Suet

Winter is the time to feed the birds. Dependent on reliable food sources like cherry trees, winter berries, and open fields - feeders also provide winter birds with an important food store. Suet in particular can make for good fodder. Most often purchased as a store bought “cake” it is possible to get fresh suet from your butcher. If dealing with a cow’s kidney fat doesn’t sound like a fun family holiday craft idea purchase a metal cage and form fitted suet cake from any hardware, animal feed, or bird store. These cakes are often filled with dried seeds, nuts, or fruit and are easily hung from a tree branch or empty flower pot hanger. Unlike many seeds, suet is less attractive to squirrels and can be left without much worry that a grey, red, or little stripper will clean you out in one sitting. Among the birds that will visit a suet cage are woodpeckers, nuthatches, kinglets, bluebirds, wrens, robins, starlings, and if you’re lucky a brown creeper. Woodpeckers who don’t eat seeds are an exciting addition to the feeder station when suet is provided. Remember suet is animal fat and should only be offered in cold weather when there is no chance of softening or spoiling which is not only disgusting but also a health risk for the birds. Remember too that birds will rely on you as a food source and while November and December is a good time to start feeding it is important that you stay consistent until spring. Serve the fat!

Snowy days

Snowy owls show up each winter in varying amounts, from tons to none. Depending on some elegant curve of lemming populations, mean temperatures, and good luck these owls "irrupt" from the great white north downwards into the lower 48. In 2011 we saw many of them across the country but not a lot here in New England. 2012 was a quiet year for the "ermine owl," with only scattered records from barrier beaches like Duxbury, MA and Salisbury, NH. Weighing a mere 3-4 lbs, these birds sit around two feet high. Fiercely white they would more likely be confused for a Clorox bleach bottle washed ashore than any gull. But they're size is formidable and they can easily kill ducks and geese as well as Boeing 747s. 

To find a snowy owl go to your local tundra: long beaches, airports, or large farm fields. Or for warmer views visit ebird.org

Nov - Dec 2012

Nov - Dec 11th 2013

tree sparrow

Like the dark-eyed junco and white-throated sparrow the american tree sparrow appears in New England with the first frost and replaces a similar looking summer resident, the chipping sparrow. The tree sparrow is a tight packed bird, with handsome slate gray and cinnamon stripes on the face. With a dull grey chest marked by a single dark spot this sparrow can often be identified by using the time of year. Consider this data from ebird.org comparing the reported observation of tree sparrows and chipping sparrows in Massachusetts over the course of a single year.

Besides a three week period in April and November notice how the arrival and departure of the chipping sparrow (green line) is in direct correlation with the departure and arrival of the tree sparrow (orange line). This type of seasonal movement is an important clue in identifying a bird and is often only learned through personal observation or anecdote.



Louis Agassiz Fuertes

The (poorly named) tree sparrow is most often found in open fields and low brush. They will visit feeders, though often pick seeds from the ground  and seem to dart around nervously, like an Englishman trying to order pastrami at a New York deli. Listen for the choral of rainy, crystalline “chwee” notes given by groups of these New England sparrows.

Winter bird feeding – the seed formerly known as thistle

Winter bird feeding is a wonderful way to bring some life back to a bleak mid-winter back yard. When people think about bird feeders they usually picture a cylindrical or house type feeder designed for mixed seed of millet, sunflower, and cracked wheat but there are some alternatives. In winter especially, when the softies have left for Florida and Central America, many of the hardy birds are attracted to suet and thistle. Suet (rendered beef fat) is a delicacy to woodpeckers, wrens, and nuthatch while thistle seeds is relished by winter finches like the American goldfinch, House and Purple finch, Pine siskin, and if you’re lucky Common redpoll or Evening grosbeak. The fine, slippery, dark grains often called thistle seeds are actually an Ethiopian seed called Nyjer. Nyjer seed is oily and rich in protein but its demure size makes a standard feeder or ground feeding impossible. The solution is easy. The thistle “sock” is a nylon mesh tube that can be filled with seed, allowing finches to pull out individual seeds as they would naturally from a grain of grass or flower. Thistle sock feeders can be purchased in any hardware, tack, or bird store.  While hanging a thistle sock may not prove to be an instant buffet, over time and in these harsh winter conditions, goldfinches will begin to appear in small flocks, clinging to all sides of the feeder to feast on the thin seeds. Bare broken branches or fallen bows of pine and fir, even a passé Christmas tree can be propped up in an empty planter next to a feeder giving the birds a place to hide, rest, and shell seeds. It is recommended that feeders be hung a minimum of 10 feet away from all windows.

Merry Christmas

Pied Beauty


Glory be to God for dappled things —
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles in all stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

 
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Santa's sleigh ride as pulled by seven tiny terns

American Coot

“Coot” 1. A dark-gray water dwelling bird resembling a duck 2. A foolish old man

This funny, quarrelsome, diving water bird that frequents ponds and wetlands is the American Coot. Not actually a duck, the coot is more closely related to a Rail. With a sleek blue-black back (appearing dark at a distance) that coot paddles and dives in freshwater, swimming with its signature head trust motion like a wind-up toy. The Coot is one of the most rewarding discoveries for the beginner birdwatcher because it lends itself to identification even at distance and often without the help of binoculars. Watch for the funny motion of these birds, neck thrusting, head held forward, and squat body. Though often feeding amongst other ducks Coots lack the curvy shape of a duck and, like some species of ducks, feeds by diving under water to catch small fish, crustaceans, or to forage for aquatic plants. Keep an eye on your local wetland and you may turn up one of these foolish old men.

Each winter Snowy owls appear out of the arctic drift like Santa Claus part illusion part myth. Snowy owls are “irruptive” migrations following the booms and shortages of prey. Summer tundra nesters, these diurnal hunters find tiny breaks in our hardwood forests, little postcards of home in the form of airstrips, beach dunes, and frozen saltwater marshes. These pockets of “tundra” are enough and from December to February Snowy owls can be found as far south as long island and coastal New Jersey. In New England locations like Duxbury and Salisbury Beaches, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, and even Logan Airport are good locations to find “Snowies”. Locating these amazing birds can be tricky. Patience and good spotting scope help. Owls like flat, open country but often hunt from a top a rise like a fence post, hummock, large boulder, or even small duck hunting blind. When the snow comes and ice chunks push up from the river the task gets harder but in the cold, drier, pre-snow months of November and December the only confusion will be gulls and the stray bleach bottles (commonly used as a bailer with local boaters). Seeing one of these massive birds is like seeing a fierce and foreign invader; even while standing on the top floor of the short term airport parking lot Snowies serve as a reminder that wilderness and wildness are not synonymous. 

Fallen Willow Snowy Owl by Robert Bateman

The Snowy Owls have arrived

View Snowy Owls in the Upper US and Canada, 2011-12 in a larger map