4th Journal Entry

March 21st, 2021
Start Time: 1:40 pm
End Time: 3:10 pm
Location: Brookwood Road in Bristol Rhode Island and Colt State Park in Bristol Rhode Island.
Weather: Blue skies, Sunny, East 10 mph wind speed and 0% precipitation.

Temperature: 57 F
Habitat: Brookwood Road is bordered by an estuary with many rocks at the shallow end where my house borders that leads to a beach less than a mile away, also bordering the house I stay at are numerous tall trees on an old street. In Colt State park it is heavily wooded but borders many streets, bogs, the same estuary that was previously mentioned and numerous open fields.

Species List: 1 Black-capped Chickadee, 2 American Crows, 1 Ring-billed Gull, 8 Brant's, 3 European Starlings.

This was a fun day again, today I went out bird watching at the family beach house in Bristol Rhode Island and we ventured from the house on Brookwod Road and hiked all the way through Colt State park less than a half mile down to go see some birds. I went over to my deck when I started to see if any birds were out on the water and I saw one Ring-billed Gull clear as day padding away from us, I knew that it was a Ring-billed Gull because while it is hard to see in the picture, there was a black ring around its yellow beak, albeit it was dimly yellow. Shorty after I heard some cackling and I looked up in the tree next to my house and I saw a nest, next to the nest I saw a large black bird cackling and once that bird stopped cackling I head a noise "caw caw" I knew these were two American Crows who were communicating with each other, sadly I could only get one as the other one flew off. Once the crow took off I saw a bunch of what I though to be ducks in the water, so I ran back down to the dock and snapped multiple photos of these 8 "ducks", only to realize their plumage and head did not make them look like ducks I have ever seen, come to find out they were Brant which are a type of geese which makes more sense when you think about its brown wings, white underbelly and long neck which that reminds me somewhat of a Canadian Goose, but I can only tell by zooming in on the photo after. Once we caught the Brant's on camera we started hiking too and through Colt State park, there were many birds while we were walking by but none I could make out because they were moving quite quickly and noises that I could not make out because of the cars and people that were nearby. However, when I was walking me and my father noticed 3 birds, two on one branch and 1 on another tree making noises at each other and looking at each other, they had an odd color to them, black but almost translucent kind of and they were fat but small. Its sound was piercing, and that is when I realized I ran into 3 European Starlings. After trying the spishing noise out on them, I was able to get a response back, I know that because they were looking toward me when they were calling. It was not long after I saw a Black-capped Chickadee moving and when it stopped I tried the spishing sound which made it stop entirely, it then immediately kept moving from tree to tree until it flew away for good. That was the last bird I was able to get a good look at, it was a nice day so it probably was not helpful there was so many people around scaring off the birds. But overall it was a good day of bird watching with my family.

The bird species I saw that were communicating were the two American Crows and the three European Starlings. For the Crows, one near the nest was cackling while the other on the other side of the house on a tree branch was cawing, to me what they are trying to say to each other here is I believe, "I'm fine, how are you" and the other would say "fine" I believe that the crow at the nest was a female and the other was a male and the male was trying to get something for the chicks or for her. For the Starlings they used communication by calls and exchanging looks back and forth between each other. I believe they were foraging for food and they were communicating like, "did you find any food" and the other said yes or no and I believe they are foraging because by looking at each other, if either say yes, they know exactly where to come and pick at. In terms of the plumage I would compare the Starlings to the Chickadee, the chickadee has a black cap with grey feathers, primary and secondary, and a black neck with white cheeks. I believe this is the case because it is a small bird the black cap and black neck are meant to give the appearance to a predator that the chickadee has large white eyes which is possible to see when you look at it from the font and the back or even from up top. On the other hand the starling has a kind of black plumage but with tints of green, purple and shiny white spots on it, this season, it almost seems translucent and shiny. This appearance I believe make its competitors and predators not be able to tell what kind of bird they are, if the sun reflects off of them and it makes them seem a different color, then they cannot tell what bird it is, and sometimes when that happens you cannot tell the size either. The starlings I believe were foraging for food, such as edible bark and nuts in the trees, this makes sense concerning their circadian rhythms when it comes to broods which is normally the most active in the latter part of the day before the sun goes down.

When spishing, specifically to the starlings, I was able to get them to look in my direction and call back numerous times, I knew I did not sound like them however when I did it at a medium level it got their attention. However, when I did it to the chickadee, one bird, he stopped and flew away. This led me to believe this spishing move I do is kind of a territorial thing, a way to issue a sort of threat, when I did it with the starlings who were in a group they wanted to see where it was coming from so they could gauge the threat, while the chickadee was alone and took it as a territorial move since I was so close to him, closer than I was to the starlings, which is why I believe I was able to kind of communicate with the starlings and scare off the chickadee by spishing.

Posted on March 23, 2021 02:18 AM by sdecrescinaturalist