by Gene Walz
My grandson now lives in Europe. He moved there before I could show him one of my favourite Sticky Feet Birds—the Red-headed Woodpecker. It’s disappeared from my suburban St. Vital neighbourhood; in fact, it’s almost impossible to find anywhere in Winnipeg nowadays. People in general, and city-officials in particular, don’t like to leave dead trees standing around for long, fearful of possible lawsuits should they fall on someone’s head. Redheads need open areas (like golf courses and city parks) with dead trees to nest in. They’re gone.
I miss the orioles and Mourning Doves that used to hang out in my neighbourhood, victims of other human incursions. But most of all, I miss the woodpeckers with their bold black and white bodies and stunning red heads.
In Europe, my grandson has already identified Green, Black, and Great Spotted Woodpeckers, three fairly common species with sticky feet. They had him running to his bird guide.
Someday I hope to show him a Pileated Woodpecker—a crow-sized, dramatically black and white bird with a red crest. Or I’ll take him to the American southwest to see the wonderful Acorn Woodpeckers there. I’m sure he’ll love their clownish faces and their acorn-storing habits. If we want the younger generations to appreciate nature, there’s no better way than showing them the upside-down birds or the birds with sticky feet.
A Great Blue Heron
Returns Before Ice-out
We’ll never really understand bird migration. Recent studies have shown that routes and times are instinctive—inherited in a bird’s DNA. But what about the early birds? The cliché says they “get the worm.” What about the ones who seem to have completely mis-timed their arrival in spring?
I’m reminded of this early in April, when birds return while the lakes and ponds and streams are still rock-stiff with ice, and snow still covers the ground in thick white drifts and patches. Those birds brave or foolish enough to return to Manitoba when there’s still snow on the ground shine in the sky as if they are lit from within—and lit with a 500-watt bulb. The sun reflecting off the snow turns raptors and geese into stunning bird-ghosts, their white undersides brighter than bright as they wing overhead.
Even birds that don’t have white undersides can look white. In early April a couple of years ago, a Great Blue Heron flew over me as I was raptor-spotting on the St. Adolphe Bridge. It shone so brightly that for a second I thought it might be a white morph (Great White Heron) or an intermediate (Wurdeman’s Heron). A closer look revealed its silvery blue feathers shining like a brand new quarter.
Great Blue Herons like this one look so relaxed, so laid-back when they fly that I sometimes wonder just how they stay aloft. The wings beat slowly and steadily. The long neck is not determinedly stretched out straight in front like cranes or geese; it coils back on itself in a kind of lazy slouch.
If herons in flight seem lackadaisical, there is something both elegant and goofy about them when they walk. They remind me of John Cleese in Monty Python doing a slow motion “silly walk.” When I think of evolutionary biology, I always wonder which came first: the heron’s neck or its legs. Is its neck so long so it can reach its food? Or are its legs so long because prehistoric herons kept bashing their long beaks on the ground, tripping over them, and snagging them on everything?
Watching that intrepid heron, white as snow, fly slowly over the St. Adophe Bridge that cold April day, I had no idea how the premature migrant was going to find food. The rivers were still frozen two feet thick. A long, cold winter meant that marshes and streams would not thaw for a month. Who knows how long it would take before the fish and frogs and slugs and bugs that suit a heron’s palate made an appearance.
Once the ice melts and the heron’s food supplies make an appearance, this bird stalks its prey with the proverbial patience of Job. It stiffens into a feathered statue, its bill and long neck poised like a javelin. Then it springs!
As I followed that too-early, too-eager heron as it flew past, all I could do was wonder. I knew that an early heron gets the best breeding and feeding spots. But if it were to try hunting for food, it would shatter its bill into a million splinters and end up with a very sore neck. I wanted to shout, “It’s still winter up here, dummy. I hope you’ve got a good reserve of fat from your warmer wintering ground.”
Instead, I turned my attention back to the Bald Eagles and Red-tailed Hawks that were streaming past. It was a day better suited to them. The thermals created by the sunny skies, the snow cover, and the exposed fields made it easy for them to soar and glide towards their northern destinations. And they have diets better suited to the cold than the heron does. Just thinking about them made me feel cold and hungry. I needed to get out of the wind and get a good bowl of soup in me. Once the heron was out of sight, my April birding was done for the day.
American White Pelicans
Ghost Riders in the Sky
People often see what they want to see and hear what they hope to hear. It’s one of the hazards of birding. Wishin’ and hopin’ to find a rare bird can sometimes lead to embarrassing misidentifications. It’s called confirmation bias. I’ve done it myself. Most of my betters have too.
There’s a famous story about iron-willed British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in this regard. At a meeting, she once claimed to have heard a Nightingale singing on a February night outside her prime ministerial residence at Ten Downing Street. An underling meekly challenged her identification skills by pointing out that Nightingales migrated to Africa in winter.
When Maggie insisted that she could not have been mistaken, the underling tried to suggest other possibilities—until his boss, a cabinet minister, took him outside and sharply castigated him. “If the prime minister says she heard a Nightingale in February, then by Jove she heard a Nightingale!”
We don’t have any amateur birders in Manitoba with quite the clout of Maggie Thatcher, but almost every spring or fall, people report seeing Whooping Cranes here. It’s highly unlikely, but not impossible. Whooping Cranes have been known to stray from their normal migratory route from Northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories to the Texas coast and back. They have been positively confirmed here, but not very often. (I was with a large group of birders who saw one south of St. Adolphe.)
More likely what people see are American White Pelicans. In the air, pelicans can look surprisingly similar to Whoopers. Both have white bodies and wings and black wing extremities. If they get too excited about seeing a rare Whooper, people might mistake the pelican’s long bill for the crane’s long neck, and they don’t notice the absence of the crane’s long, trailing legs.
People don’t expect to see pelicans in Manitoba. They think pelicans are ocean or coastal dwellers. That’s the Brown Pelican, a more colourful, if less elegant, bird. In fact, White Pelicans are pretty numerous on Manitoba’s lakes and rivers—so numerous that they are periodically slaughtered by fishermen who erroneously believe that pelicans and cormorants are responsible for fish-stock depletions.
Pelicans are among my favourite local birds. To see a dozen of them appearing, disappearing, and magically reappearing as they soar in languid arcs high above a prairie lake can distract me even when I’m fiercely concentrating on a golf green. It happens almost every time I play the ninth hole at Clear Lake Golf Course. They hardly seem to move their wings at all. Appearing and disappearing, like ghost riders in the sky.
Watching a small group as it works together to herd fish, grab them, and lets them wriggle in their rubbery bill pouches can make the kid in me rise again to the surface. At Lockport, Manitoba, I once marvelled as a pelican caught a fish in its bill that seemed far too large to fit down its throat and into its belly. It took ten or twelve tries, but the pelican finally tilted its head back and slid the live, wriggling fish down its throat. The fish was twice as wide as the pelican’s neck, but somehow the neck didn’t burst wide open. Amazing!
I’m in good company in my fascination with pelicans, and misident
ifiers are not alone in their mistakes. The famous Greek philosopher Aristotle “studied” them and concluded that pelicans swallowed clamshells whole, cooked them in their pouches, and then vomited them up to feed on the exposed and cooked flesh. The pelicans cooked and shelled the clams in their pouches without the aid of a stove, clam knife, or plyers. Hmmm!
Great philosopher, Aristotle. Terrible ornithologist!
Eyeball to Eyeball
with a Short-eared Owl
The first time I ever saw a Short-eared Owl, it was flying at eye level about ten feet from my car window as I drove along the west edge of Oak Hammock Marsh north of Winnipeg. I was with my good friend Lew Layman, a guy who loves owls. We were both gob-smacked as it turned its head slightly and stared right at us with its big, yellow eyes. And, instead of flapping away, it stayed with my car at about twenty miles per hour for several minutes. Only ten feet away. It instantly became my favourite owl.
Thinking back on it, I wish my grandson had been with me then. He would have enjoyed the “race” between a car and an owl, one of his favourite birds. Who was leading whom? Was I in the pace car or was it the pace owl?
Because it was so close and stuck with us so long, I was able to get a great read on its markings. Medium-sized, tawny colour with white belly and under-wings, and a streaky breast. The head had a beige facial disk and the yellow eyes were surrounded by black—as if it were wearing mascara. Mascara—my grandson would have loved that image!
The distinctive flight would surely have fascinated him. There’s nothing that compares. It truly does remind you of the flight of a moth. It beats its long, floppy wings in an unhurried, irregular way, occasionally dipping to one side or another as it hunts low to the ground for voles and mice and other small rodents.
Then you realize: hey, it’s ten o’clock in the morning, and I’m eyeball to eyeball with an owl! Another reason to like it. It’s one of very few owls that are diurnal; it hunts during daylight hours. It also hunts like other owls, at night (nocturnal), but your best bet to see them is to look at dawn and dusk (crepuscular).
Not long after that encounter I saw about twenty Short-eared Owls over the course of a couple of hours in the very same place—Oak Hammock Marsh. That can happen. Occasionally they flock together when the hunting is good. I’ve not been as lucky since. All birding involves a certain amount of serendipity.
But I have been lucky enough to see Short-eared Owls in all four seasons. My second best sighting happened on a Christmas Bird Count, the annual census of all the birds within a twelve-mile circle. The wind was howling across the bald-headed prairie, and Lew, Andy Courcelles, another birding friend, and I weren’t finding anything. Our census list was pathetic—some chickadees, a few nuthatches, a Downy Woodpecker or two, some House Sparrows. Most birds were in hiding, hunkered down out of the wind. So we stopped at a short bridge across an irrigation ditch to see if any Rock Pigeons were taking shelter there. That’s how desperate we were; hunting for pigeons to bulk up our census list. We were desperate to find anything at all.
Suddenly, three large, tawny birds boomed out from the cramped space. Grouse? No! Three Short-eared Owls! And boy, did they look mad at us for chasing them from their warm hiding place! Lew, owl aficionado and shameless punster, exclaimed, “Irritable Owl Syndrome, I think.”
No moth-like fluttering by these three owls. They took off as if they had turbo-boosters. Racing side by side with them was out of the question. They headed across a snow-covered, bumpy stubble-field and were quickly out of sight.
How’d we know they were Short-eared Owls? We’d each caught enough of a glimpse of them to be sure of their identity: tawny colour, white underneath, yellow eyes, and, oh, no “ears,” the ornamental tufts of feathers that distinguish them from Long-eared Owls.
If it weren’t so silly, I’d suggest that they be re-named. Maybe No-eared Owls. But even my grandson knows an owl’s ears are beneath their feathers. Ears are one of their unseen, dominant features. Maybe Moth-like Owls would be a better moniker.
Because of these three owls, seen in this area on a Christmas count for the first time ever, we ended up with the best list at the tally dinner. The others birders just smiled when we listed them as No-eared Owls.
Merlins
and Other Bird Brains
My friend Harry has been complaining about the Merlins in his south Winnipeg neighbourhood for years. These smallish, brown (female) or grey (male) falcons have nested in his evergreens, terrorizing the birds at his feeders. And they’re noisy birds; their shrill, piercing “key, key, key” calls, especially during nesting season, only add to their nuisance quotient.
Harry would love to shoot them, but there are city bylaws. And lately he says that he’s gained a new, grudging respect for them. They’re smarter than he originally thought.
He wonders whether they may have adopted a new hunting tactic. Instead of catching birds on the wing, the Merlins have been scaring their prey into flying, panic-stricken, into his picture windows and then feasting on them after they’ve stunned themselves and fallen onto the ground. Smart birds! Easy pickings, minimal effort.
I didn’t know quite what to think until I saw a female Merlin in my own yard, miles away from Harry’s, doing the same thing. I was standing over the sink in my kitchen when I heard a soft thump on my patio doors. Quickly checking to find out what made the sound, I discovered a Merlin casually retrieving its unconscious prey. She was mantling a sparrow (stretching her wings out to prevent other possible predators from seeing and poaching it), but from my covert vantage point, I had a good look.
In short order, the sparrow’s feathers were flying. The Merlin removed the head and gorged herself on the bird’s torso. Within five minutes, all that was left were the separated wings, the head and tail, and a pile of downy feathers. Nature, in the poet Tennyson’s phrase, “red in tooth and claw”—or beak and claw.
I was still skeptical of the apparent cleverness of the Merlins after my sighting. One or two examples were hardly scientific. Was the tactic planned? Did the Merlins calculate and then execute a strategy? Or were they just lucky? When I recounted these stories to some friends, one of them asked me whether any other birds qualified as smart. I tossed his question back at him, using the tried and true professorial gambit.
He took a minute and then offered, hesitantly: robins?
Surprised, I asked him why he chose robins.
“I don’t know much about birds,” he stammered, “but I’ve read that bird populations are declining rapidly. But I see robins all the time. I figure they must be smart enough, adaptable enough, to buck the trends.”
I told him that robins first adapted their behaviour hundreds of years ago. Before white settlement of North America and especially before the middle class obsession with lush, extensive lawns, robins were forest dwellers. They especially liked the open, green spaces of forests recently cleared by forest fires. They’ve learned to co-exist with people, hunting for worms and grubs on suburban lawns and building mud nests on and near houses. They’re smarter than people think.
Examples of brainy birds, of birds adapting to changing conditions, are not difficult to find. Think of Barn Owls and Barn Swallows and Chimney Swifts. They all existed in North America before barns and chimneys were built. They were smart enough to adapt—to examine a situation, imagine an alternative way of living, and change their behaviour. And adaptation continues. There’s evidence that Barn Swallows have learned to fly through the scanners that trigger the automatic door openers that allow them to get into and out of Big Box home and garden stores. Nesting inside is easier than nesting out in the weather.
Other smart birds? Parrots come quickly to mind. If you’ve read the book Tuco: The Parrot, the Others, and a Scattershot World by Brian Brett, you already know that parrots aren’t just great mimics, they’re also highly intelligent and sensitive creatures, capable of empathy, cruelty,
and humor. Some people have suggested that eagles are really smart; I don’t know why. Believe it or not, others have voted for Canada Geese, but that just seems ignorant to me.
Like many conversations, this one ended in mid-air. I never did get to provide the ultimate answer: the smartest birds in the world are the corvids—ravens, crows, jays, magpies, and nutcrackers. But that was a story for another day.
Corvids
The Smartest Birds in the World
My first bird book was The Golden Nature Guide to Birds. It was printed in 1949, but I didn’t get my copy until 1952 or 1953. Before then, I birded without the benefit of binoculars or a book. I guess I was engaged in close-quarter ornithological research without even knowing what the words meant. I had plenty of time on my hands (this was before computers and TV dominated kids’ free time) to stake out a birdy spot and wait for whatever came along. It could take hours.
Before I got the Golden Guide, I only knew the names of very common birds: robin, chickadee, pheasant, pigeon, Mallard, etc. For some others, I didn’t make fine distinctions: all owls were Hoot Owls, Goldfinches were wild canaries, all gulls were simply seagulls. For the rest, I had to make up my own names. The only ones I can now remember are “Chatterbox” for the Warbling Vireo and “Sad Bird” for the Mourning Dove. I wish I’d kept the lists I created as a ten-year-old.
The Golden Guide was skimpy. It covered only 112 birds—“The Most Familiar American Birds.” For instance, it had crow but not raven. For a while I thought they were the same bird—just like puma and cougar describes the same animal. After I read Edgar Allen Poe, I thought I had to listen for the raven’s song “Nevermore” to tell the difference. I figured “Nevermore” was a transcription of the bird’s song into English, like “Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody” was the mnemonic for the White-throated Sparrow’s song, and “Pleased, pleased, pleased to meetcha” a transcription of the Chestnut-sided Warbler’s song, and “Drink your tea” what the Eastern Towhee “says.”