Field Journal 2 - February 22nd
Date: February 20, 2021
Start: 9:05 AM
End: 10:30 AM
Location: UVM campus - From the Davis Center to Redstone Campus, up Prospect Street and back to the Davis Center
Weather: 19° F, sunny, 85% cloud cover, 5-10 mph wind out of the North-West
Habitat: urban/suburban areas on and around campus. Some deciduous forest and individual evergreen trees. We also observed a number of bird feeders within the suburban area that were surrounded by a number of deciduous trees.
On this first excursion, a group of students from our ornithology class met in front of the Davis Center and went for a 90 minute walk around campus. We moved from the Davis Center across to Redstone Campus, stopping a number of times to listen and observe a number of species that we noticed along the way. From Redstone, we walked up Prospect Street through a more developed residential area. Along the way we stopped to notice birds at a number of feeders in front of the houses on the street. By the time we had circled back to the Davis Center, we had spent 90 minutes in the field, seen at least a dozen different species, and made observations about flight patterns and behavior.
Along this trip, I noticed quite a few Black-capped Chickadees. I noticed that this species has shorter, high speed wings. They seemed to do a lot of flitting between branches of an individual tree using short, quick wing flaps.
All across campus, we saw a number of American Crows. These larger birds have a more “all-around” elliptical wing shape and tend to use fewer and larger wing flaps followed by some soaring.
Additionally, towards the end of our excursion, we saw a juvenile Bald Eagle. This bird had a high aspect ratio wing and used relatively few wing flaps. As we watched the bird fly all the way across campus, it was primarily soaring in a straight, long trajectory.
These flight patterns were very telling. You can tell from a great distance generally what kind of bird you are looking at based on the size and shape of the wing relative to the size of the bird, and the flight pattern.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B6DlUvzJ6al28D4n8QMeOoqE_U8JbTpf/view?usp=sharing
Northern Cardinal drawing
