A Spring Head-dress and a Heart-stopping Thrush

This female northern cardinal visiting the bird bath for a drink gave me my first belly laugh of the day.     

Her plumes on her crest stood up like flames in the wind.  Despite the winter-y blast of heavy snow in the mid-western states, we're having mild temperatures and blustery pre-March winds in Tennessee.  And if that weren't enough to hint of spring, birds are showing signs of spring molting.  Just twelve days ago, I snapped the image below, of a female cardinal in the snow.  She was fluffed and warm in her thick winter plumage.   But in the days since, we've had more moderate weather with some days reaching as high as the 70's F.

My Atlas of the Breeding Bird of Tennessee says, "In late February and March, cardinals form stable, monogamous pair bonds. Both the male and female defend the territory with song, displays, and mild combat."   Females pick the nest site usually in April but as early as mid-March, meaning that the tolerance of communal winter foraging is about to end, replaced by freshened spring plumage and territorial attitudes.

Along with the tattered and comical appearance of her crest, feathers have molted around this cardinal's face. New feather sheaths will emerge quickly where old feathers have been shed and fresh ones will rapidly grow to replace the lost ones.  This female's colors are beautiful, nonetheless, even though she wears a wind-blown look.  I couldn't be sure if she was on the alert or if the wind was standing her remaining crest feathers up so tall.

The watering hole is definitely a fun place to hang out, a good place to watch the tall pines, oak and maples waving in the gusting wind, as well as, to see birds that may otherwise go unseen as they come for a drink.  Several times I've seen a yellow-rumped warbler both drink and forage near the feeders but, so far, not when I'm outside with the camera.

Today I enjoyed a better look at the beautiful streaking and contrast in an American robin's plumage as she braved the birdbath for a drink.  When she flew, my heart picked up a beat, as a hermit thrush popped in to replace her, its 7-inch stature seeming exceptionally petite next to that of a robin, ranging from 9 to 11 inches.

It was special to get lingering looks at this shy bird, standing tall on tiny legs.  More often I notice her hanging out in the shadows of the hemlock, impossible conditions for a good photo, and visits to the birdbath are usually glimpsed through the window.  This made today's surprise visit exceptionally appreciated and I fell in love with the wind-blown look below!

Hermit thrushes are best known in Tennessee as a migrant and wintering resident, generally arriving in October and departing by early April.  Breeding seasons have only been sparsely recorded in Tennessee in the higher elevations of Roan Mountain and the Great Smoky Mountains (Atlas of the Breeding Birds of TN, ed. Charles P Nicholson.)

When this thrush turned, giving me nice looks at her body proportions and rust tail, I thought she was leaving.      

But she lingered a few minutes longer and reached from the side to take several more drinks.  Sigh.  One of many special moments enjoyed in the backyard.  

Links and Resources:

Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Tennessee, edited by Charles P. Nicholson.  This book is out of print and pricey on the secondary market, but with patience, you may find lowered pricing on Amazon with time.  

More thrushes on this blog:  Bird Gratitude, Townsend's Solitaire, Eastern Bluebird, American Robin

And more about cardinals and molting in A Day-making Family of Cardinals

If you have not already signed the petition requesting a new management plan for the Eastern Population of Sandhill cranes, visit the petition site right now and voice your opinion on this important conservation issue.  Kentucky is battling a sandhill crane hunting proposal similar to the one deferred in Tennessee.  We have a lot of work left to do to protect this population that has only recently recovered from near extirpation.  To read more visit A New Plan for Eastern Sandhills.    

Linked to Bird Photography Weekly #130 at Birdfreak.com to promote the conservation of our world's birds.

A Day-Making Family of Cardinals!

Yesterday, after the morning drizzle stopped, we had a very pleasant soft-light day of clouds in Knoxville (east Tennessee). I sat outside for a while and read, enjoying the moderate air, camera handy, of course.
I also wanted to see how the molting Northern cardinal family looked, Mom with her heavily molting head, and Dad, last seen with a disarray of crest feathers and gray down showing here and there.
Above you see the male on August 11th, with many of his crest feathers already missing. And below you can see how he appeared yesterday, on August 28th. In a little over two weeks he had molted all his crest feathers, many head and facial feathers and had produced feather sheaths to protect newly growing feathers. The tiny feathers poking up on his crown in the image below are the brand new ones growing out beyond the sheath. And what looks like gray whiskers are the sheaths for his new black facial feathers.

It's the 'tween time for cardinals and many other birds, the molting season, a time when juveniles are still following parents around begging, but the hectic pace of nesting and fledging season is over. Young can now fly and are learning to forage for themselves.

Molting female cardinal with juvenile perched below her.

It's also a time when molting birds need a bounty of food to help nourish them through the energy-demanding task of producing new feathers. And for year-around residents in Tennessee, these new feathers include a thicker layer of down, making ready for the winter months.

Molting, or the shedding and replacing of worn feathers with new ones, occurs in all birds but at different times, with different frequency and rates, all of which perfectly matches the bird's habits, seasonal cycles, available food sources and migration patterns. And despite the look of disarray, molting occurs in an orderly and gradual fashion with most birds retaining their ability to fly while molting. Waterfowl are an exception, rendered temporarily flightless with a complete postbreeding molt due to body aerodynamics.

Northern Cardinal juvenile.

Besides having fun watching this cardinal family interact, I noticed the juveniles were molting, too. So I checked my new book, National Geographic Birding Essentials by Jonathan Alderfer and Jon L. Dunn that I purchased through Wild Birds Unlimited and delved into it a little more.

There is a great deal of variation among species as to how long a juvenile keeps its first plumage.

Molting may occur for some juveniles before leaving the nest! In other species, such as the Bald Eagle, a series of partial molts over a five year period changes the plumage appearance several times before the young eagle reaches breeding age and acquires the distinctive white head and tail of the mature adult.

For these two juvenile cardinals trying to share a perch, the wait will not be so long. In only a few months they will have acquired the distinctive orange beak and brighter adult plumage that we all enjoy in our backyard cardinals.

Linked to Bird Photography Weekly #53 at Birdfreak.com to celebrate the conservation of our world's birds and Bird Photography Weekly's second anniversary.

A Real Cardinal Juvenile Meets His Neighbors

I use the term "real" in reference to my first experience with watching papa cardinal feed a juvenile. The fledgling turned out to be not a cardinal at all, but a hungry cowbird juvenile.Northern cardinals are one of 44 species in our area that are known to be predated by cowbirds. In the cardinal's case, a conservative estimate is 10 percent of the time. This frequency is increasing as habitat is more and more broken by development. All the more reason why I was happy to notice this for real cardinal juvenile being fed by papa on a limb near the feeder. After observing the titmouse family, I'm finding the cardinals so much more cautious and timid, though they enjoy suet and seeds no less. On this particular day, the juvenile accompanied his Dad and eagerly but silently, waited to be fed. And speaking of titmice, the juvenile cardinal landed on a limb in the hemlock that is frequented by the foraging titmice family. When he did, three of the titmice juveniles surrounded him, making their squealing juvenile calls. Looking a bit overwhelmed, the cardinal ruffled his feathers, made himself look bigger, and gave a big leap. The titmous juveniles scattered.Now, don't we look innocent.

A Cardinal Fledgling?

Do Northern cardinal fledglings really look like this? I would have known this was a fledgling even without the parents nearby. It's persistent peepish rattling was of the cannot-be-ignored variety. But if I had seen him alone, I never would have guessed this was a juvenile cardinal. Wouldn't you expect olive or brownish feathers? [Don't miss the last paragraph of this post. It explains this unexpected occurrence!]
Me too. But I took a jog around the internet (where else?) and found some images that looked just like this one. Some of the juveniles had rust feathers but there were also these gray little guys. (The above images were taken through the window.)
And here's proud papa. He was singing in these first two images but I was a second or two too late to capture it. He's perched in the spot where many birds pause to look around before advancing to feed.
Both he and the female have been coming to the plate for suet and sunflower seeds and today I happened to hear the juvenile and looked out to see him sitting under the plate being fed.

The plate is pictured here with a blue jay patron.
And below papa is back to hunting up meals for that fledgling.
Busy time of year!
Note: Jeff Gordon to the rescue again. Jeff is a very experienced bird field guide expert and presenter from Delaware. This is not the first time Jeff's seen something amiss in the bird ID department on my blog. I'm grateful he noticed this one and straightened out who this strange looking fledgling actually belongs to. Read Jeff's note in the comment section. The fledgling pictured above is not a cardinal at all, but a very hungry cowbird fledgling, a species that parasitizes other bird's nests, that is, removes the other bird's egg and lays their own in its place. Sigh. Thanks Jeff...
Take in some interesting field experiences, fun humor and beautiful images at Jeffery A Gordon's blog.
Linked to Bird Photography Weekly #38 and Birdfreak. com to promote the conservation of our world's birds.

A Glimpse of the Nestling

I think I had the most fun creating this sketch of any thus far in my red-shouldered hawk sketchbook. Partly, this is because it is a recreation from memory and imagination. But the rest of it, I'm sure, is that I saw the nestling again for the first time since April 26th. Seeing the nest is a complicated matter now. First, I had to understand the vast change in the hawk pair's attitude once the nestling hatched. Then the rains came.
After weeks of frequent rain and warm temperatures, the deciduous trees leafed out with a lush, thick canopy and there is now only one spot, and I mean a spot, that is open enough to view a small portion of the nest edge. And that's only to get a view of the nest. Seeing the nestling is a whole different matter. You have to be there just at the right moment when he happens to be active, and on that side of the nest!

I viewed the nest from this spot after I arrived on my May 15th visit and concluded that I wasn't going to see much from this angle. I refer to this as the back of the nest, a more narrow place between two limbs. The larger entry to the nest, where I caught the image of the nestling, is 90 degrees further around to the right of this view.

But conclusions come and go. Don't hold too tight to them. Just as I was about to leave, the resident called me over to ask if I had seen this view. I had my binoculars in hand so I took another look thinking, 'but you can't see anything.' Wow! Did I get a surprise treat. There was the nestling stretching and flapping those tiny little wings. It was 87 º F and humid on this visit. Both hawks were off the nest at least some of the time. From the neighboring property, I spotted the female perched on a low limb on the far side of the nest. My view of her was actually from down hill in a wooded area looking up, with the driveway nearly at my eye-level.

The female is never far away but sometimes she hunts while keeping watch. She flew past me once and landed at the base of a tree but I couldn't see if her strike was successful. Another time she landed on the roof for an instant and lifted off toward the nest. This is when I heard a series of eager peepish calls to which she responded. At first I thought it might be both adults but then I heard the male calling in the distance. I spent four hours on this visit, observing the hawks and listening from the neighboring property. Well worth it. I will have my recorder ready next visit.

There are many other birds to watch as I'm sitting with the hawks. The cardinal in my last post is one of them.

Next, I'll show you the bluebirds in red-shouldered hawk territory.

To see all my posts about these red-shouldered hawks click the link. The first post will be at the bottom.

Twig Harvesting

I'm wondering if I'm the only bird watcher out there who didn't know how birds harvest twigs. I really hadn't given it much thought until I first saw the red-shouldered hawk female fly to a nearby pine and return to the nest with a fresh pine twig clutched in her talons. The female is the hawk in the upper right in the image below.
These hawk images were taken April 4th before the leaves came out. The female is just landing, relieving the male at the nest. Below is a closer view of her talons gripping the pine twig and the male as he lifts off the nest. When it comes to smaller birds, I assumed nesting materials were gathered loose, that birds simply found them and picked them up. I've certainly seen many birds flying with their mouths full of grass, straw, string. But I never really thought about where or how they got their twigs.
While sitting in 'Red-shouldered hawk territory' today, I watched this female cardinal moving about on a perch, fluttering her wings, swinging around, using her whole body in a manner that was puzzling at first, until I finally spotted the twig.
Above, she's pausing for a moment...maybe to rest? The light green spot on the twig above her head marks where she has been trying to gnaw it loose. Below she gives it another try.
And succeeds!
What a prize!
The more I watch birds, the more I learn and the more their ways and instinctive wisdom amazes me.

Next post: Another look at Red-shouldered Hawk Territory. The nestling is growing. Got a glimpse of him/her flapping little wings through my binoculars! (I've only seen one nestling so far.)