Wordless Wednesday

Birds and Habitat: Cox Hall Creek WMA

 [The bird with the earth on its breast and sky on its back (John Burroughs' words, not mine) shows why Multiflora Rose is my "favorite" exotic invasive plant. Eastern Bluebird, Cox Hall Creek WMA Sunday.]

Many, many birds adorned Cox Hall Creek WMA on Sunday, and as we wandered and wondered enjoying them, I got to thinking about birds in context of habitat. They're pretty much always where they're supposed to be - imagine that!

Like, why is the WMA so good for Eastern Bluebirds? With at least 100 (!!) there today? Because it's a mixture of open woods and meadows, with abundant fruiting trees and shrubs like eastern redcedar and multiflora rose, and has water to produce insects the year round, and plenty of snags with cavities to roost in at night or in inclement weather. The definition of bluebird habitat. I sincerely doubt all those bluebirds will winter at Cox Hall Creek, but a sizeable chunk of them will.

[Cedar Waxwings love ripe multiflora berries, too. This one is at least a year and a half old, since it has wide waxy tips on the secondaries, thought to be a signal of maturity and/or fitness. Compare this bird's waxy tips and tail with the one below. . .]

 [So this waxing is a hatch-year, aged by the retained juvenal wing feathers lacking waxy tips. And, what's with the orange-tipped tail? Pigments in the bird's diet while those feathers were growing made them orange rather than the normal bright yellow - pigments probably derived from non-native honeysuckle berries, which have been coloring some waxwing tails since becoming well established in the 1950's.]

[There's a secret, secluded pond at the WMA fringed with oaks, and acorns rain down into the pond. Habitat again - the definition this time for Wood Duck habitat.]

[And again habitat. Wet leaves near a pond bank, perfect for Rusty Blackbirds to flip over and look for invertebrates underneath.]

[The Red-headed Woodpeckers hanging out at Cox Hall Creek all fall intend to stay. How do I know? Because they are caching acorns like crazy, preparing for winter.]

[Flashes of white - Red-headed Woodpecker going back to an oak for another acorn.]

Wordless Wednesday

Tactics and Unexpected Results

 [First year Baltimore Oriole near Lily Lake, Cape May Point on Saturday. Orioles are not among the birds normally associated with Eastern Redcedar, but this one gets around the berry's waxy coating by crushing it open. Yellow-rumped Warblers and Tree Swallows famously can digest the wax coating on redcedars (technically junipers) and bayberries.]

On Saturday morning, after quickly concluding there was no big flight underway (due to the absence of robins and other flocks overhead), and after not finding the Western Kingbird lingering along Sunset Boulevard near the bread stand, I decided instead to find me a redcedar in heavy fruit and with bird activity on it.

(By the way, I'm waiting for kingbird searchers to find another rare bird there, and thus create Cape May's answer to the Patagonia Picinc Table Effect - the Cape May Bread Stand Effect).

Driving around Lily Lake I found just the cedar, laden with berries and with ponderous low boughs riddled with yellow-rumpeds, House Finches, Robins, a Blackpoll Warbler. I was thinking about Townsend's Solitaire. There's one in the state right now, apparently, and there've been enough cold fronts and west wind days to push such a western stray here. TOSO's descend from high elevation breeding areas to winter on junipers in the west, and the two I've seen in NJ both were doing something similar, maintaining territories for several weeks in eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) thickets. No TOSO materialized, but the oriole above was a nice consolation.

I drove by the Western Kingbird spot again, and missed it again, and headed on to the South Cape May Meadows to look for more juniper birds. First a hatch year Bald Eagle flushing the many ducks and coots in the meadows distracted me, then some sparrows (I think half the birds on the radar Friday night were migrating Song Sparrows, based on the number of seeps in the meadows on Sunday), and then I chanced to look up and see a high-flying Short-eared Owl. Unexpected. It disappeared heading south over the dune before I could get a good photo, and I resumed sparrowing until it occurred to me that the owl was unlikely to keep going across the bay on such a strong NE wind, so I hustled to the top of the dune and found the owl dog-fighting with gulls, low over the breakers.

[Short-eared Owl coming back to land, South Cape May Meadows on Saturday.]

Eventually the Short-eared made its way back to land, flying pretty much right past me, and went back over the dune to roost somewhere between the meadows and Cape May City.

My theory on the Western Kingbird, supported by Tom Johnson and Sam Galick who had seen the bird before, was that eventually it would return to its favored haunts along Sunset, once it warmed up a bit. So for a third try, I drove by the spot again, and missed it again, but did secure a nice loaf of rosemary-thyme bread, and said hello to other folks who were also waiting around buying bread and missing the bird. I hear its being seen again this morning as I write. . . grrr.

[I love the pattern on Short-eared Owl. The bold solid bars on the wing tip help separate the bird from a flyby Long-eared Owl, as does the pale lower belly - not to mention it's out and about in broad daylight, something I have not been lucky enough to encounter with a LEOW!]

I'm up in my old north Jersey haunts this weekend, doing some hiking and leaf-peeping. Speaking of cedars, we've encountered more Cedar Waxwings so far than I've been seeing in Cape May, perhaps more will move south later in the fall.

Wordless Wednesday: Bird Food