Field Observation 2: Physiology

I went birding with my boyfriend around his house in Milton, VT. We went on March 1st, 2019 around 4pm up his long road along the sidewalk to remain in the sun. We passed by a barn, a few large (dead) crop fields, and the edge of a forest habitat at the top of the road.
The Feral Pigeons we saw on top of the silo were huddled together, resting in the sun to conserve energy and retain body heat. A lot of the songbirds we observed (House Sparrows and Chickadees) were also doing the same thing as the pigeons and were traveling in packs and were either huddled together in a tree or bush or were just resting on a branch out in the heat of the sun to stay warm.
The bushes and trees these birds were in also contained seeds or food of some sort so that they were resting and conserving energy while also being able to eat and build up their energy for then night. Other species we saw, like the American Crow, the Red-tailed Hawk, and the Wild Turkeys were grazing or flying low to the ground to find food but remaining in the sun to preserve their body heat.
The songbirds were hunting for and eating seeds and parts of a pine tree, i.e. cones and needles. The larger birds, the turkeys, hawk, and crows, might have also been searching for seeds (not the hawk), but they were also hunting for any type of live or dead organism they could possibly eat for some protein and energy.
These larger birds might overnight in the forest behind the barn somewhere to stay protected and out of the wind and out of reach of predators, however, even though the songbirds need to do the same, they also need to stay near a food source. So, the songbirds might travel into the forest for the night, but they also could fly into the barn up in the roosts to stay warm or in a pine tree along the road, and both options would keep them warm.
We observed a few snags in the field and along the edge habitat during our journey, ranging in different sizes of tree diameter and hole size on and within the snags. Snags are important because they provide shelter and habitats for many different animals and organisms to take shelter in. However, snags also provide certain species of animals (specifically birds) with a food source because of all the different organisms, like bugs and worms, that take shelter in the tree's crevices. The cavities are formed by decaying and rot but also but certain birds, like woodpeckers, that use their beak to make holes to try and find and pry out any bugs within the wood and then later on, some smaller animals will inhabit those holes later on depending on what size the cavities get.

Posted on March 9, 2019 04:54 AM by elizabethkaufmann