Look-alikes Can Fool Birders

For the beginning birder, look-alikes are tormenting.

First, let's take the house finch and the purple finch. The purple finch, of course, is not in the Central Savannah River Area except during winter months but a beginner might not know this and will confuse the two finches.

Arriving in our area in late November and early December, the purple finch is a purplish rosy-red, while the color of the house finch is usually a bright fire-truck red. The male purple finch looks as if he's been dipped in "cranberry juice", giving his brown feathered back an overall purplish look. The rosy color of the purple finch's throat and breast blend into the white of the belly. The brown-backed house finch has a brown-streaked breast and belly while the purple finch has a plain rosy breast.

Female purple finches have a distinct face patch defined by a whitish eyebrow line and cheekstripe. They are heavily streaked overall with dark brown on a white background.

Female house finches have light brown streaks on a beige background and lack the eyebrow line and cheek stripe and are slimmer.

Other look-alikes are the mockingbird and the loggerhead shrike, both permanent residents of the Central Savannah River Area. Though both birds are gray and white, and both have solid white breasts and gray wings with white patches, the grays are different shades.

The shrike's gray is almost a charcoal color while the mockingbird's feathers are a soft, light gray. The mockingbird has a slim bill. The shrike's is dark, short and hooked. Another distinguishing field mark of the shrike is the black eye mask. And he is a stouter bird than the mockingbird, though not as long.

Summer tanagers are solid red, sometimes with a dark washing on the wings and tail. The trouble here are the females, with the summer tanager looking much like the female orchard oriole, both summer residents of this area. Both are yellow, though in slightly different shades. Oriole beaks are dark, sturdy and pointed. Tanager beaks are not as long as the oriole's and are blunt at the tip and are whitish in color. The female orchard oriole has grayish wings with white wingbars. Wingbars on the tanager are hardly noticeable.

The wood thrush is a summer visitor, the hermit thrush a winter tourist. Usually, the wood thrush is on his way to Central America before the hermit arrives for the winter, though sometimes they meet in the South long enough to say "hello". Both thrushes are brown-backed, with off-white, brown-spotted breasts. Look at the head and tail to distinguish the two. The wood thrush has a reddish-brown head, with duller brown on the wings, back and tail. The hermit thrush has a reddish-brown tail, with the remainder of its body a duller brown.

There are two wrens that you might see around your place during the colder months . . . our State bird, the Carolina wren and the little mousy winter wren. The winter wren is much smaller than the Carolina, with a short, stubby tail, grayish-brown back and barred belly. The Carolina's back is reddish-brown and its belly is buffy, not white, and it has a strong eye line. There's little risk that these two wrens will be confusing.

A Summer Of Adventure

The joys of bird watching.

Have you ever watched a towhee luxuriating in a dust bath? Have you seen a male summer tanager splashing in a pool and then watched him preen and align his feathers after bathing? Have you noticed the female tanager comes timidly to the pool for her refreshing bath after her mate has completed his priming?

Have you ever observed a brilliant metallic hummingbird fly through the gentle waterfall smoothly sliding into the pool? Have you seen one of those spastic jewels "sit" on a flat rock beside the waterfall?

Have you ever witnessed a brilliant blue male Eastern bluebird, with his less beautiful wife, teaching five spotted=breasted young to bathe in the sparkling water?

In early spring have you watched the flicker's courtship dance as the two birds, facing each other, do a two-step down a lichened limb of a water oak, calling "wicka, wicka, wicka" as they swing back and forth with a pendulum motion? Have you seen an Eastern kingbird chase a crow who he thinks might have an eye on the four eggs in the bulky nest of cotton and sticks in the tall pine of a wooded lot?

Have you watched a feisty blue jay bouncing up and down on a limb as if on springs and shouting his raucous cry of "jay, jay, jay"? This fellow is a tease and a scoundrel. Have you heard him give a call like a red-shouldered hawk, scaring all the small birds away from the feeder? He then, with a grin on his face, plops himself down on the feeder and begins to gobble up the goodies.

Have you seen a red start flitting about the shrubbery around the pool, then dropping into the wet stuff, opening and closing his orange-red tail all the time he's playing on the rocks in the shallow water?

Have you heard the musical, bell-like song of the wood thrush in the purple twilight, or the mimicking song of the ebullient mockingbird? The ecstasy of singing hurtles him like a rocket from his chimney perch as he sails across the yard to a swinging elaeagnus branch.

Have you watched our State Bird gather nesting material? Do you know where the Carolina wren's roofed, side-opening nest is?

Are thrashers nesting in your yard? Have you searched for a hummer's nest? It possibly could be in a dogwood or white oak tree on a sloping branch. Has the red-eyed vireo hung his nest from a swaying branch of a sweet gum tree? Have you noticed a robin's mud and rootlet nest, or the wood thrush's nest, also made of mud and rootlets?

Are you aware that a downy woodpecker has a cavity full of young who sound like insects when calling for food? Have you noticed that the delightful little chickadee calls your bluebird box home? Have you discovered the nest of the blue-gray coated mourning dove with pink accents on his frock? Did you know that the nest is so fragiley built that the two white eggs can be seen from underneath the nest?

To have all this action in your yard you must have the habitat different species enjoy . . . tall deciduous trees and evergreens, an understory of trees such as dogwood, small maples, crape myrtles, crab apples and hollies.

Water is a must. Have dripping water if at all possible. The easiest and most inexpensive way to get dripping water is to throw a hose over a tree limb and let it drip into a birdbath, a container or a small pool.

Enjoy your birding this summer!