[mou] Bird Behavior

[Thomas Maiello]

Just spent a fascinating half hour discovering something about 
chickadees.  I have three bird baths set up around my yard - varying in 
depth, size, floor shape, location height, degree of cover, amount of 
direct sun, etc.   But I never saw any of my numerous chickadees and 
their numerous young-of-the-year use them - or even show interest in the 
showers from the sprinklers like the robins.  They only drank from them 
- but never so much as a toe dipping or tail splash.  I made a number of 
assumptions around the observation but today opened my eyes to a 
different possibility.  I was setting up an automatic timer to help me 
water during this dry spell and incidentally watered a big patch of 
large leafed bamboo in the process (not a wise thing to encourage any 
type of bamboo with a taste of water).  As I went in to fix up a nice 
pot of Gyrokuro green tea (yum!) I noticed motion in the bamboo.  I 
finally saw a single chickadee not really flying about or feeding among 
the leaves - rather it seemed to be clumsily rubbing itself on the leaf 
faces and vibrating its feathers, rapidly moving to the next leaf or 
standing on an adjacent stem and using it as a perch to rub its body on 
the leaf faces.  I noticed that it was only going to the leaves that 
still had water clinging to them and actually going after the water on 
the leaf surfaces.  I watched in amazement and I concluded that it was 
taking a sponge bath of sorts - because after it rubbed the water onto 
itself its body motion was similar to how the larger birds move when 
they are bird bath bathing but much quicker and shorter in between the 
frenzied moving from leaf to leaf.  I have many, many leaves on my 
bamboo stand and as I watched that little critter must have hit every 
one of them.  Talk about cute.

My Baltimore orioles have reappeared and the adults are focusing on my 
meal worms and completely ignoring the grape jelly.  When I first put 
the worms out, the orioles came and took them away to what I assumed 
were their young.  Now they mash them flat and gobble them down.  Their 
young are amusing me all about the yard now in the uncoordinated 
explorations, but the adults are eating all the worms I can put out.  It 
appears also that the adults are significantly smaller than the young I 
am seeing.  Maybe its just the difference in coloring and the fact that 
I never see them together - but it seems to be.  And don't worry about 
the grape jelly fermenting, the House Finches are eating it along with 
the robins and catbirds.

Another bit of fascination was an interaction between the two 
young-of-the-year, feisty Brown Thrashers and a young-of-the-year Gray 
Squirrel - both now nearly fully grown.  In a slender, bare trunked, 
tall tree I watched what for all the world looked like a game of tag 
between the two thrashers and a squirrel.  The birds would perch various 
limbs and branches and the squirrel would chase after them and what 
appeared to actually touch them.  The reacting thrasher would jerkily 
take off only to land on another close by branch as the other thrasher 
would go after the squirrel.  The bird would contact the squirrel and 
the squirrel would either leap to another branch or drop down the trunk 
and then take off after the aggressive thrasher - only to have the other 
thrasher move in.  I watched this behavior for some 20 minutes with all 
three creatures apparently not striving for anything except the 
interaction with the others.  My anthropomorphic eyes thought they saw 
them playing as no animals were injured in the making of my observation.

I have also had the joy of monitoring a Chipping Sparrow nest from three 
blue mottled eggs to the cutest little chicks I could imagine.  The 
catbirds, thrashers, robins, Mourning Doves, and others are all busy on 
the second and third brooding and the antics of hatchlings continue to 
amuse - but, my, the bird populations are growing in my little corner of 
the world.

I did manage to rid myself of being the party headquarters for grackle 
hoard.  I simply stopped filling their favorite feeders for about a week 
and a half.  Yes I did miss the other birdies but when I finally did 
fill the feeders back up the other birdies came back in full force with 
nary a grackle for a couple of days.  Then when one does show up I put 
my hose on "jet" and chase them away with the water.  I've only had to 
do that a couple of times.  I guess birds might just communicate somehow 
even if it is just by not hanging out in my yard.

Well I am off to set up some experimental snares for my burgeoning 
stealth rabbit population.  Nothing else seems to be working.  I have 
already live trapped some 27 "what I believe to be" 13-Lined Ground 
Squirrels now and some 17 gray squirrels along with my eradication 
program on the pesky vole.  Did you know that according to the DNR web 
site, the 13-Lined Ground Squirrel is the "gopher" the UofM uses for 
their symbol?  I am just full of it today.  Darn, now I have carpenter 
ants in my green house trusses.  Another beautiful day in the 
neighborhood - would you be my, could you be my, would you be my neighbor.

Thomas Maiello
Spring Lake Park