresponded today with a kind woman from Athens Ohio who has five turkey vultures hanging around her backyard. Like us farther east, they are encased in ice after a rainy night that turned frigid. I explained that grounded turkey vultures are a thing in ice storms; that they cannot fly if their feathers are icy, and there are no thermals to give them lift. She and her husband thawed some chicken and offered it to the birds. Interesting twist: they have a 5' chain link fence around their yard, and the vultures are on the ground, inside the fence. Coincidence? I think not. If a white-tailed deer knows enough to jump into a fenced backyard to give birth (and they do!), I submit that a turkey vulture knows enough to know it's safer in a fenced yard than outside it. Something to think about, something to ponder. 

As I shot photos of my suffering songbirds, it occurred to me that there might be some cavity-roosters in my bluebird boxes in trouble. Could some have gone in to roost last night, wet, and not come back out? A little voice was tugging my sleeve. Go check. Go check. See if anyone is in need.

So I packed a nylon drawstring bag (for weak cold birds) and a screwdriver (to open the boxes), called Curtis Loew, and set out to the meadow to check some boxes. I heard a coyote bark several times nearby and stopped in my tracks. Curtis stopped, too, and let out one short, sharp bark. 

Hey. I know you're here. This is me, Curtis. 

I saw him before Curtis did. He was sitting out beyond the big pine, watching us. Wow. That is interesting. Coyotes are usually just shadows disappearing. Not this one.

I called Curtis to me, and he was only too happy to run back with me to the house. A romantic might think the coyote just wanted to play in the snow, but I wasn't about to offer my best boy for an experiment, or my heart for more breaking. I left my grateful and sensible Curtis inside and grabbed my big Canon rig. When I came out the back door, the coyote was still sitting out there, and that's how I got that first photo, from my deck. 

Do you see that sumac clump in the left foreground? That's how I got the rest of the photos. I snuck along the back of the house, ducked behind the low spruce by my fishpond, lined myself up with that clump of sumac, and walked in a straight, unwavering line toward the animal, staying always behind the thickest part of the shrub. 

I trusted he was still there, but I never took the chance of exposing myself. I just kept walking. I wasn't going to blow my cover just to see if he was waiting there.

 Finally I got to the sumac clump and peeked through the branches to catch sight of the animal, who had moved off to the side.

And look where he's sitting. That's the iron fence around Bill's grave, and the big Virginia pine that stands by it. Ice has brought its boughs to the ground. 

Though I stayed mostly behind the sumac clump, I'm sure the coyote knew I was there.

After all, he'd been watching me. 

I knew it was a male when I enlarged this photo. Click on it and you'll see, too.

The size of his tracks alone suggested a male.

It was a big coyote. The front pawprint shown here was 2 7/8" from heel to toe.

The hind paw (below)  is narrower, and has a smaller heel than the front paw.

Here is the imprint where he had been sitting when I first spotted him. 

And here he is loping along. There's a 16" span between the pawprints. 

After watching me for awhile, he stood up and turned to leave. What a long neck he has! 

He stood for a moment, looking. It was moving to make contact with a wild creature, here in this place I come visit every day. The way he looked back at me sent a feeling through me, something benign and wondering, not threatening. 

I guess this is the best shot. He was so red against the ice and snow, so warm. I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered why he and his pack have spared Curtis these past three years. If they'd wanted him dead, they've had a million chances to do it.

For now, and I hope for as long as Curtis lives, there is peace, and this beautiful red wild one, walking easily through the snow. 

All this, within sight of the house, with the ice still dripping off the sumac from last night. 

Ice storms are hard, but this one brought me a gift.

Here is where he melted back into the woods.

There were no birds trapped in my boxes--I checked.

There was just the little voice, telling me to go out and help,

the gift,

 and the silence when he had left.

 

Meet the Mint Humbug

Pssst. Fall migration is in full swing. While you're asleep, warblers by the hundreds and thousands are slipping through the treetops, silently making their way toward Central America. Getting out before the frost comes, giving themselves plenty of time to travel in night skies, dropping down to forage in insect-laden leaves at daybreak. It's Fat City out there, the best time to travel, when caterpillars and crickets and spiders and aphids are everywhere. 

When there are redstarts on the roof, the move is on. You hear their lisping calls in the sky each morning. Watch the trees, see them cartwheeling through.

This little immature female black and white warbler has eaten her share of spiders, I am certain. She's clinging to the trunk of a golden Chamaecyparis right outside my studio window. If she recalls a nuthatch in her stance, that's no accident. This is the warbler who lives like a nuthatch.

She sticks close to the trunk of the tree, peering at the bark and limbs for anything crawling there. Her Latin name: Mniotilta varia, means "varied (striped) moss-plucker." Mniotilta is a monotypic genus, meaning there's only one species in it--this one. Though this bird mostly specializes on bark, it will often glean foliage. All birds are opportunists.

In this way, warblers carve up the habitat, each taking its niche within the same forest. If I remember anything from my ecology courses in college, I remember being taught to see forest birds, especially warblers, as a guild, with each one specializing in combing different parts of the tree. This is how Nature packs the forest with so many birds. If they all foraged the same way, there wouldn't be room for them all. So some take the crowns, some the shrubbery; some forage on the tops of the leaves, and some the bottoms. 

Black and white warblers spend a lot of time hanging head-down and hitching around on the bark and limbs. As such, they have strong legs and large feet.

The hallux, or hind toe, is particularly long and robust, with a large hooked claw from which the bird can hang. Much like a nuthatch's foot. Isn't that cool? From Birds of the World account by John Kricher: 

Mniotilta is treated as monotypic because of morphological adaptations for vertical (tree trunk) foraging (Parkes 1978), adaptations that include an elongated hallux, roughly as long as the tarsus (Ridgway 1902). 

Translated, that means that the hind toe of this bird is nearly as long as its leg! Check out that feature on this white-breasted nuthatch, also shot from my studio window:

Isn't it neat to see the congruencies of behavior, coloration and structure in these two unrelated species, based on the similarity in how they make their living? Convergent evolution, y'all. It makes the world go around.

Disruptive coloration, black and white striations resembling tree bark, help break up the bird's form as it works the bark. Even the undertail coverts are spotted. I noticed that this young female's nails are a fetching golden color. Now I want to check every black and white warbler to see if that color stays into adulthood. Look at those golden grappling hooks! 

From my friend John Kricher's account in Birds of the World (formerly Birds of North America), I learned that the "distal toepads (are) usually notched, a possible adaptation for bark foraging (Clark 1973b)" Blowing up my photo, I see a teeny weeny notch just anterior to the fattest part of the big toe pad. Do you?

Nice to have a black-and-white warbler so close that you can grab a photo of the notches in its distal toepads!

The black-and-white warbler is famous as a vagrant, showing up somewhat regularly in fall in Britain and Ireland. You can imagine how that thrills European birders, who are accustomed to waxing poetic about the drabbest of their hopelessly drab warblers. When you've been rhapsodizing about birds that look like this...

Great Reed Warbler, Wikipedia Commons. A lovely bird, but no Mint Humbug.

...imagine THIS striped beauty showing up, knocking everyone's damp woolen socks off.

Ah, Facebook. Beneath one photo I posted there, I got this comment from Megan Crewe, a bird tour leader for Field Guides, Inc: 

"Did you know that the British birders' nickname for these little sprites is "Mint Humbug"? That's a black-and-white peppermint candy here."

                                      Naturally, I had to check and see why...Waah hahaha!!!

Leave it to the British to come up with such a perfectly droll name for our gorgeous warbler. Mint Humbug. I can see them, whispering in code, so the rarity-seeking throng can't hear. "Psst. Mint Humbug, working a large beech, corner of Gloucester and Wembly, still there as of 1400 hours Tuesday." Thank you for that smile, Megan!!

I am delighted to say that these little darlings breed in my southeast Ohio forest. In the spring of 2020, rainy, cold and wet as it was, I watched a pair constructing a nest in the newly-cleared farthest reach, among the black maples. They were tucking wads of bark-fluff and moss at the base of tree trunk. What a weird place for a warbler nest, but then black-and-white warblers are among the weirdest of warblers. Ground nesters--with all these chipmunks and snakes and raccoons...arrrgh. Yet somehow they persist.  I never knew if the 2020 nest was successful; I was not about to walk up to it and lead predators there. Plus, I was too busy feeding starving migrants and bluebirds that awful, freezing cold, rainy May. The black-and-whites were back in 2021, voicing their squeaky-wheel song in the tulip grove just off the lower path in the orchard,  and though I rarely caught so much as a glimpse of them, that squeaky song made me smile so big. Knowing they were there was everything.

I'd love to think this little gal was hatched here, but in the fall, one never knows. The black-and-whites and all the other warblers are streaming through now. Go out, willya, and catch the show. 

Recommended Citation

 Kricher, J. C. (2020). Black-and-white Warbler (Mniotilta varia), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (A. F. Poole, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.bawwar.01

 

The Best Thing I've Ever Bought

You know that good feeling you get when you find something that WORKS? It may not be expensive or particularly beautiful, but it just WORKS.

I was reading galleys for Bird Watcher's Digest, which I've been doing since about 1991 in my position as Contributing Editor. I read the copy for science accuracy as well as flow and pesky typos. So, if somebody's written an article about their trip to Costa Rica, and they mention seeing a seriema,

lifted from Wikipedia.org

I'll go 

THERE ARE NO SERIEMAS IN COSTA RICA 

in big red letters in the margin. 

That kind of thing.

I happened upon a column called "My Way: The Water Bowl" in the Jan/Feb 2015 issue. It was by BWD subscriber Lorna McKerness. A resident of Alberta, Canada, she's faced with below-freezing temperatures for much of the year, and she'd hit upon the idea of using a heated dog water bowl as a year-round bird bath. She had tried any number of commercial products, but they were often very expensive and lasted little more than a year in those punishing environs. In the article, she said she was at the feed store buying two more, and the woman behind her in line added a heated dog water bowl to her order, too. That made Lorna happy.

Within a day or two of reading that, I found myself in the feed store, as I often do, and I was in the process of buying several hundred pounds of fancy food for the birds I adore, so that none would go hungry

and I remembered Ms. McKerness' piece, and lo and behold, down on the lowest shelf around the corner I found my next purchase.

It comes in green or swimming-pool blue. Neither of which would be colors I'd choose, but hey. The point in the dead of winter is not necessarily beauty. It's providing open water for thirsty birds.

All I'd have to do is plug it in and run an outdoor extension cord to a GFCI-equipped outdoor outlet. I could do that. I'd put it right where the (frost-vulnerable) Magnificent Bird Spa reigns supreme in warmer temperatures.

The price was right: $22.99. I grabbed one.

That same afternoon, the feeders filled up with pine siskins

and a pretty yellow-trimmed pine siskin was the first taker on the new bowl! 

Pine siskins are big drinkers.

As you can see, I've stacked three big flat rocks in the bowl to make a flat, level surface for a bird to stand on should it wish to bathe. I'd had my doubts about the slippery plastic as a friendly perching surface, but the siskin didn't hesitate. He was thirsty. 

Since installing it November 3, 2014, I've had the best time documenting the heated dog dish's inaugural winter. Herewith follows a gallery of ugly photos of beautiful birds slaking their thirst.

American goldfinches:

A pair of bathing house sparrows. Here you can see the coil-protected cord.

A tufted titmouse drinks. We're having a banner year for TUTI's.

A female white-breasted nuthatch, with her shadow-grey cap, appreciates the flat rock for perching. She has very long toenails and doesn't like the slippery plastic.

One of the very first visitors to the new bowl was Peg, a blue jay of whom I've grown very fond.

Peg has but one usable leg (you can see her useless right leg dangling). I'll tell her story in another post dedicated to her. Seeing her getting fresh water in freezing temperatures makes me feel good. 

I was on the phone with Bill, who was calling from Uganda, when a yellow-shafted flicker hopped up to the bowl! We hurriedly ended the conversation so I could document this spectacular visitor.

 Oh how I love a flicker. Probably my favorite bird to paint of all. This is a girl. No black moustache. Please appreciate those googly eyes all over her breast and belly. Swoon.

As you might have surmised, I am totally in love with my ugly green heated dog bowl, and I dream of manufacturing something similar, but more beautiful--rock-colored, rock-shaped.  I'll say this--with its simple round reservoir and smooth surfaces, it's a snap to clean and refill--the work of a minute. I just bring a bucket of hot water out, give it a little scrub, then rinse it and the rocks and refill. Maybe it doesn't need beautification. The birds do that. Maybe I need to stick to writing about them and painting them.

I am not the only one who likes watching the birds and chipmunks use the heated dish. (Yes, this post is from 2015, when I had Chet Baker stealing my seat each time I got up. I miss The Bacon.)

Now the ante's upped. I'm going for more and more thrilling birds. Managed to snap only the male, but for a fleeting moment a pair of eastern bluebirds graced the bowl. I just know I'll get a flock on some warm winter day...

If I've given you something you can use in this post, something that's not necessarily beautiful, but that WORKS, that makes me happy. But what would make me happier is your subscribing to BWD, where I've found Lorna's article and so many more useful, informative and awesome articles over the 44 years I've been associated with it. It's a print magazine you can hold in your hands, and also available digitally. With its rebirth in July, 2022, it's now full-sized and more beautiful and informative than ever. I am Advising Editor and I write a column and usually something else for each issue, as well as contributing art for its pages. 

Maybe it'll be the best thing you've ever bought.

Click here to learn more and subscribe.