It’s enjoyable to look at how birds behave within the deep snow

Surviving Maine’s winter appears really a outstanding feat for a lot of of our feathered pals, however that’s from the angle of a mammal with a big prefrontal cortex and a hearth. Most birds are completely tailored for the chilly, and discovering meals is their major concern within the winter. With the latest deep snow storms, I wished to focus on a number of attention-grabbing phenomena we see with our birds as they adapt to the worst of the winter.

I’ll begin with one among my extra entertaining yard birds, the wild turkey. I’ve written about my love-hate relationship with them earlier than, as they tear up my yard all summer season to dig out sandy patches to take a mud bathtub in, but in addition deliver their cute chicks round and assist eat all of the ticks and bugs I don’t need. We are surrounded by tall white pines, which a bunch of 45 turkeys fly up into every night to roost. In the winter, we find yourself with a number of well-trodden paths that the turkeys take every day, slowly packing down the snow. After the deep snow of the large storm on the finish of January, we ended up with among the most spectacular canyons carved by the fluffy snow the place the turkeys had been plowing their approach to entry the highway. I measured one of many paths at 14 inches to the snow, plus one other inch or so their ft would’ve sunk. That’s near half of the fowl being within the snow. 

Turkeys are primarily floor feeders, and within the winter will typically search out wooded areas with dense cowl the place snow gained’t be as deep. Here they will scratch by the snow and the leaf litter to uncover acorns and different seeds … except there may be a lot snow that they should search for for meals. Twice, on the day instantly after the deep snow, I noticed teams of untamed turkey foraging in crab apple bushes. These massive birds aren’t actually constructed for maneuvering across the small branches of those fruit-bearing bushes, however they had been making it work, or at the least placing within the further effort for the meals that was nonetheless accessible. 

Winters can be a difficult time for owls in Maine. Barred owls are sadly widespread as roadkill as a result of they get hit by vehicles whereas they’re going for the straightforward meal of a mouse operating throughout the highway. Road sides with brief mowed grass (and thus seeds) create an ideal habitat for rodents. Packed roads (and cement) are exhausting for them to go beneath, in order that they develop into weak to owls and hawks whereas they’re crossing above floor. Many of those shrews and voles will spend the winter within the subnivean layer, between the exhausting floor and the highest of the snow. This is often a secure place, besides that owls, whose listening to is so good that they will sense their prey by the snow, can punch by and seize the unsuspecting sufferer when the snow is shallow sufficient. 

Sometimes, nevertheless, this layer may be too deep for owls to successfully hunt, so we frequently get experiences of owls in unlikely locations after massive storms. At the top of January, we noticed a report of a long-eared owl, usually some of the elusive owls in Maine, sitting on a railing in a downtown Portland yard, close to a fowl feeder. Unlike a Cooper’s hawk that goes for songbirds at feeders, the owl was extra possible going after rodents interested in spilled seed from the feeder. At the identical time, we received a report from central Maine of a boreal owl, even rarer than the long-eared, that was stalking a rooster coop. Again, the owl wasn’t within the chickens (a barred or an important horned owl may be, however boreal owls are smaller than most chickens), it was after the mice, who had been going for the rooster feed. 

Feeder birds had been one more spotlight of this snowy storm. It is all the time entertaining to see the elevated exercise at feeders earlier than a storm hits. Many birds have built-in barometers and may sense when a storm (low strain) is coming in, in order that they’ll enhance feeding forward of and through a storm. We additionally see elevated exercise at feeders following a storm as a result of that meals is straightforward to entry (as we talked about with the turkeys above). 

It is difficult to maintain observe of 1 particular person fowl’s habits, however one which I discovered attention-grabbing not too long ago was a bullock’s oriole that has been visiting a feeder in Blue Hill. This is the western sister-species to our Baltimore oriole, and we’ve seen a handful of winter information in recent times, usually of people at yard fowl feeders. This one was first noticed in November, and has been an virtually each day customer (aside from a brief hole in the course of December). It stayed recurrently till Jan. 11, then disappeared. Well, on Jan. 26, simply after the deep snow, the oriole was again on the feeders. It is enjoyable to consider all of the uncommon birds that might be wandering across the state, not supplementing their food regimen with feeders, simply going unrecognized. 

While the chilly temperatures and deep snow would possibly appear to be a downer, my hope with this text is to level out among the enjoyable issues you possibly can look ahead to in your backyards or in native public areas in winter. And in just some weeks, we will begin to anticipate among the earliest winged migrants coming again. What are you seeing this winter? Send questions on wildlife to [email protected], and I’ll attempt to reply them right here.

Have you bought a nature or wildlife query of your personal? It doesn’t need to be about birds! Email inquiries to [email protected] and go towww.maineaudubon.org to study extra about birding, native vegetation, and packages and occasions specializing in Maine wildlife and habitat. Maine Audubon Staff Naturalist Doug Hitchcox and different naturalists lead free fowl walks on Thursday mornings beginning at 8 am, at Maine Audubon’s Gilsland Farm Audubon Sanctuary in Falmouth.