Like rambunctious kids at a restaurant, young birds are learning the ropes at Mr. Neil’s feeders. Above is a female rose-breasted grosbeak who I thought was an adult female, but she engaged in some begging behavior with a male and sat for awhile on the pole above the feeder watching the other birds feed, working out how to do it. Most of the adult females know how to feed–they are all business when they come to the feeder.  They perch on a branch, make sure the coast is clear of predators, land on the pole, take another look and then jump right down to the feeders.  This one seemed unsure of how the food came out of the feeder or what to make of the smaller birds around her.

This young oriole ate some of the grape jelly, but also made a haphazard landing on the thistle feeder and took a few pecks at the feeding port.  I’m sure it had been watching the goldfinches and thought, “Well, if those dudes are getting food out of there, I’m sure I can too.”

And much the same way I felt about catfish, thought to itself, “Seriously?  You think this is good? Bleh!”

Here’s a recently fledged red-bellied woodpecker.  They’re just so awkward and bald (bald in the sense that they have no read on their heads, not that they are missing feathers).  The suet log was empty and he was watching another red-belly perched on a peanut feeder and wondering if it has the landing skills necessary to be able to land on the nut feeder too.  This young bird was very nervous and seemed a poster child for hawk bait.  It was continually begging in the trees, following the parent birds (who were over feeding it at this point) and then made all kinds of strange loud squawks as it flew.  I’m sure it’s saying, “I don’t know what I’m doing, why is this happening to me?  How to I move, I’m hungary, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Of all the boisterous youngsters visiting the feeders, the blue jays were the most refined diner.  I love this photo, I was shooting from the kitchen window and the young blue eyed me warily wonder what that sound was (and why my lens was aimed at it).

I have mixed feelings going through the woods right now.  Some birds have finished their territory songs for the season, others are going for a second brood, some are just getting started, but six months from now, the sounds at the feeder and in the wood will be softer, occasional caws of crows, sweet contact notes of chickadees, a few laughs of nuthatches.

I wonder if the winter birds enjoy the quiet of winter without having young birds crashing around at the feeders…the rowdy college kids leave the woods leaving all who stay with a peaceful neighborhood until the next breeding season.

That is, until an adult male showed up and chased the recently fledged oriole off the jelly. That’s the way it goes in the bird world, older more experienced birds push around the younger ones. This young oriole must not have been from this male’s family group.

The male Baltimore oriole gathered globs of grape jelly. I heard a young bird begging in the nearby trees. The male flew up, the begging calls stopped. I couldn’t see them, but I could tell that the male must have been feeding a young bird. He flew back down to gather more jelly. I was puzzled because the begging calls did not sound like a young oriole. I spent two years volunteering in the avian nursery of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center and one thing that stuck was the sound of baby birds. I never paid attention to those calls before, but now I’m pretty good at picking out eastern species begging calls. Begging orioles have a breathy, descending “eeep, eeep, eeep, eeep” sound. This wasn’t it. As the male oriole grabbed more jelly, the young begging bird flew to the feeder pole and the male flew up to feed it.

Doh! No wonder it didn’t sound like a young oriole…it’s a young cowbird begging for food. Oh, oriole, I expected more from you. And great, just what we need, cowbirds learning to feed at jelly feeders. Even though the young cowbird at what it was fed by the oriole, I watched it watch the birds at the seed feeders. When the male oriole flew away, the young cowbird flew over to the seed feeders and tried eating some of that instead of going to the jelly feeder. Perhaps jelly does not taste good to cowbirds? This is not the first oriole to raise a cowbird, so if jelly were a good food item to them, we would see more cowbirds on jelly feeders and I just don’t see that very much.

Eventually, the young oriole flew back to the jelly feeder and resumed it’s feeding:

You asked me to keep an eye on things while you’re at the World Series of Birding (really? They call it that?). I’ll have an update about bee related things soon, but I thought you’d be interested to know about what was happening at Mr. Neil’s hives while I got the bee gear together.

I filled all the feeders, and the birds must have been starving, because as soon as I walked away, they were all over that noise. You would have been so happy: it was a veritable rainbow of birds: all the way from brown, to umber, to burnt umber, to light brown. It was dazzling. Unfortunately, there were, as always, some troublemakers.

I’m not sure from what level of hell arose this not-brown monstrosity, but I knew you’d be cheesed if this type of creature came nosing around your feeders.

While I tried to figure out what to do, it made its way down to the feeder full of jelly you’d set out to nourish Common Sparrows, Very Common Finches, and Downright Mundane Looks Like Bits of Bark Birds.

How best to handle this? You left me in charge of the feeders for one weekend, and look what happened! What was this horrible half-bird half-crayon!? Surely its presence at the feeder would prove that I was a failure not only as a husband, but as a human being as well. How to proceed? I was perplexed, and to make matters worse, an even more colorful (ptui!) bird showed up right after it!

Ack! Shoo! Get out of here! You’re endangering my marriage with your vibrant markings!

Back! Back I say! Back to the fiery pits that spawned ye!

I don’t think he was listening.

Eventually, though, he took off and some bird with dark brown marks on its grey-brown body settled in. I enjoyed a sigh of relief, confident that the crisis had past, and as long as I kept my mouth shut, you’d be none the wiser…

Crap.

Saturday, the weather was chilly, but the sun was out and I could hear new bird song. One thing I do love about spring is waking up, hearing a bird song and realizing that I had not heard that song the day before. These birds had just arrived overnight. Over a morning cup of coffee saw the first rose-breasted grosbeaks in Mr. Neil’s yard.

Not long after that, a pair of orioles showed up and stayed around the feeders all day. Even though it was a male and female, they did not tolerate being on the oriole feeder at the same time–they fought over it quite a bit. I put out both an orange and grape jelly in the recycled oriole feeder, they totally ignored the orange and went straight for the jelly. The brush pile was chock full of sparrows, they looked like mostly white-throated sparrows. Pine warbler, rose-breasted grosbeaks, white-throated sparrow, orioles–this banding session was going to be colorfully unbelievable!

Not so much, as evidenced with Ms. Brown-headed Cowbird. Actually, I shouldn’t say that–it was awesome as always–it was banding and I always learn something, we just didn’t get the birds that thought we would.

We did get in both red-breasted and white-breasted nuthatches. I love in the above photo that the red-breasted puffed up a tad when confronted with a larger white-breasted. The red-breasted did have a brood-patch and I have been seeing a pair sticking around. Between that and some excited yanking calls, I have a suspicion that the red-breasted are nesting nearby.

Here is the titmouse from the earlier contest. That was a treat for Mark and Roger, they don’t get too many of those where they normally band birds, so something new pecking at your knuckles is always fun.

A surprise in the nets were a pair of mourning doves. We had been using the back entrance of the house, and while I was in there indulging in a cinnamon roll, I noticed to doves on the ground. I wondered if I went out the front door if they would flush towards the nets. Yep. It was a pair too and we were able to sex them by plumage. Above is the female.

And here is the male. Note that he has some blue on the top and back of his head–the female doesn’t have that.

Another fun surprise was a pair of blue jays. We did get in a steady stream of birds Sunday morning, so I was not able to get all the info about the birds, I was busy helping to get them out of the nets. But my friend Amber got some great shots of them flying away.

We did get one warbler. This yellow-rump filled the quota for the day. It was interesting to note that while the nets were up, no pine warblers or Baltimore orioles showed up. Grosbeaks serenaded us from the tops of the trees and when they did fly into the feeders, they had a knack of flying in a line just above the nets–clever birds.

Out of the 40 odd white-throated sparrows in the brush pile, we only got one in the net. This bird is fine. Sometimes, when you finish banding a bird and open up your hands to let it go, they don’t quite realize that they’re free and just rest for a moment. All it usually takes is for the bander to twitch his fingers or for an observer to cough, sneeze, or move suddenly and the bird takes off like a shot.

We did get in quite a few chickadees. One was a retrap that Mark and Roger banded last fall. What was interesting was that they were unable to determine the sex of the bird last fall, but this time the bird had a brood patch (a bare patch of skin used to incubate eggs, in some species just the female has it–like chickadees, and in other species both males and females have it–like nuthatches). So, since the chickadee had the brood patch, she was female. The chickadees have taken over a bluebird box in the front yard. I’ll have to watch and see if one of them is banded.

At about noon and over thirty banded birds later, the guys took the nets down. And what species was one of the first to show up to the feeders? The pine warbler, of course. The orioles never did show up again all day. Roger suspects that they were just passing through and that the previous nights winds pushed them north. Ah well, more will be coming soon.

I spent the rest of the afternoon practicing my digiscoping for the World Series of Birding this coming weekend (boy, I was just going over the rules for that–that’s a blog entry). Amidst all the white-throated sparrows and chipping sparrows in the brush pile, I was surprised to find a field sparrow! Wonder where this bird came from? I don’t normally find these guys around the yard, I hope it stays, I love that call.

This feeder is new, it’s made of recycled plastic and has two dishes for grape jelly and mealworms. It also holds two orange halves. I like it because recycled plastic lasts for a long time and the color really gets the orioles’ attention. The roof keeps the jelly from turning to soup. It’s been our most popular oriole feeder at the store too. It’s odd, when I saw it at Bird Watch America last January, I thought it was a neat idea, but I had no clue that it would be so popular a feeder this year.

I also checked on our hooded merganser nest:

According to A Guide to the Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds by Paul Baicich and Colin J. O. Harrison hooded mergansers incubate for 31 days. I believe this bird started to incubate on April 20 so May 21 should be hatch day. I’m working at the store Friday, Saturday and Sunday so I should be able to see it. For safe measure, I’m going to try and set up the Nova Bird Camera on Friday so hopefully that will catch the chicks jumping out.