Diario de jgoodma4

My birding trip stared around 10:40 in the morning on March 4, 2020. It started out as a mostly clear sky but clouds rolled in while I was out and it ended up being very overcast with no precipitation. It was around 40 degrees Fahrenheit with some wind but not too intense. My walk started at the entrance to centennial woods. I saw a few American Robins low in a tree. Further into the woods I saw Black-capped Chickadees and a Pileated woodpecker. I saw what I think was a Barn Owl and heard a Blue Jay though I didn’t see it. I also saw a Cedar Waxwing up in a tree. The way birds retain their body heat is by puffing up and trapping the air in their feathers. At this point in the season most of the bird’s time is spent feeding and resting/sleeping. Surviving in the cold takes a lot of energy so they must conserve as much as they can. They also need to eat more to make up for the quicker depletion of energy. Most birds will sleep overnight in trees or bushes. Some will also overnight in snags. The cavities in snags make for good shelter from wind and could be a slightly warmer place to sleep for a night.
Bigger snags seemed to have bigger cavities and there were a few that had more than one cavity on it. Bigger cavities can provide shelter to bigger birds like some species of owl. These species are more likely to be seen at dusk rather than during the day. With most of the snags that I tapped, there was no movement; nothing popped its head out to investigate. There were a couple that had birds in them though. In one snag I saw a Black-capped chickadee and in another a Pileated Woodpecker looked out. Though I didn’t see any, I would guess there were probably some cavities in snags that housed owls as well as more woodpeckers, chickadees, and other species.

I started my birding trip around 12:00 on March 24, 2020. It was partly cloudy with a temperature around 43 degrees Fahrenheit. It had both snowed and rained in the past few days so that probably had some effect on the bird’s activity level. For the first half of my walk, I was hearing a bunch of different species but all I was really seeing were a few American Crows. In the second half of my walk, I saw a Black-capped Chickadee and a northern Cardinal up in some trees. I saw a bunch of American Robins in a neighbor’s yard and as I was finishing up the walk, I saw a Blue Jay fly by. I finished up my Birding trip around 1:15.
I didn’t see very many birds interacting, for the most part the ones I saw were alone. The few times I saw multiple birds interacting, they seemed to be gathering food. I watched the blackbirds for a while and they would stop at a tree eat some seeds, take a branch, fly off then return a minute later to a different nearby tree and repeat the process. Northern Cardinal males have bright red plumage which are fairly easy to spot while American Robins have Grey/brown backs with a much more muted red on their undersides. The plumage of a Northern Cardinal is ideal for attracting a mate. The bright color draws females to the males. The muted colors of the American Robin help camouflage the birds better especially this time of the year when trees haven’t regrown leaves to act as cover yet. Their brown backs blend nicely with the tree bark making them more difficult to see while up in a tree. Though I tried “spishing” a few times, nothing really happened which leads me to believe I was probably doing it incorrectly. In general, it is so effective with small birds because it alerts them to possible threats they either want to further investigate or escape from.