Winter tidbits

Downy Woodpecker in birch tree. Margaret Madsen photo.

Our world was bathed in an amber glow when the sun came up this morning about 7:50, but the only thing warm was the color. The mercury is stuck at the bottom of the thermometer, the wind is gusty and the wind chill scary.

The male Downy Woodpecker has set up a regular time to visit us. He's here every day between 11 and 12 and always arrives the same way. He lands first in the birch tree and carefully surveys the feeders, stretching up to get a better view. He elongates himself to about twice his height and looks so long and skinny, almost the same length as a Hairy Woodpecker. When he decides everything looks safe, he exhales back to his regular height, his body plumps out again and then he dips in for the suet.

When he was doing his inspection yesterday, the sunlight caught the red patch on the back of his head and for a moment, it glowed with jewel-like brilliance, the color of garnets. Isn't it amazing how, in the right light, certain feathers burst into dazzling flashes of color?

Even the much aligned magpie, another tough, resilient winter bird, can display breath-taking beauty. Don't we all cherish those moments when the sunlight catches the black and white bird at just the right angle and suddenly it is transformed into iridescent purple and green?

"Chickadees are cold weather machines" is the headline of an article in the spring issue of Nature Views, published by Nature Saskatchewan. Black-capped Chickadees lower their body temperatures at night to conserve energy. This nightly hypothermia is the chickadee's most remarkable tool for survival, according the American biologist Susan M. Smith who has studied them for years. In the article, she explains that this tough little bird with its dense winter coat also carefully hides food items and finds special cavities to roost in at night.

The article doesn't say anything about the chickadee's good nature. Don't you think they are the most happy-go-lucky cheerful birds in the winter landscape? Wish I was as cheerful with the forecast that this cold weather will drag on!

Swan song

Tundra Swans near Naicam, April 17, 2010. John Madsen photo

February is definitely a cruel month. The last few days have been bitterly cold with the mercury shriveled to the bottom of the thermometer while a week earlier we were teased by temperatures above freezing for enough days to make us think it was winter's swan song.

Speaking of swans, last spring John and I came upon a flock of over 100 Tundra Swans on a slough just northeast of Naicam. It was the largest number we had seen at one time, although I understand the largest flock recorded was 20,000 at Goose Lake near Tessier in 1973, according to Alan R. Smith in the Atlas of Saskatchewan Birds. That must have been spectacular.

When I say these swans are on a slough, I am exaggerating. It's the flooded corner of a field. When we went back a couple of months later, the crop was up and flourishing and it was hard to believe that swans had ever gathered there. About five years ago, a rapid spring thaw created mini-lakes on either side of the Anaheim access road off Highway 5 where a flock of about 30 stayed to forage for several days. After the water dried up, it was the same amazement. The water must have been less that a foot deep and yet the swans liked it!

All the flooded potholes across the prairies must be the fast-food outlets for these magnificent birds making their way from the eastern coast of the USA to north of the Arctic Circle. I keep a notebook in the glove compartment to record birds sighted on outings, and looking back I see that en route to BC on April 14, we saw swans west of Humboldt, at Laura west of Delisle, at Sibbald just inside the Alberta boarder, west of Hannah and west of Beiseker and the next morning, at Lac Des Arcs near the Banff park entrance. Number of birds at each of these sightings ranged from five or six to 20 or 30, nowhere near the size of the flock we saw last year.

The swans were all strung out in a long line on the far side of the "slough". We sat in the car with the windows down, watching and listening to the birds chattering. A pair of Lesser Scaups feeding nearby looked impossibly tiny. Then we heard a delicate whistling and three swans came in for a landing near us. The whistling sound is made by their wings, not their voices, and gives them the name by which they were once known, Whistling Swans.

When the fly overhead, it's their cooing calls that makes you look up to see the long undulating ribbon of birds. They have all white plumage with black legs, feet and bills, and usually a yellow spot in front of the eye. The plumage of the sexes is the same.

Not cross - but crossed

White-winged Crossbill at Prince Albert feeder. Linda Clavelle photo

My sister Linda discovered this little guy at her feeder the other morning just north of Prince Albert. Her first reaction was that she was looking at a Pine Grosbeak, but then she noticed the short, stubby tail. What confused her, she said, was that she couldn't see that the bill was actually crossed. Spotting the feature that give the bird its name is never as easy as the field guides make it seem. Even in this great photo that Linda took through her dining room window, the crossed bill is not readily apparent even though the photo is enlarged almost to the point of pixilating.

There are two crossbills which occasionally show up at our feeders in winter: the
Red Crossbill which has no white on its wings and the White-winged Crossbill which is more pink than red in color and has white showing on its wings. The Red has a much larger bill and eats seeds from pines while the White-winged's smaller, finer bill is perfect for extracting seeds from tamaracks and spruce cones.

Both incidentally are members of the finch family and they are the only birds in the world with truly crossed bills, according to The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior. The Purple Finch and House Finch are other related "red" birds in this area and appear to be much smaller than the White-winged. The difference in over-all length is not much. A House Finch averages about 5.75 inches; Purple Finch, 6 inches; and White-Winged 6.5 inches. The stocky body and stubby tail, however, give the impression that the White-winged much bigger than the other two.

Hairy or Downy?

Downy Woodpecker at our Naicam feeder, Feb. 12, 2011. Margaret Madsen photo

We have no trouble telling Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers apart when they visit our feeders. The Downy guys at about 6 inches (15-18 cms) fit on our small barn feeder with the suet holders at the ends, but the poor gangly Hairy Woodpeckers (9 inches) have an awful time clinging to the feeder to attack the suet. You can see that even this Downy has to skew  his tail to the side to brace himself at the feeder.

Both species have almost identical black and white markings and the males both have bright red spots at the back of their heads. It's hard to see the red on the male pictured here. When you see one or the other by itself out in the woods, it's difficult to tell through your binoculars whether you're looking at a Hairy or a Downy. If both species show up at the same time on the same tree, there's no guesswork because you can see the relative difference in size. This has actually happened for me twice in my life - once years ago in BC when we lived on a wooded acreage and once when we lived in Delisle and went on an outing with Saskatoon Nature Society to Blackstrap Provincial Park.

There is another way to tell them apart. Check the bill. The Downy has a short bill while the Hairy's bill is as long as his head. Both bills are strong, straight and chisel shaped so they don't get jammed in the wood when they are excavating Both also have the nasal "whisker" feathers to screen sawdust when they're working.

Both have two toes pointing forward and two back to help them cling to trees and strong, stiff central tail feathers to help prop them up.

When you hear the rat-a-tat-tat sound of a woodpecker beating on wood, it's doing one of three things: excavating a nest, foraging for food or "drumming." They "drum" to attract a mate or to announce their territory and incidentally, both males and females drum. They choose the most resonant "drum" available whether it's a dead tree or a power pole or a metal chimney or the siding on your house!

And here's piece of trivia for you. While all woodpeckers have long, sticky, barbed tongues, the female Downy's tongue is much longer than the male's - she probes and he pecks. And so where do these long tongues go when they retract? Into a channel that curves around the back of the skull and up over the eyes. Is that too much information?

About feeders and chickadees

Chickadee perched on Karl's feeder. Karl Madsen/Yvonne Koenig photo

In a recent blog I got talking about Evening Grosbeaks and forgot to tell you about Karl's feeders. This is just one of a number scattered about their yard and each is more interesting than the last. All are made from recycled materials or scraps of wood from other projects and each is embellished with his trademark bent rusty nail.

As I said the other day, this is the feeder just outside their kitchen window right against the narrow deck along the side of the house. Their unique home is notched into the side of a steep hill. My favorite place to spend time is in a chair on this deck where I have choice of a close up view of visitors to the feeder, a mid-range view of activity in the Ponderosa pines or spruce across the driveway and a more distant view of activity on the valley floor - pheasants and killdeer, for example. The whitish space on the lower left of the photo is the neighbor's roof and beyond that (not visible) the railway track and road and then the pasture at the valley bottom.

On the wooden fence enclosing the courtyard outside their dining room, Karl has set  up special feeders that attract hordes of California Quail with the distinctive black comma jutting from their foreheads. They seem to prefer walking or running to flying and have their little trails all over the property.

I've seen two sparrows at this feeder that don't come to ours in Naicam - the White-crowned and the Golden-crowned. Our daughter-in-law calls the White-crowned the "bicycle helmet birds" for indeed their striped black and white heads do make them look like they are wearing bicycle helmets!

The chickadee perched on top of the feeder here is the Black-capped which is our usual visitor, too. A more occasional visitor at the Okanagan feeders is the Mountain Chickadee which has a white eyebrow separating its black cap from the black eyeline that looks like a mask.

The chickadee visiting Kristin and Peter's feeder when they lived in Kentucky was the Carolina Chickadee which looks very much like our Black-capped but lacks the white stripes on the wing. It also sounded different to my ear - as if it had a southern accent. It said chick-dah-dah-y'all.

I've seen the brown-capped Boreal Chickadees at Emma Lake and at my brother Alvin's near Olds, AB. So far I have not seen them here in Naicam.

Swallow tales

Mixed flock of Purple Martins and Swallows on anentena in Naicam last fall. Margaret Madsen photo

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who build up and those who tear down.

A number of years ago when we were in Holland, we met our son-in-law Tony's uncle, Bernard, a Catholic monk or brother. The monastery where he lived was in a beautiful park area that included an operating farm which also served as a retreat/summer camp for young people. Brother Bernard was in charge of the little herd of dairy cattle. While showing us around the farm, he paused to add water to a small puddle beside the barn. By keeping the mud damp, he was assisting a pair of Barn Swallows building their nest. These avian engineering architects use mud to affix their adobe-like nests to perpendicular surfaces. St. Francis of Assisi would have definitely approved of Brother Bernard.

Then there was the unfortunate pair of swallows who chose to build their nest above the bedroom window of the old couple who lived one door down across the street. From my favorite perch on our front steps, I had watched for several days as the energetic little birds flitted back and forth from a mud puddle at the intersection toting tiny beaksful of mortar to glue to their nest.

My heart was in my throat when the cleaning lady who comes regularly to help the old couple decided to wash the outside windows. I saw her hesitate about the nest over the window, then ignore it and go on with washing glass. I called my thanks to her and she just laughed and shrugged. "Well, they worked so hard and and it's not hurting anything there," she said.

Shortly after, the old couple's daughter and son-in-law came from out of province for a visit and to help with some yard work. First thing they did was knock down the nest and wash the remnants of mud from the siding.

Like I said, some people build up and some knock down.

Okay, okay, before you get your shirt in a knot, I can understand that Barn Swallows nesting over your bedroom window might get a bit messy, especially if there is a wind blowing houseward while there's bathroom business underway from the lip of the nest.

Almost every summer after we built the new barn in BC, Barn Swallows chose to set up housekeeping on the first rafter inside the west door. We always left the west doors at least partially open in the summer to allow whatever cooling breeze might be coming up from the lake. The swallows certainly didn't bother us, although for those weeks after the chicks hatched and until they left the nest, one had to be sure not to walk directly under the nest but to detour around the pile of droppings that accumulated on the floor beneath it. A surprise deposit in one's hair was not pleasant.

More Pine Grosbeaks

Juvenile Pine Grosbeak. Photo by Linda Clavelle

My sister Linda contributed today's photos of a rusty-colored juvenile Pine Grosbeak at the feeder outside her dining room window in the pines just north of Prince Albert. Isn't it amazing how a bit of bright color on a bird can be such a treat for our color-hungry winter eyes?

At our feeders this winter, our regular visitors are Black-capped chickadees, House Sparrows and Common Redpolls. This morning, there were several Hoary Redpolls hopping around under the feeder, too. The Hoary guys have white rumps/lower backs, fewer streaks on the sides and are lighter looking overall as though they were coated with hoar frost. We seem to have far more Common Redpolls than the frosty kind.

Redpolls, incidentally, are closely related to Pine Grosbeaks and Crossbills.

Another bird with a red badge of courage at our winter feeder occasionally is the Hairy Woodpecker. The male has a red spot on the back of his head that seems to blink like a traffic signal. The female is just black and white. I get a kick out of watching a Hairy try to get at sunflower seeds in the tower feeder, clinging to a roost post on one side while stretching around to hammer at seeds in an opening on the adjacent side.

My friend Clistine called me the other day to tell me about magpie doing the same thing at their feeder. She said it had to flail its wings wildly to keep its balance. She said this reminded her of me saying that I thought magpies were the inspiration was garden whirligigs with their wooden wings that rotate like propellors.