Fledgling Season (and assorted thoughts)
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birdfeedingThis was originally posted on my journal, and cross-posted here on request! For context, I live in a mid-size community on the short-grass prairie in southern Alberta.
Fledgling Season (and assorted thoughts)
Inspired by the June Monthly Post atbirdfeeding. (And, er, it kind of got away.)
We started feeding our local birds in July 2021, during the height of a massive drought, when we got warning of a heat dome coming. I’d watched some robins frolic in a puddle in a gutter while driving home earlier, and thought that once the heat dome hits that won’t be an option for them. We bought a bird bath and a couple of feeders, and opened for business.
We kept on feeding them through the winter, because several birds overwinter here, and food can be scarce to find, especially when it reaches -40 °C. Our robins, grackles, blackbirds, and mourning doves migrate, but the rest stay on: the year-round list includes blue jays, flickers, downy woodpeckers, red breasted nuthatches, “little brown birds” (house sparrows and house finches mainly), Eurasian collared doves, pigeons, and black-capped chickadees.
Three years later…
We have 2 water baths set up: a year-round black plastic bowl with a heater and rock perches for the little ones to stand on while having a drink; and a classic concrete water bath for summer, which the birds really love and often empty with the force of their splashing. We also keep a black heated bucket, which some of the larger and/or more acrobatic birds use.
And we have 5 feeding stations around the backyard: our shed roof by the side of the house; a picnic table that we don’t use; two hanging green tube feeders; and a hanging triangle platform feeder. All the hanging feeders are located under our backyard spruce tree to help protect the food from rain. We serve peanuts (whole for the bigger birds and shelled for the little guys); black oil sunflower seeds (which the birds can’t get enough of because the shells are soft and open easily); and a premium general birdseed mix. Ground feeding birds like the doves and pigeons use the picnic table, and/or siphon up food dropped from the hanging feeders. The grackles—which are fairly large—have figured out how to eat from the tube feeders now, so those empty out pretty quickly.
We’ve tried offering suet in winter, but most of the birds don’t seem to care for it, except the woodpeckers. Our sour cherry trees are in terminal decline, sadly, so they’re no longer a reliable fruit source for July/August like they used to be; but the mountain ash trees this year at the side of our house have lots of little green berries developing. I’m hoping there will be a bumper crop to last the critters from September/October when they ripen, through to spring next year. Otherwise, we don’t offer live food like meal worms. We thought about it, but decided we should limit what’s on offer at the bird buffet to encourage at least some foraging. For winter, that’s high-fat/oil and high protein seeds to keep up energy.
We add cayenne pepper to the picnic table station because otherwise the local deer can, will, and have taken advantage of it. Even then, some of the older deer have adapted to the cayenne, though most now avoid the picnic table and stick to the delicious grass and weeds we let grow in the yard. We stopped using chemicals years ago, unless absolutely necessary.
This third year certainly saw a fledgling season in May and June. :-D In late May and June I spotted at least 4 distinct robin fledglings, several gracklings, a blue jay fledgling (in May) and a juvenile in June; as well as flicker, mourning dove, Eurasian collared dove, house finch, and house sparrow fledglings for sure. Adult pigeons and chickadees also dropped by the feeders. At some points our back yard looked like a landing strip: from lilac bush to dead cherry tree in the backyard to the live cherry trees surrounding the spruce, and then to where the feeders are located.
Running bird feeders does mean we occasionally find a dead bird nearby. We do watch for signs of illness though, and keep things as clean as we can. Sadly this year, the blue jay fledgling and one grackling didn't make it. :-( I think they both got injured when they left their nests in our backyard spruce tree. Both were very small, quite likely from the last eggs in their respective clutches to be laid and hatched. (Blue jay fledglings, at least, all leave the nest at the same time and tend to stay together. This means the fledglings are anywhere from 17 to 21 days old depending on egg laying order, as blue jays lay their eggs over a span of a few days. At that age, even 1 day makes a difference in survival for the youngest.)
The blue jay fledgling lived 3 days on the ground (May 25-28); it didn't move much beyond the spruce, and stumbled quite a lot when it tried to walk. On the second evening it attempted a walk in the grass; it fell frequently, but managed to right itself. On the third day it was mostly rocking in place; in the evening it simply wasn’t capable of righting itself anymore when it tried to walk. Z ran out and righted it because it was struggling on its back, but we all knew by then it wouldn’t survive much longer. I called an emergency veterinarian, which was pretty useless because they had no advice to give that we didn’t already know. We finally decided to make sure the fledgling was tucked safely in its home base under the spruce, and let it be. It passed away that night.
Earlier that third evening, however, before its attempt to walk, I thought I saw it pull itself up to its full height for its parents when they came to feed it. I might have imagined it; I was far away and inside the house, observing from a window. But I wondered if it was one last defiant gesture of life. Despite its injury, it was a feisty little guy: the blue jay fledgling helped chase off a grackle that was bothering it on its first day out of the nest. We were glad to see that its parents were fully devoted to it right to the end. RIP little fledgling, you were definitely loved and cared for.
I’m thinking the juvenile we saw in June might have been its sibling. We knew there was a second blue jay fledgling around, in the lilac bush that borders our yard and the neighbour’s, but we never saw that one. We knew the parents were visiting the bush to feed it though. Blue jays are quite possibly the most delicate and vulnerable of fledglings, because unlike a lot of other birds, they don’t start flying at all until a week or so out of the nest. The rest of the fledglings I’ve seen had at least rudimentary flying skills.
I don't know what happened to the fallen grackling; we found it already dead face down in the yard June 9. I think it may have just landed wrong, because it didn’t look obviously ill. What really sucks is that our closest wildlife rehabilitator is 3 hours away; local vets won't take in sick or injured wildlife, and our Alberta Fish and Wildlife office is useless. The local office is only open 5 days a week, 8:15 to 4:30, and any officers that can do anything are located hours away. So there's not much to do for the little guys here if they get sick or injured.
We also lost one of the resident red-breasted nuthatches to a vehicle strike in our alley, the same day we found the deceased grackling. :-( We came across it while returning from a trip to Home Despot. I dearly hope its babies had already left the nest before the collision. And I found a dead unidentified nestling in the alley, no clue as to how it got there; maybe it was a snack that got dropped by another bird, or blown down from a nest.
Last Wednesday (June 26) was downright eerie bird-wise. I was out walking, a block up the street, and unlike the rest of the month when it’s been a cacophony of bird calls morning, noon and evening, it was. completely. quiet. Only crickets chirped. And nothing flitted about. Even when the birds go into moulting season, there are always bird calls, but this was utter silence.
I crossed the avenue, then something in the sky caught my attention and I looked up. Two grackles were chasing something—much bigger than them—something with swooping wings. I couldn’t quite see what it was, because it had already left my field of vision. Then I saw 2 crows also chasing after it. A few seconds later I saw the culprit further away against the sky: I realized a hawk had come to visit. We do get the occasional hawk in the inner city; mostly they hang around the outer subdivisions close to the prairie to feast on the gophers. (Which aren’t real gophers: here, the term refers to Richardson’s ground squirrels, the main harbinger of spring on the prairie.)
With the threat gone, the bird calls started up again a few minutes later, mainly chickadee warnings. For the rest of my walk though, no birds showed themselves.
That’s not the first time I’ve seen an avian predator around the neighbourhood however. Last year (April 2023) we heard a massive racket beside our house, crows cawing and blue jays screaming at the front corner. We went outside to investigate, to find a great horned owl perched high in our front spruce tree. Over a dozen crows and several blue jays were swooping in and harassing it to get it to leave. Luckily it was only a temporary visitor, gone by next morning. Yes we feed the birds, but they’re not really supposed to be on the menu too.
Then we had a brief but harsh hailstorm last Thursday (June 27), with hail the size of marbles. Hail of any size is not good at all for little birds, so I hope all the critters got through the storm safely. I’m especially worried about the house finches; they were quite active at the feeders up til hailstorm day, showing and feeding the fledglings the food from them; then it seemed to be mainly sparrows and their fledglings visiting after that for little birds. Then again, house finches live off of bird feeders so I’m hoping they’re just making their rounds to teach the fledglings all the sources of food available to them. I’ve noticed most of the birds do regular rounds; right now all the grackles seem to have moved to the next street over. And now it’s moulting season, so a lot of them are dealing with the growing of new feathers.
May this year was especially cold and wet compared to previous years; it actually broke precipitation records, which was helpful for alleviating our drought status somewhat. June’s also had its share of rain this year. In comparison, last year the spring weather was much warmer and drier, so it was actually very helpful for fledglings. We saw 5 blue jay juveniles last year sitting hidden in a bush in our neighbour’s yard. And this year we had lots more robin adults around than previous years, which meant lots of fledglings last year.
While they're not really fledglings, we also saw a yearling buck and yearling doe come by. Last year we had a mother doe who hid her 3 fawns in our neighbourhood, including our neighbour's overgrown back yard. (One of which preferred to curl in the corner between house, shed, and fence, right outside my kitchen window.) She’d come around regularly to our back yard to nosh on the grass with at least 1 fawn in tow, often 2, and sometimes all 3. I think at least one of these yearlings is hers, recently chased away because she was ready to give birth to this year’s fawns. These two are surprisingly tiny for their age, but last year I noted a couple of the fawns were really small compared to the others. Deer normally give birth to 1 or 2 a year, but triplets do happen when food is easily available.
As to other wildlife around Chez Topaz, last year I saw a raccoon in our next door neighbour’s yard, prowling in the underbrush. Raccoons arrived in the city a few years ago, but they don’t seem to have taken a permanent foothold yet. Winters are still very cold here for non-native critters. We do have skunks and porcupines around; we don’t really see the skunks as much as smell them. Last year because of the drought we had a pretty severe mouse infestation in the house, to the point we had to put down poison bait to control it.
One day a few weeks ago C and I saw a coyote above the coulee, which also serves as a wildlife corridor through the city. I suspect that’s why we’re not seeing as many deer in the city this year as last; also, the city brought in a wildlife feeding ban to try to deter the deer, though bird feeding is still allowed. Though this spring it’s been much cooler, while last year the deer were mainly seeking out water sources, and staying for the eats.
So that’s basically what things are like around here these days regarding our local wildlife. Fledgling season is dwindling down, but I did see a fresh broken robin egg’s shell in the alley this afternoon, so there may be more robin fledglings to come in the next few weeks. We’ll see.
Fledgling Season (and assorted thoughts)
Inspired by the June Monthly Post at
birdfeeding. (And, er, it kind of got away.)We started feeding our local birds in July 2021, during the height of a massive drought, when we got warning of a heat dome coming. I’d watched some robins frolic in a puddle in a gutter while driving home earlier, and thought that once the heat dome hits that won’t be an option for them. We bought a bird bath and a couple of feeders, and opened for business.
We kept on feeding them through the winter, because several birds overwinter here, and food can be scarce to find, especially when it reaches -40 °C. Our robins, grackles, blackbirds, and mourning doves migrate, but the rest stay on: the year-round list includes blue jays, flickers, downy woodpeckers, red breasted nuthatches, “little brown birds” (house sparrows and house finches mainly), Eurasian collared doves, pigeons, and black-capped chickadees.
Three years later…
We have 2 water baths set up: a year-round black plastic bowl with a heater and rock perches for the little ones to stand on while having a drink; and a classic concrete water bath for summer, which the birds really love and often empty with the force of their splashing. We also keep a black heated bucket, which some of the larger and/or more acrobatic birds use.
And we have 5 feeding stations around the backyard: our shed roof by the side of the house; a picnic table that we don’t use; two hanging green tube feeders; and a hanging triangle platform feeder. All the hanging feeders are located under our backyard spruce tree to help protect the food from rain. We serve peanuts (whole for the bigger birds and shelled for the little guys); black oil sunflower seeds (which the birds can’t get enough of because the shells are soft and open easily); and a premium general birdseed mix. Ground feeding birds like the doves and pigeons use the picnic table, and/or siphon up food dropped from the hanging feeders. The grackles—which are fairly large—have figured out how to eat from the tube feeders now, so those empty out pretty quickly.
We’ve tried offering suet in winter, but most of the birds don’t seem to care for it, except the woodpeckers. Our sour cherry trees are in terminal decline, sadly, so they’re no longer a reliable fruit source for July/August like they used to be; but the mountain ash trees this year at the side of our house have lots of little green berries developing. I’m hoping there will be a bumper crop to last the critters from September/October when they ripen, through to spring next year. Otherwise, we don’t offer live food like meal worms. We thought about it, but decided we should limit what’s on offer at the bird buffet to encourage at least some foraging. For winter, that’s high-fat/oil and high protein seeds to keep up energy.
We add cayenne pepper to the picnic table station because otherwise the local deer can, will, and have taken advantage of it. Even then, some of the older deer have adapted to the cayenne, though most now avoid the picnic table and stick to the delicious grass and weeds we let grow in the yard. We stopped using chemicals years ago, unless absolutely necessary.
This third year certainly saw a fledgling season in May and June. :-D In late May and June I spotted at least 4 distinct robin fledglings, several gracklings, a blue jay fledgling (in May) and a juvenile in June; as well as flicker, mourning dove, Eurasian collared dove, house finch, and house sparrow fledglings for sure. Adult pigeons and chickadees also dropped by the feeders. At some points our back yard looked like a landing strip: from lilac bush to dead cherry tree in the backyard to the live cherry trees surrounding the spruce, and then to where the feeders are located.
Running bird feeders does mean we occasionally find a dead bird nearby. We do watch for signs of illness though, and keep things as clean as we can. Sadly this year, the blue jay fledgling and one grackling didn't make it. :-( I think they both got injured when they left their nests in our backyard spruce tree. Both were very small, quite likely from the last eggs in their respective clutches to be laid and hatched. (Blue jay fledglings, at least, all leave the nest at the same time and tend to stay together. This means the fledglings are anywhere from 17 to 21 days old depending on egg laying order, as blue jays lay their eggs over a span of a few days. At that age, even 1 day makes a difference in survival for the youngest.)
The blue jay fledgling lived 3 days on the ground (May 25-28); it didn't move much beyond the spruce, and stumbled quite a lot when it tried to walk. On the second evening it attempted a walk in the grass; it fell frequently, but managed to right itself. On the third day it was mostly rocking in place; in the evening it simply wasn’t capable of righting itself anymore when it tried to walk. Z ran out and righted it because it was struggling on its back, but we all knew by then it wouldn’t survive much longer. I called an emergency veterinarian, which was pretty useless because they had no advice to give that we didn’t already know. We finally decided to make sure the fledgling was tucked safely in its home base under the spruce, and let it be. It passed away that night.
Earlier that third evening, however, before its attempt to walk, I thought I saw it pull itself up to its full height for its parents when they came to feed it. I might have imagined it; I was far away and inside the house, observing from a window. But I wondered if it was one last defiant gesture of life. Despite its injury, it was a feisty little guy: the blue jay fledgling helped chase off a grackle that was bothering it on its first day out of the nest. We were glad to see that its parents were fully devoted to it right to the end. RIP little fledgling, you were definitely loved and cared for.
I’m thinking the juvenile we saw in June might have been its sibling. We knew there was a second blue jay fledgling around, in the lilac bush that borders our yard and the neighbour’s, but we never saw that one. We knew the parents were visiting the bush to feed it though. Blue jays are quite possibly the most delicate and vulnerable of fledglings, because unlike a lot of other birds, they don’t start flying at all until a week or so out of the nest. The rest of the fledglings I’ve seen had at least rudimentary flying skills.
I don't know what happened to the fallen grackling; we found it already dead face down in the yard June 9. I think it may have just landed wrong, because it didn’t look obviously ill. What really sucks is that our closest wildlife rehabilitator is 3 hours away; local vets won't take in sick or injured wildlife, and our Alberta Fish and Wildlife office is useless. The local office is only open 5 days a week, 8:15 to 4:30, and any officers that can do anything are located hours away. So there's not much to do for the little guys here if they get sick or injured.
We also lost one of the resident red-breasted nuthatches to a vehicle strike in our alley, the same day we found the deceased grackling. :-( We came across it while returning from a trip to Home Despot. I dearly hope its babies had already left the nest before the collision. And I found a dead unidentified nestling in the alley, no clue as to how it got there; maybe it was a snack that got dropped by another bird, or blown down from a nest.
Last Wednesday (June 26) was downright eerie bird-wise. I was out walking, a block up the street, and unlike the rest of the month when it’s been a cacophony of bird calls morning, noon and evening, it was. completely. quiet. Only crickets chirped. And nothing flitted about. Even when the birds go into moulting season, there are always bird calls, but this was utter silence.
I crossed the avenue, then something in the sky caught my attention and I looked up. Two grackles were chasing something—much bigger than them—something with swooping wings. I couldn’t quite see what it was, because it had already left my field of vision. Then I saw 2 crows also chasing after it. A few seconds later I saw the culprit further away against the sky: I realized a hawk had come to visit. We do get the occasional hawk in the inner city; mostly they hang around the outer subdivisions close to the prairie to feast on the gophers. (Which aren’t real gophers: here, the term refers to Richardson’s ground squirrels, the main harbinger of spring on the prairie.)
With the threat gone, the bird calls started up again a few minutes later, mainly chickadee warnings. For the rest of my walk though, no birds showed themselves.
That’s not the first time I’ve seen an avian predator around the neighbourhood however. Last year (April 2023) we heard a massive racket beside our house, crows cawing and blue jays screaming at the front corner. We went outside to investigate, to find a great horned owl perched high in our front spruce tree. Over a dozen crows and several blue jays were swooping in and harassing it to get it to leave. Luckily it was only a temporary visitor, gone by next morning. Yes we feed the birds, but they’re not really supposed to be on the menu too.
Then we had a brief but harsh hailstorm last Thursday (June 27), with hail the size of marbles. Hail of any size is not good at all for little birds, so I hope all the critters got through the storm safely. I’m especially worried about the house finches; they were quite active at the feeders up til hailstorm day, showing and feeding the fledglings the food from them; then it seemed to be mainly sparrows and their fledglings visiting after that for little birds. Then again, house finches live off of bird feeders so I’m hoping they’re just making their rounds to teach the fledglings all the sources of food available to them. I’ve noticed most of the birds do regular rounds; right now all the grackles seem to have moved to the next street over. And now it’s moulting season, so a lot of them are dealing with the growing of new feathers.
May this year was especially cold and wet compared to previous years; it actually broke precipitation records, which was helpful for alleviating our drought status somewhat. June’s also had its share of rain this year. In comparison, last year the spring weather was much warmer and drier, so it was actually very helpful for fledglings. We saw 5 blue jay juveniles last year sitting hidden in a bush in our neighbour’s yard. And this year we had lots more robin adults around than previous years, which meant lots of fledglings last year.
While they're not really fledglings, we also saw a yearling buck and yearling doe come by. Last year we had a mother doe who hid her 3 fawns in our neighbourhood, including our neighbour's overgrown back yard. (One of which preferred to curl in the corner between house, shed, and fence, right outside my kitchen window.) She’d come around regularly to our back yard to nosh on the grass with at least 1 fawn in tow, often 2, and sometimes all 3. I think at least one of these yearlings is hers, recently chased away because she was ready to give birth to this year’s fawns. These two are surprisingly tiny for their age, but last year I noted a couple of the fawns were really small compared to the others. Deer normally give birth to 1 or 2 a year, but triplets do happen when food is easily available.
As to other wildlife around Chez Topaz, last year I saw a raccoon in our next door neighbour’s yard, prowling in the underbrush. Raccoons arrived in the city a few years ago, but they don’t seem to have taken a permanent foothold yet. Winters are still very cold here for non-native critters. We do have skunks and porcupines around; we don’t really see the skunks as much as smell them. Last year because of the drought we had a pretty severe mouse infestation in the house, to the point we had to put down poison bait to control it.
One day a few weeks ago C and I saw a coyote above the coulee, which also serves as a wildlife corridor through the city. I suspect that’s why we’re not seeing as many deer in the city this year as last; also, the city brought in a wildlife feeding ban to try to deter the deer, though bird feeding is still allowed. Though this spring it’s been much cooler, while last year the deer were mainly seeking out water sources, and staying for the eats.
So that’s basically what things are like around here these days regarding our local wildlife. Fledgling season is dwindling down, but I did see a fresh broken robin egg’s shell in the alley this afternoon, so there may be more robin fledglings to come in the next few weeks. We’ll see.
Thoughts
Date: 2024-07-02 08:12 pm (UTC)Go you! I leave out water too.
>>And we have 5 feeding stations around the backyard<<
That sounds awesome. Let's see, I have a hopper feeder, a thistle sock, a metal tray feeder, a metal birdbath, a water bowl on the ground, a suet cage, and a fly-through feeder.
>> Our sour cherry trees are in terminal decline, sadly, so they’re no longer a reliable fruit source for July/August like they used to be; but the mountain ash trees this year at the side of our house have lots of little green berries developing. <<
I have sour cherry trees, a pear tree, some others that don't actually fruit, lots of mulberries, raspberries and blackberries, some other stuff.
>> In late May and June I spotted at least 4 distinct robin fledglings, several gracklings, a blue jay fledgling (in May) and a juvenile in June; as well as flicker, mourning dove, Eurasian collared dove, house finch, and house sparrow fledglings for sure. <<
I've seen at least 2 robin fledglings.
>> I crossed the avenue, then something in the sky caught my attention and I looked up. Two grackles were chasing something—much bigger than them—something with swooping wings. <<
One summer, a great-horned owl and several crows got into a fight over my yard. For months. Every time I went outside I'd hear the crows harassing that poor owl and see him flying circles around the yard.
>> May this year was especially cold and wet compared to previous years; it actually broke precipitation records, which was helpful for alleviating our drought status somewhat. <<
Here it's been hot and dry. :/
>> While they're not really fledglings, we also saw a yearling buck and yearling doe come by. <<
So adorable!
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-07-06 04:54 am (UTC)Oh wow, the prey situation must have been outstanding for the owl to put up with months-long harassment. I looked up why crows mob owls, and it seems like they're ingrained enemies. It's kind of like a turf war, but larger owls are known to sometimes prey on young crows, and crows pass that information along to the rest of the flock.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-07-06 05:06 am (UTC)