March 5th, 2021

Out from: 2pm-3:30pm
Weather: 21 degrees, 100% overcast, wind coming from the North around 10 mph
Habitat: Maily forested with some residential area.

For today's excursion with the group it was mostly in Centennial woods today. The entire thing went from 2 to 3:30. Overall it was a chilly day, with the temperature staying at twenty one degrees, but there was a wind chill involved which brought the temperature down to nine degrees. The wind varied from constant to more like gusts probably around ten miles per hour, the wind was mostly coming from the North. It was hundred percent overcast with no sun really being seen. Centennial is generally a pretty heavy pine stand (primarily Eastern white Pines) with some deciduous trees underneath, throughout the time we spent in Centennial and Davis area we saw eleven species of birds overall.
Throughout most of the trek there weren't a whole lot of birds to be seen, we did hear the distant calls of birds on occasion but we never saw anything super close for a while. This may be due to the fact Burlington seemed to get another cold snap which caused some of the food resources to dry up. All throughout centennial there were cavities in both living and dead trees, these could either be for living/nesting in or for food purposes. The birds that stay in Burlington are primarily eating seeds and fruits, some insects but not that many. During the day I feel like birds are often just trying to find food as currently it isn’t breeding season so they aren’t doing that, and it being this cold I feel like they’d want to keep moving to avoid freezing. This may also depend on the day because on very cold days they may just want to stay in their nest to avoid putting themselves in a situation where they may die or get injured, but on warmer days they resume their normal duties. Most of the birds we saw in Centennial are more generalist species, so currently their diet would differ from when food is more abundant (they would eat more insects but since there aren’t any leaves there aren't that many bugs to feed on). Most species will stay in forested areas overnight, it offers them protection from the elements as trees can keep wind gusts lower. Forests are usually also slightly warmer than open fields, and give protection from snow. The amount of cavities seem to point to more birds staying in the Centennial forest area. A lot of birds when it gets cold (depending on the species) will to fluff up their feathers and potentially try and huddle together to stay warm.
When we walked through centennial we hit a stick on five snags but no wildlife ever showed itself when we did that. You could tell that certain snags were older because they would have a lot of cavities in them, and in a lot of those areas where we saw a lot of cavities we saw more birds. Taller snags usually had more cavities, but there were some smaller ones with a lot of cavities as well. We did see a couple larger cavities which we assumed were for living in (they also had cleaner edges) compared to the feeding cavities (which usually had rougher entrances). The snag cavities provide protection from the elements. Snags were all throughout Centennial, and to map them out would just about be the entire thing lmao, as there were lots of them.

Publicado el marzo 8, 2021 05:29 TARDE por jridge1821