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re: snow, ice, and birds



Hi C-birders,

Leah got off easy! We've been without power since Wednesday night, and
without heat as well (gas furnace, but electric trigger). Fortunately, the
water's still running, and since we installed a solar hot water heater, we
do have hot water! Phone still works too, better than many folks around
here. But with the temperatures down in the teens last night, we packed up
the cats and set up a bed in my office at Duke, where the heat and
electricity never stop (lizards were already here).

Backyard was alive with sparrows, all identifiable ones White-throated,
while we were around the house. They especially liked the brush pile, as
the ground underneath it escaped being coated with ice, unlike the grassy
lawns; I scattered some seed into the pile before we left. A Ruby-crowned
Kinglet foraged for bugs in the similarly sheltered and non-iced dirt of
our window box (which greatly excited Nicole the cat). And a female Downy
Woodpecker made TWO visits to the mostly-untouched suet feeder. The
hummingbird feeder hasn't been visited since October, but at least hasn't
frozen yet. The Carolina Wrens lurked right along the base of our house's
foundation, also not iced. I would guess that anyone who got out birding
in the day or two after the storm would have found all the action either
at the edge of water or on roadways, the most ice-free patches of ground;
that was what happened after the big snowstorm the year before last, too.

The oaks around our house have been decimated, losing many large limbs.
Our magnolia too; alas, the one tree I *want* to see dead, the White
Mulberry, appears unscathed! Here at Duke an entire oak tree came down,
and lots of pines lost their tops, leaving white spikes pointing to the
sky. And the Yaupon Hollies in front of the bio sci building, hugely
popular with Cedar Waxwings every February-March, have been severely
damaged too. But hey, at least that post-Hurricane-Fran woodpecker
population boom will get prolonged... And the cold weather might mean an
influx of waterbirds for us as the ponds and lakes to the north finally
freeze over...

Hey, the Massachusetts RBA reports a Thick-billed Kingbird! It appeared
the day I flew back down here, of course. The best bird I saw while I was
up there was an American Tree Sparrow, in the backyard of my friends Bill
and Barbara Drummond.

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/