Diario de jridge1821

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.

Place: Burlington Waterfront (residential/waterfront/kinda urban?? (a lot of older buildings and railways). Shoreline/rocky/beach-like.
Time: 2-330pm
Temperature: 29 degrees (20 degrees with windchill)
Wind: 5mph with some gusts. Mainly coming from the North.
Weather: Sunny with little to no clouds.

It was a fairly cold day today on the waterfront. There was only one other person with us (besides Professor Allan and the TA). Fairly strong gusts kept blowing but with sun out it made it bearable to stay out there. We walked along the Burlington Bike path heading South, encountering a variety of human habitats. The area was mostly run down ship yards(for trains and boats), apartment buildings, and small parks that were scattered alongside the path. We saw numerous waterfowl, including nearly one hundred Ring-billed Gulls. These gulls were constantly interacting with each other (and they were quite noisy!), these talks could be fake mating rituals in order to ‘practice’ with another female, to alert other gulls where they were, and also to tell other gulls that ‘you are getting too close to me for comfort.’ On occasion they would throw their head back (this was done by a couple of species) possibly as a sign of intimidation/mating ritual. I think some of the birds' circadian rhythms were thrown off today due to the cold weather, as very few song birds were seen throughout the time we were outside. This cold weather also left numerous species (Ring-billed Gull, and Mallards mainly) just sitting there, with them usually laying down or not moving very often (or tucking their bill/leg into their feathers) in order to stay warm. They were also often trying to keep pointed into the wind in order to stay warm. The male Mallards had bright plumage that was usually only useful in attracting a mate, this is opposite to the female who had brown feathers that are used in order to make sure they aren’t seen by predators (very useful if you have a nest and you need to look after it). We even saw some of the Mallard males chasing one another away from a female, signaling it seems to be almost time for breeding season. This plays into their circannual rhythm as even though it was such a cold day they still had that drive.
Although there weren’t a lot of songbirds out we still did the pishing activity. We did manage to drag in a couple of groups of birds (mainly European Starlings and Northern Cardinals). We think this is due to the fact that birds may just be curious about the noise and want to investigate, also since in cold weather birds may also nest together in multi-species roosts and since it sounds like a Chickadee (and Chickadees are often found in these large roosts) will bring other birds with it as it is attracted to the pishing noise. There are multiple other theories as to why people think pishing works, whether it be that it could possibly sound like a noise an insect would make, or a noise that birds use to scare away predators (Source 1).

Source One for pishing: https://www.thespruce.com/pishing-to-attract-birds-386698#:~:text=Attract%20Birds%20in%20the%20Field&text=The%20raspy%2C%20rough%20quality%20of,ready%20to%20chase%20an%20intruder.