zackwini's Journal

Date - 4/27/2024
Start time -10:55 AM
End time - 12:06 PM
Location - Redstone & Athletic Campus, pathways near Redstone Lofts, outskirts of the country club, and the Redstone Pines
Weather - 56 degrees, 12 mph wind, cloudy
Habitats - Mostly urban and some semi forest with lots of open space. Many small clusters of coniferous trees, and some individual deciduous trees.

Date - 4/21/2024
Start time -5:05 PM
End time - 6:17 PM
Location - Redstone & Athletic Campus, pathways near Redstone Lofts and Redstone Pines
Weather - 47 degrees, 11 mph wind, cloudy, humid (49%)
Habitats - Mostly urban and some semi forest. Mostly tall clusters of coniferous trees, and some deciduous trees.

I conducted my observations on campus, walking around athletic and redstone campuses, going as far as the Redstone Commons and looping back to University Heights North. The weather was cloudy and relatively humid. Most birds were found in grassy patches on the ground or in trees with high density (Redstone pines)

One behavior I observed was several Black-capped Chickadees all singing at the same time in a small area. This could be each chickadee trying to prove their fitness/attractiveness to win over a female. This could also be the chickadees trying to defend their territory. It is likely that these songs double as both. I also observed a female Northern Cardinal fluttering between different trees, most likely searching for nest building materials. Northern Cardinals are open nesters, so their requirements are very different from chickadees, and thus their activity building up to the breeding season looks much different.

The Black-capped Chickadees I spotted singing were near the Redstone pines, and likely defending prime territory. Black-capped Chickadees are cavity nesters, and while the Redstone pines are somewhat small, many of the trees have cavities on them. Chickadees that have claimed and successfully defended territory here are likely very fit, because this is a high value spot. While I did not see any chickadees gathering materials for their nests, chickadees often line their nests with moss, which they can easily take from the sides of trees, rocks or simply off the forest floor. Moss is fairly abundant in the Redstone pines and around campus in areas with high shade and moisture.

Mini activity submission on brightspace

Date - 4/7/2024
Start time - 1:16 PM
End time - 2:27 PM
Location - Redstone & Athletic Campus, pathways near Redstone Lofts and Redstone Pines
Weather - 44 degrees, 12 mph wind, sunny
Habitats - Primarily Urban and some semi forest. Mostly tall clusters of coniferous trees (less than 10), and some deciduous trees of varying heights.

For the sake of not entering a ton of observations, I recorded only one or two of each species I saw. I saw a lot fo American Robins, European Starlings, and Black-capped Chickadees, as usual for on campus birding.

Date - 3/24/2024
Start time - 12:07 PM
End time - 1:14 PM
Location - Outskirts of Redstone Commons, & pathways between Patrick Gym and WDW dorms
Weather - 28 degrees, 7 mph wind, sunny
Habitats - Primarily Urban and forest edge, semi-wooded clusters (country club). Mostly tall stands of coniferous trees, and some smaller ornamental deciduous trees

My bird watching began outside the Patrick gym, and continued through the parking lots/outskirts of the Redstone campus. Along my way I noticed a large number of American Robins (you may be able to tell by all the observations) as well as American Crows. As I continued towards the Redstone Commons, I noticed a few other birds, namely Black-capped Chickadees, and a White-breasted Nuthatch. These were mostly heard in the green spaces between the buildings, likely because of bird feeders and less human activity.

A year-round resident species I consistently observe is the Black-capped Chickadee. I discussed in a previous field journal that Black-capped Chickadees are able to shift their diet for certain times of the year. In the spring and summer months Black-capped Chickadees eat mostly insects, but in the fall and winter they shift towards a more plant/seed based diet. Black-capped Chickadees might not want to migrate, because food is available enough here to not make the effort it takes to migrate very worth it. Additionally, Black-capped Chickadees are not designed for long distance flight in the same way that other birds are. This would make migrate extremely taxing.

Common Loons are a migratory species that might be coming back to Vermont in April. Their wintering range is usually all along the east coast (for Vermont Loons anyways) as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. Common Loons winter in warmer bodies of water to help them consistently find food, specifically food they can dive for. Vermont water bodies get too cold during the winter to allow for Common Loons to dive. They would lose to much energy from the cold water, and there would be less food available. The Common Loons are coming back to Vermont to breed, because Vermont water bodies are safer areas to raise their young. The main change that brings them back is the warmer weather, and more abundant food sources in water bodies. A major advantage of coming back in early April is the readily available food, with lake fish reproducing in spring. However, this comes at the price of laying their eggs at a time of year when predators are most active (raccoons, skunks, turtles, and possibly Bald Eagles for the adults).

Mini Activity:
Common Loon: Gulf of Mexico to Burlington VT ~1622 mi
Mourning Dove: Mexico to Burlington VT ~2236 mi
Mallard: Mississippi Valley to Burlington VT ~1259 mi
Cooper's Hawk: Middle America to Burlington VT (Missouri) ~1059 mi
Belted Kingfisher: Central America to Burlington VT (Guatemala)~2234 mi

Date - 3/5/2024
Start time - 10:04 AM
End time - 10:56 AM
Location - Centennial Woods
Weather - 37 degrees, 15 mph wind, sunny
Habitats - Primarily forest edge, semi-wooded with clearings, primarily coniferous trees, and smaller deciduous trees/shrubs

My bird watching began outside Centennial Woods, and continued through the woods as I walked along the trails. In my first field journal, I visited Centennial Woods and primarily found birds on the edge of the woods, so more of my time was spent standing still near the entrance to Centennial Woods rather than going deeper into the woods. I will get into why I think this is later, but I had very few sightings along the edge of the forest. Much less so than in early February, and it made getting any recordings quite difficult. I was able to record a Tufted Titmouse twice (or two different Tufted Titmouses) but one of my recordings did not upload properly. I ran into a similar issue as my last journal, where I would attempt to record a call, and only get silence if I wanted my recording to be less than a minute. With all this said, I did get close enough to see a very loud red squirrel, which is unfortunately not a bird.

During my birding, I heard mostly Tufted Titmouse calls, and not much else. This was unusual, and is likely due to bird territorial disputes. In my previous trip to Centennial, there were less resources and a lot more snow. During the cold season, it makes more sense to keep moving to find food due to scarcity, but once the weather warms up, it might be easier to defend an area instead of moving around so much. So, it would make sense that most of the calls I heard was one or two Tufted Titmouses defending their territory. This aligns with what I heard, more rapid and higher pitch calls compared to the Tufted Titmouse calls we heard in class.

Due to the popularity of Centennial Woods, combined with the warm weather and day I chose to go birding (Town hall meeting day), there were many hikers and not many visible birds. With that said, on campus today, I had the pleasure of spotting a Northern Cardinal outside of Jeffords hall. The plumage for both birds do not change between winter and spring, and likely has very different purposes. For the Northern Cardinal, the red plumage and song are both important aspects of defining their territory. Meanwhile, the Tufted Titmouse is harder to spot, and thus it's song is more important to defending its territory.
As for the activity of the birds, I noticed that most of the time (for the Northern Cardinal anyways) the birds were perched as they were calling. It seems to be that defending their territory is a passive activity ie something they do while they rest. Meanwhile, most birds I saw in flight were either not calling or were larger birds like Crows that are more social. I would imagine that with such a high metabolism, song birds would want to be constantly doing something, and to me that would be either resting and calling or searching for food.

I was able to give spishing an attempt with a Black-capped Chickadee I saw on my way to class a few days ago, but unfortunately it flew away. I believe that spishing is a way to semi-replicate a bird call like how a "spspsps" noise is similar to what a cat understands as communication. And just like the "spspsp" for cats, it is likely that the spishing I did was a nonsensical noise that confused the Chickadee. I would guess that it works sometimes due to the curiosity of the bird, and other times it doesn't due to the fear that comes with seeing a larger animal.

Date - 2/19/2024
Start time - 3:37 PM
End time - 4:29 PM
Location - Athletic Campus (Redstone Pines, Interfaith Center, and semi wooded area near the Davis Tunnel)
Weather - 22 degrees, moderate Southeast wind, partly cloudy
Habitats - Semi-urban, partially wooded with large clearings, primarily coniferous trees (pines and cedars)

My bird watching began from my dorm as I walked around to the semi-wooded areas on athletic campus. Almost immediately, I could hear at least one Black-capped Chickadee and possibly a few House Finches. However, the birds were very sparring with their calls, which meant that each time I attempted to record a bird I would end up recording silence. After the initial set of observations, I headed towards the Redstone pines, but I ended up hearing less calls there than anywhere else. On the way back to my dorm I was able to record what I think was a Black-capped Chickadee and another bird in the background.

Today was a much colder day for birding than the last entry (about 10 degrees colder due to consistent wind chill), and bird activity was much less abundant. More evident to me was the lack of calls, which could be explained by the birds wanting to conserve energy they could be using to maintain their body temperature. With that said, I was mostly in urbanized environments today, while the last time I was in Centennial Woods. The lack of calls could be due to song birds not surviving as well near people or simply the song birds not wanting to call attention to themselves in areas with less vegetation/with more predators such as domestic cats/dogs. Additionally, I did hear more calls from the off campus houses closer to the lake, which gives some credence to the idea that the birds prefer areas with more density (be that vegetation or buildings).

Given the location of the Black-capped Chickadee sightings, I would assume that they eat mostly seeds in the winter, because they are strongly associated with trees. This aligns with the All About Birds page that states, "In winter Black-capped Chickadees eat about half seeds, berries, and other plant matter, and half animal food (insects, spiders, suet, and sometimes fat and bits of meat from frozen carcasses),". And as the winter turns into spring, the Black-capped Chickadees shift their diets to eat more animal food. For one, it makes sense to shift towards plant foods in the winter because insects are less plentiful, but also because it saves the Chickadees heat energy that they would lose trying to find insects. So in the winter, the Chickadees can conserve as much energy as possible by budgeting more of their time to resting/courting instead of hunting for food.

Unfortunately, the Redstone pines do not have any standing dead trees, so I could not rap on any trees to see any birds. However, I did see a fair amount of tree cavities on alive trees, and especially some of the deciduous trees that looked to be a bit older. It seemed that the trees with more cavities and larger cavities looked older, and had more dying branches. Snags are important to many species, but specifically for birds as a nesting site. Many birds are cavity nesters such as the Downy Woodpecker, Black-capped Chickadee, and the White-breasted Nuthatch. While these species are not dependent on snags to create/find cavities to nest in, snags provide easier access to nesting sites, and are thus important to their survival. Due to the number of sizable cavities I observed in the Redstone pines, I would not be surprised if a large number of birds used those trees as nesting/overnighting sites.

Date - 2/3/2024
Start time - 12:26 PM
End time - 1:45 PM
Location - Centennial Woods
Weather - Slightly below freezing (27 degrees), light wind (no direction), cloudy
Habitats - Wooded with large clearings, primarily coniferous trees, and smaller deciduous trees/shrubs

My bird watching began with a short walk from my dorm to Centennial woods, where I heard several crows along the way. I arrived to the woods at 12:26 PM, and within a few minutes of walking I could hear several song birds, namely Black-capped Chickadees and White-breasted Nuthatches. Unfortunately, there were several factors that prevented me from getting more audio observations, including cars, planes, and even a tuba/trombone player (audible in the American Crow observation). After the initial set of observations, the number of bird sightings decreased as I went further down the trail. The forest opened up at one point, which had a few White-breasted Nuthatches, but otherwise nothing. I turned back, and on the way back near the exit of the woods, I spotted a Downy Woodpecker.

Most of my experience birding consisted of listening to calls, and on occasion seeing a bird for a few moments. Because of this, I had a hard time studying the flight pattern of any one bird. That said, I was able to see one bird (or multiple instances of the sane species) in flight. The flight pattern was a quick burst of flaps followed by the wings tucking in to the body to create a torpedo-like shape. From what I have seen online, this is referred to as "bounding flight" and is used by many of the birds from the first ID quiz. Based on the songs I heard and the color of the bird (as well as the long tail relative to the body), I would guess that I saw a Black-capped Chickadee in flight. The wings of the Black-capped Chickadee(s) in flight were almost exclusively tucked into its body, but the wings were relatively stout (low aspect ratio). The tail was also relatively long compared to the body, and flared out towards the end.

The bounding flight pattern is associated with several song birds, and thus is likely also associated with the forest edge habitat that I saw the most song birds. Meanwhile, the crows I observed flapped less frequently, but moved slower. It would appear that the bounding pattern is useful for quick movement, perhaps to avoid predation, or simply spend less time traveling. Regardless, smaller birds had more elliptical wings, and utilized bounding flight, while larger birds used more spread out flapping to remain in the air longer.

Ultimately, while I did see a fair number of birds, I saw them mostly within the same habitat, and within the same time frame. It is likely that the time of day impacted bird activity, given that birds are more active in the morning. Additionally, because I was in a large natural area, it is possible that I simply did not go to the parts of the woods with higher bird density. Given the short time frame of the bird watching, I did not see much of the woods, and thus likely missed out on the sections of trail that get more attention.