The Beautiful Woodie

These warm misty days bring out the incredibly beautiful iridescent color of the wood duck's plumage.

The summer duck, as it is sometimes called, never leaves our area the year 'round. About the middle of this century we began to see a decline in the woodie's numbers. One reason for its diminishing numbers was thought to be the development of wetlands and swampy areas, causing hollow trees and stumps to disappear. A cement front lawn is a big "no no" to a wood duck. Now man is helping the housing shortage by placing nesting boxes throughout the wood duck's breeding area.

If you've never seen either the male or female of this species, and see the female first, you will exclaim her beauty. And she is beautiful in her own right. Her small crest when displayed, sits atop a grayish-green, olive-brown head. Neck and sides are streaked with yellowish-brown. Her breast is spotted with brown. And a lady she is, for she wears a white pearl in the middle of her upper bill. She has brownish-red eyes and wears yellow slippers.

The male's crested head is a metallic green with shadings of blue and purple and white. Back feathers are a glossy green-purple, the breast a purplish-chestnut flecked with darts of white. The belly and throat patch are white. Chestnut, buffs, reds, blues, greens, purples, black and white, with many tones and shades, make up the indescribable oriental feather pattern of this pond dweller. His eyes are blood-red, his short bill black and orange-red.

No wonder he's called the Beau Brummel of the quacking world. Roger Tory Peterson, the father of bird watching, said "descriptive words fail to describe this bird's plumage."

Both male and female are from 18 to 21 inches in length, with a wingspan of 24 inches. Weighing only one and a half pounds, this gorgeous little duck is preening and courting and nesting in local moss-hung swamp lands and sun-splashed ponds that he calls home. Always using a cavity in a tree or a stump, he is one of the few ducks that doesn't nest on the ground. And, he is a loner you might say, for you will most likely find him in ponds with only other wood ducks. He likes his privacy.

The cavity used for nesting is often one chopped out by woodpeckers or in natural hollows created by large rotting limbs. Most nesting cavities are from five to 50 feet from the ground. Usually, the nest is placed near a stream, but not always.

After the mother finds a hollow to her liking, she adds down plucked from her own body to line the nest. Into this cozy bed she lays from 10 to 15 buffy-white eggs. Incubation takes around four weeks.

How do the ducklings, when only a day old, get to the ground or water from so high in the air? They jump! Our ancestors were of the opinion the mother woodie carried the youngsters to the ground or to the pond on her back. This, by observation and photography, has been proven wrong. The mother jumps first and then calls her children to come out to play.

Each youngster perches in the doorway and without hesitation jumps when the mother calls. It free-falls into the air and bounces on the swampy soil then waddle in single file behind their mother to the pond. If they jump into water, they bob like a cork and then paddle toward their mother.

Swallows Are Signs of Spring

Winter appears to be hardly gone when we sight the barn swallow home from Brazil, darting, zipping and twittering in flight. The sighting reminds us how things change for both man and birds, especially environmentally.

When we came to the Central Savannah River Area some five decades ago, there were no barn swallows around, that is that nested in the area. The foothills of the Georgia and South Carolina mountains were the southern limits of their breeding range. As man alters the environment of North America, birds adapt to the changing conditions or decline in numbers. The barn swallow adapted.

This is the second time this species has changed nesting situations. Before our forefathers came to America, these swallows built in tree cavities, rock crevices and caves. But from the time the first Colonists started building barns, the barn swallow, being an opportunists, left tree cavities and rock crevices for buildings, maybe because barns gave better protection from nasty weather. Because of this habit, this flying feathered saucer has become known as the "barn swallow," a name it holds until today.

Many of these forked-tailed birds still nest in barns. But, as our great freeways swept through the countryside, barn swallows followed, nesting under the many bridges that spanned the thoroughfares. This brought them into our area and carried them even farther south.

The barn swallow is perhaps the best known of the 20 plus species of American swallows. Small and trim, it is easily recognized because of its purplish-blue back, red-brown forehead, rich rufous breast touched with white, long pointed wings and its deeply forked tail. The forked tail is a good identification mark, the barn being the only swallow with such a tail. The female is usually duller in colors, but not always.

These sleek birds feed on the wing, never flying a straight line, but circling, darting, and twisting in the air. Holding their tiny wide-gaping mouths fully open like suction cups, they scoop out of the air hundreds of noxious insects, including gnats, mosquitoes, house flies, grasshoppers, crickets, moths and dragonflies.

The nests of barn swallows are semi-circular or cup-shaped and made of mud mixed with sand. The shape depends on whether the nest is attached to a beam or rafter or a flat shelf. The nests are lined with soft materials and feathers, usually chicken feathers. The three to five white eggs have markings of bright reddish-brown and pale lilac.

This handsome swallow breeds over most of North America, nesting from northwestern Alaska to Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, including much of Canada and the United States.

Barn swallows nesting in Alaska will travel 7,000 miles from the sunny pampas of Argentina each spring to nest in North America. Year after year these swift fliers travel the same sky ways to and from breeding and wintering grounds. Yet they have nothing to direct them but that "something" (wild wisdom) that speaks out from the earth or sky to guide them to their destination.

No matter the weather, spring has sprung when the swallows return.

Marching Into Spring

Puffy white clouds in a wedge-wood sky tell us spring is in the wings. March is known for its chilling, biting winds, but some days bring a soft warm breeze that beckons buds to blossom, birds to begin their dawn chorus and nuptial songs and all around us there is growing greenness.

Trees were late to lose their leaves last fall, some holding onto their precious finery until after the first of the year. But they haven't been loafing these short weeks of the new year, with sunny warm days now and then. Buds on the beech are long and pointed. Sweet gum buds and big and fat and yellow, like dabs of butter. Fattening buds of the winged-elm are reddish-brown and hairy.

To see the first spring flowers, go for a walk in the woods where emerging fiddle-heads of ferns greet you before uncoiling to become feathery fronds. The bird's-foot violet (so named because of its foliage resembling a bird's foot) and the common blue violet are blooming. Blue flags with grass-like leaves hail you when you go tramping in moist deciduous woods.

Trilliums will be easy to spot because they have leaves, petals and sepals in the whorls of three.

Another spring flower is the trout lilly, or yellow adder's tongue. Greenish-purple points emerge from under brown leaves or grasses. Soon after the stems appear, mottled leaves, and then lemon-colored flowers will cover the roadside ditches and sun-filled woods. The beauty of wildflowers is enhanced by the very wildness about them.

Splitting the air with his home-coming call, that black beauty, the fish crow, announces his presence. Others join him. As they move across the pond, the racket diminishes. Sweet warbles of the bluebird fall softly from the perfumed air of crab apple blossoms. The twitterings of chimney swifts bring spring closer.

On one greening and sunny day, you'll hear the chipping sparrow, the dark-eyed junco and the pine warbler singing. All three songs sound much alike. Knowing this, you'll need to search diligently in order to find the songster.

Everywhere, everywhere music! Cardinals singing, Carolina wrens, brown thrashers, mockingbirds, with woodpeckers drumming and hammering. All these natives or year-round songsters, proclaiming spring with their cheerful carols.

The morning chorus in our area lasts longer than in some. Today permanent residents pour out a throaty opera every morning. By the time these are through courting and nest building, they become busy with family chores, which necessarily mean less singing. By then summer residents arrive with spring in their throats. The wood thrush, the great-crested flycatcher, summer tanager, orchard oriole, join in the dawn chorus.

You know spring is hear when you hear the lovely but tireless warbling of the red-eyed vireo.

The Mystery of Migration

Have you ever pondered the migration flight of millions of birds twice a year from one hemisphere to another?

This has always been a mystery to man, and scientists continue to study the phenomenon. All through the month of April and the first weeks of May these midgets of forest, field and lawn flow into the United States from tropical wintering grounds.

The late Dr. Eugene Odom, a zoologist, and his associates at the University of Georgia in Athens made contributions toward a full explanation of the mysteries. The fact is only God and the bird know how he gets from wherever he is to wherever he is going

Man asks, how can they fly so far without refueling? Studies show birds store fat, their "high test gasoline," in separate parts of their body, or "spare gas tanks". Man, lacking such a container, spreads his out all through his body.

A migratory bird is thus analogous to the airplane in that "high octane" fuel is added to and used from preexisting "tanks" without appreciable change in the tissue structure of the body as a whole.

This added fat is stored in empty spaces throughout the bird's tissues, much as extra gasoline is stored in the plane's tanks. Because it is not spread through the bird's body, the stored fat is completely independent of the bird's functioning parts.

A migrating bird's fat is "high octane" fuel. A human's fat is only a disfiguring bulge. A bird uses up the spare fat in flight and doesn't have to join the local Weight Watcher's Club once they arrive. Oh, to be a bird when the battle of the bulge attacks.

The how-come mystery of migration was addressed by Odom some years ago. He demonstrated that before migrating these birds build up their fat until their weight is doubled or even tripled, and this fat is the sole source of their long flight energy. No vitamins for these long distances fliers.

We can vouch that hummingbirds get fat before leaving for the tropics. We have from two to five nectar feeding tubes hanging in the kitchen window all through the migration period. In July and August, they come to the tubes, sleek and slim. We watch them grow fat. By the time they leave in September they are "totin' fat" and probably weigh three times their weight of July. By the time they reach their destination, the extra fat (fuel) has been used.

The energy system of man is based on glycogen, a carbohydrate. The fat-based system of a bird functions much better for them.

The available energy of a bird is greater per unit of weight than in humans, the storage capacity greater, and water balance is facilitated because fat, unlike proteins or carbohydrates, can be stored "dry" yet yields water on combustion, scientists explain.

At the current price of gasoline, wouldn't it be wonderful if all the fat and calories in our pizzas and burgers could be stored in an extra tank for the family car or lawn mower?

What To Do With Young Birds

It's that time of year again . . . nesting time and foundlings!

Every spring, people will be seeking help in handling nestlings (young birds from the pink and naked stage to the not fully feathered stage) that have fallen from the nest. Fledglings are fully feathered but still short-tailed or have no tail at all and are scraggly. They probably have been guided to the ground by the parent birds.

Wrens, mockingbirds, cardinals, brown thrashers, towhees, doves are already building nests. This means that in less than a month babies probably will be falling out of their cradles because of severe weather such as high winds and hail, or other hazardous situations.

If you find such a baby bird, the first thing you must do is try to put the nestling back in the nest. If the nest was destroyed, you might call an experienced wildlife rehabilitator. The Department of Natural Resources can put you in touch with one.

Don't try to raise a bird because the law does not permit anyone to possess any bird, dead or alive, without a permit. This includes feathers, nests and eggs. In other words, by law you are not supposed to try to care for the bird yourself. The possession of a house sparrow, starling or pigeon is excluded.

As far as the fledgling is concerned, leave it alone. It was probably placed where you found it by its parents. This sounds harsh, and although it may be tempting to rescue what you think is an "abandoned" bird, don't do it. Position yourself to watch nature takes its course and watch as almost without exception the parents will return to feed the little one.

They might guide it to a nearby shrub or tree where they will feed it. Just another phase of the difficult transition period of becoming an adult.

Evidently, it is time for the young bird to leave home and unlike many homo sapien parents, concerned avian parents make sure their offspring "go" when the time comes.

They do, however, feed them for a week or two until they learn to feed themselves and become strong fliers. Sometimes fledglings become restless and hop from the nest and climb into the branches of the tree or bush where they were hatched.

When young birds fall from the nest prematurely, they usually perish.

And just remember, it is natural for some nesting attempts not to succeed. It has been determined for most birds that a nesting success rate of just 20 percent for the season is considered a banner year.

If you have cats, keep them in the house and ask your neighbor to do the same until the birds are safe in trees and shrubs.

It is a sobering thought to realize when we try to rescue fledglings from the wild (our years and neighborhoods) that we might become an accidental predator. To best help these young birds leave them where you find them . . . in the wild. In our rush to help, we can do more harm than good because most of the time our best efforts fail!