Field Observation 3: Social Behavior and Phenology

I went out birding three major times while I was out in Venice, FL, Siesta Key, FL and in the Everglades National Park, FL with my friend. When I went out birding in Venice, FL at the rookery it was almost dusk (around 5:30pm-7pm) but still clear skies and sunny until the sun went down. Then, in the Everglades (between 10am and 2pm), and at Siesta Key (between 1pm and 2:30pm), it was mostly sunny with partial clouds here and there. All three times, the temperature was around 80-85 degrees F.

Out of all the birds I observed, the sea gulls were interacting the most with each other. This is probably because on all the beaches we went to, they were pretty crowded and full of people with food, so the seagulls were all just calling (squawking) back and forth a lot and probably about where the food was. Another neat bird interaction that I saw, that we don't really have the chance to see up north, is the interaction between the all the different types of herons and egrets. We went to a rookery in Venice, which is an island on a small pond which nests what seemed to be over 40 birds - babies, immatures, and adults - of all different types of herons and egrets with some cormorants and anhingas mixed in there. All of these large (and some small) birds would interact with each other and each species by making these weird whopping calls and low squawking calls (like a dinosaur). I can't really describe them, but when they would interact with a different species in a territorial way, they made a sort-of chirping sound at first and then went into the low whooping sound again while trying to attack the other intruder. It was amazing to see these large animals flap their wings and try to bite each other, because unlike a Canada Goose, it was so graceful, yet aggressive.

The plumage of all of the birds I observed was so drastically different from each other. You had the seagulls, ducks, most herons, and crows which looked sleek and glued together almost. Whereas for some Great Egrets that we saw in the rookery, they had tails almost like peacock feathers, and the Anhingas has a similar loose-feather look when they spread out their wings to dry out. There was also birds like the Purple Gallinule, Green Heron, and Little Blue Heron, which just had absolutely stunning colors on them unlike all the other birds which are more muted tones. Even though the birds I saw that were super colorful were beautiful, the sleek-looking birds with the muted colors would have camouflage advantages over the colorful birds and would be able to remain still and unnoticed from a predator better than the pretty birds. Like most of the herons we saw as we approached them, or as they got close to an alligator, we would look at how still they remained. Their stillness is an act of camouflage which can be part of their foraging or it can just be them resting which both fit in to their circannual rhythm. These herons become a statue and don't move, or move insanely slow while remaining super quiet and stealthy.

I didn't come across any chickadees or small flocks of birds while I was in Florida, but when I came back to Vermont I tried out the pishing technique. This technique works because it elicits some curiosity from these birds and makes them think that something is going on near you, which could either mean food, a predator, or just more birds to interact with. From my experience in the woods, or back at my house in Massachusetts, whenever I'm fishing, the chickadees are just usually curious or just looking for food from the birds feeding and then they end up continuing those pishing noises after I stop making them. What I have also witnessed, is a lot of small (traveling in packs) songbirds make these pishing noises to alert other birds that a predator is near and needs to be scared away by the pack because just one chickadee wouldn't do.

P.S. I wasn't able to attach all of my observations, but all of the bird observations from Florida are all ones that I took for this journal entry.

Posted on March 26, 2019 03:40 AM by elizabethkaufmann