4:30-6:15; 3/24/19; golf course south of UVM; clear skies, 40ºF, low wind; urban forest edge mix
Today, Nigel and I went to the golf course south of campus to see what we could find. Upon arriving, we immediately heard the call of 2-3 Northern Cardinals. Since we never found the one from the last outing, we were keen on finding this one. Long story short, we did; but ran into a couple other species before. The first birds we noticed were robins–everywhere we looked, there had to be a pair of them perched on a branch. AND they were singing, always a constant flow of notes during our visit. Since it's early spring, I would assume that the calls we heard were males trying to find a mate and if it wasn't, then the calls were most likely flocking announcements between groups for possible intruders or food.
Then Nigel pointed out the Hairy Woodpecker that was hanging out, drilling some holes into a tree. When observed, she (due to the lack of the red splotch on the head) didn't interact much with any of the other birds. She did her thing and eventually left, flying off who knows where. My best guess is that she's looking for food (beetles, ants or other insects).
Shortly after, we located the cardinal and man he was beautiful. He was calling back and forth with 2 other individuals (we couldn't get a visual on them) and I think it was more of a mating call. It is spring after all.
Now, the male cardinal's coloring stands out from the rest of the environment, not only making it easy for us humans to see but predators as well. However, today it didn't seem that there were many predators in the air (that we couldn't see) and it was most likely mating displays to the females. In comparison, starlings are black and speckled with white circles, which will change darker and glossier as the season goes on. The darker pattern would better camouflage the starling than the bright contrasting red that the cardinal has.
Now at the end, we were walking back and found a little group of black-capped chickadees; however, I had given the camera to Nigel for the time being and he was unable to take any usable photos. BUT, we were able to complete the little activity and practice our "pish" calls. After doing a couple, we noticed that the chickadees were liveliar both in sound and noise. In a songbird context, I believe that this response stems from the "pishing" sound mimicking a group alarm call in response to a predator. Now this group would most likely be a multitude of species, not limited to any singular taxa.
Today's search was a success. We found a cardinal and even spotted a noisy European Starling on a gorgeous day.
–AR
3 of them were calling each other
a little hard to tell, but the speckled pattern on the back
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