OUTDOOR COLUMN: Birds have much to teach us

I enjoy watching birds, as I sort of hinted at in a recent column. Why? Well, they are interesting creatures on the face of it. Birds do all kinds of things, and they do different things depending on the species, the terrain, the weather, and all sorts of other things.

Some feed on the ground, some feed in the air, some feed in trees and bushes. Some are very fast, some fly with very distinctive styles, some do odd things that are not easily understood at first. Some have beautiful voices, others might sound like a dull hacksaw scraping across a hard metal surface.



Some go south for the winter, some don’t, or don’t go far. All that stuff is interesting. For example, watch a robin hunting for worms on your lawn after a rain.

One day I noticed – it only took decades for it to register with me – that robins often stop and turn their heads before bobbing down and grabbing their prey. Why do they do that? I was told long ago, or read, that they are listening for nightcrawlers. That made sense to me for about a minute, but then I started thinking “How much sound does a nightcrawler make?” Not much, I’d think, and not enough to help a bird zero in on it.

Well, guess what? This behavior, which is shared by many birds, has been well studied. The answer is, robins turn their heads to get a better look at their prey. Also, have you ever noticed that birds face into the wind when perched on a wire? Take a look at a flock of pigeons sometime.

It seems to me that most all of them face into the wind. Why? Their bodies are streamlined toward the back, for one thing, so the wind sweeps over them. And, I guess, taking off into the wind is a bit more efficient.

That’s pretty obvious. But I also think – I say think because I can’t be sure that it always happens – that in any flock gathered on a perch, one or two birds will face downwind. I tried to find an ornithologist to tell me why that is, but couldn’t get an answer.

I decided they serve as sentries. I have no real idea if that is so, but I did read that those positions might be the result of social behavior and might serve the sentry purpose by accident. I’ve also noticed that if there is little or no wind, the birds might face any which way at random.

Feeding and watching birds has made me a better angler and hunter. How? It certainly has sharpened my observational skills, slowed me down, made me more patient. The more you watch the birds, the more you learn, the more you are aware of how animals operate.

For example, chickadees are regarded as sweet birds, very tame, very nice. But if you watch long enough, you learn they have hierarchies. The alpha chickadee gets to grab his or her sunflower seed first, flies away to eat it in a secret place, and comes back to grab another seed.

When the alpha bird returns, whoever is at the feeder gives it plenty of space. Chickadees, by the way, lovable as they seem, have been known to eat the eggs of other birds. You can’t trust anyone out there! Hierarchies occur within species, and across species.

Males tend to dominate females, and big birds tend to dominate smaller birds. Almost everyone who feeds birds knows that bluejays are the bullies of the backyard ..

. until a hawk shows up. Blue jays, like their cousins ravens and crows, are about as smart as a bird can get.

They have been known to utter hawk sounds to frighten other birds away from feeders so they can dine alone and at their leisure. I’ve never witnessed that, but I do remember that my mother’s cat once killed a bluejay. Every time that cat went outside for the next little while, three or four jays would swoop down and drill it in the head repeatedly – rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat.

I watched them do it a couple of times. That poor cat didn’t know what was going on. How does all this help in fishing and hunting? It’s kind of indirect.

Again, more than anything else, it teaches you to pay attention to behaviors – what deer do at different times of year, for example, what they react to, what bothers them, maybe how fish behave in their environment. And it might teach you that despite the “rules,” all the critters out there might do what they want any time they want just because. Just pay attention, I guess.

You will learn something. All this leads up to Project Feed Watch, a citizen science effort sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Birds Canada and sponsored by Wild Birds Unlimited that has been going on since the 1980s. Bird watchers across North America count birds and send their numbers to a database, producing information that is used to draw a picture of bird abundance and distribution.

The information can be used to determine if a species is at risk because of weather changes, food supply shortages, and other factors, and can allow for the planning of steps to mitigate the problems. You don’t need to feed birds to participate, and there certainly are few limitations. I’d think older people and school children, especially, would find the project interesting and gratifying.

It runs from November through April. Information is available at https://feederwatch.org/ .

And If you need help setting up a feeding system in your yard, the National Audubon Society has a few suggestions at https://www.audubon.org/news/11-tips-feeding-backyard-birds.