Field Journal 4

Date: March 24nd, 2024
Start time: 11:30am-ish
End time: 12:30pm-ish
Location: Near the Redstone Commons/WDW
Weather: Sunny, relatively clear
Temperature: 30ish
Wind: 7mph or so
Precipitation: None
Habitats: suburbs, roadsides, forest edge, semi urban

Today was a great day to go birding. The wind wasn’t too bad, so I hoped that I would be able to see a lot of birds. When I went last time, the constant noise from planes and cars near Centennial Woods made it hard to both hear and get recordings of various species, but this area was a little quieter. The openness of the area also let me spot and identify the birds more often. Mostly, I saw Black-capped Chickadees and American Robins.
For the main prompt, I’ll consider the Black-capped Chickadee. I’m going to guess that they don’t migrate because, when most of the other birds leave, there is more food left for them. They also are small, and don’t need much food in comparison to other birds (though they do need to eat a lot relative to their bodyweight). For the facultative migrants, I’ll choose the Red-tailed Hawk (Google says it’s a facultative migrant). I’m going to guess that they could be leaving Burlington, since other places are also warming up in this odd winter. We also got a lot of snow recently while other places haven’t, so they may be going down South to where there is more food. I’d say the disadvantages to one arriving here would be that the weather has been quite odd recently, so its food supply is probably unstable. It would also be tough to find good shelter.
Since the two species I encountered were the American Robin and the Black-capped Chickadee, I’ll calculate the distance for those. However, Black-capped Chickadees don’t migrate, so they don’t count. For the American Robin, the nearest wintering location is Florida, and it is about 1300 miles from UVM to Florida!

Posted on March 24, 2024 10:55 PM by wsn802