Birds Are Fledgin' Out All Over
Young chickadees are invading the feeders at Mr. Neil's house. If you look closely at this photo, you can see a little yellow where this young chickadee's bill connects with it's face. The remnants of the gape young chickadees have to help stimulate their parents to feed them. This young chickadee was figuring out how to hold a peanut between its toes and then peck out bite sized pieces.
The adult chickadees are now ignoring the young birds crying for food and eating themselves. The ravenous young birds are following what they see the parent birds do and learning how to use the feeding stations. Once they figure out how to grab peanuts from the mesh feeder and sunflower seeds from the tube feeders, they explore further for food. This young bird is contemplating the eye hole on this decorative bird on top of the feeder pole. It is asking itself, "Can I eat this?"
"Let's find out!" PECK! The young bird pecked and prodded the eye hole a few times and then gave up. It was fun watching the young chickadees trying out new things. One intrepid youngster flew to the hummingbird feeder and ate the ants trying to get past the ant moat.
The young chickadees were looking fresh and well feathered. 
The adults, well, they were looking a little rough. I'm sure it's a combination of the nonstop work of nesting and it's time for a summer molt (dropping those old feathers and growing in new ones).
Young titmice were also learning to feed too. The adults kept going to the peanut feeder over and over again while the young birds begged in the tree. Eventually, one impatient young bird followed the adult to the feeder and continued to beg. As the adult continued to feed only itself, the young bird finally got the idea that it had to dig out it's own peanut or sunflower.
As the young bird finally mastered the feeders, it seemed triumphant in its discovery. "I am king of the peanuts, master of all the feeders I survey!"
I found another grosbeak photo and I'm just throwing this in to the entry to add a little color.Labels: Bird Feeding, digiscoping
posted by birdchick at 7:33 AM
4 Comments:
We have two young pileated woodpeckers. For a week the parents flew with them to a nearby tree, got suet from the feeder and went back to the tree to feed the youths. Suddenly, the adults stopped feeding the kids. For several days we had such fun watching them sit on the tree trunk or deck railing, trying to get enough nerve to fly to the suet feeder. They even squawked to the parents who flew off as if to say, "Nothing doing. Figure it out."
On the 4th of July, Mom and I walked around Woodlake (before getting caught in the rainstorm). As we where crossing the marsh bridge, we noticed that there were a whole bunch of birds lined up on the rope/handrail. As we got closer, we realized they were mostly young barn swallows and their parents were taking turns feeding them. We were able to get within a few feet of them and watch them for a few minutes until they decided we weren't going to bring them anything fun to eat and flew off to circle around behind us. By the time we made it across the bridge, they were all back on the rope waiting to be fed.
There were also young red wing blackbirds and many parental squabbles. Young robins, song sparrows, and immature male wood duck (which, by the way, are extremely cool looking) rounded out the group of bird kids.
Also, we saw two turtles digging nesting holes right on the side of the path.
Hi, I love your blog and it's become daily reading for me.
I just thought I'd bring this little article to your attention in case you hadn't seen it yet.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526115.000-bird-song-goes-out-of-fashion-too.html
Hi! New poster and mom of a highly disapproving French Lop.
I've got a hermit thrush living in the woods behind my house (west of Boston, MA), and it sings every afternoon--never actually seen it, but the song is just amazing--my favorite bird song. Is it looking for a mate right now, or is it just singing for the heck of it?
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