WINTER BIRDING

Many people do not realize that just because we are in mid-winter that there is still plenty of wildlife to observe, especially birds. These fall into three categories: First are those birds which live here year round. They include Nuthatches, Chickadees, Titmice, and various woodpeckers, among others. Then there are birds that move into our area for the winter and then depart again in the spring. Our friendly little White-throated Sparrow (see left) is in that group and its song is one of the most delightful of all bird songs. It appears in our area around mid-October and leaves for the north some time in April. Its cousins, the White-crowned Sparrow and Dark-eyed Juncos are also considered winter birds although both may be found year round in higher elevations. The third group are those birds that appear only in certain winters, usually as a result of food shortages further north. The great eruption in Pine Siskins during the winter of 2008-09 is a good example. We do not see this third types every winter.

Any of these birds, including the rarities mentioned above may appear on or under your winter feeders. That is one thing nice about winter birding: you don't have to don boots and Mackinaws to go out looking for winter birds; if your habitat is right, you can bring the birds into you while you sit inside in front of a window near the fire place with your binocs in one hand and a hot toddy in the other. It is more civilized this latter way. But you do need to have trees and particularly, shrubs, nearby for the birds to rest between feeding forays to your feeder. They need cover and if you do not have it, you may not expect much besides House Sparrows and Starlings. Habitat is everything. Once I lived right next to a woods not many yards away and I lured nice birds like Thrushes and Towhees out of the woods where they normally live. Too far away and I would not have seen them.

Type of food and feeders you put out also makes a difference in what kind of birds you can attract. Don't go for the cheap-O brands at K Mart; these contain too much filler that interesting song birds don't eat. You will get lots of pigeons though which like to feed on all the junk dropped to the ground by all the better birds. Put out some suet feeders around the house or close to the woods and you will see a variety of woodpeckers, e.g., Downy, Hairy, and Pileated (see right). Although you may see these birds visit your feeder anytime during the winter, mine seem to visit more often towards the onset of nesting season. Getting a resplendent Pileated Woodpecker to visit your feeder regularly is truly a wonderful accomplishment.


Well, maybe you live in an apartment on the tenth floor or your yard is in a overly-manicured development in which all the trees and shrubs were removed by the bulldozers before the houses went up and maybe you don't like to trudge through the ice and snow in search of winter birds in the wild; what to do? Cheer - up all is not lost. Set up a card table under some good lighting, obtain some good 140 pound rag paper, some paint brushes and some water colors. Now you can see any kind of bird you would care to. By the vicarious means of water colors, you can bring the birds right in to you (see above and below) and do your winter birding in front of the fire with some Christmas carols playing on the stereo.







Merry Christmas, Everybody!

A BIRD BY ANY OTHER NAME

Did you ever think how birds got their names? Some of them are holdovers from the U.K., but others got their names in America back in the days when a day of birding meant just that; you spent the day afield before bird guides and binoculars were useful. Any bird seen was shot and not with a camera. Shotguns loaded with very fine shot (bird shot) were used to bag the unknown. After a day afield, the birders gathered around a table and passed the birds around noting such characteristics as type of bill, colors, wing bars, etc. After naming as many as they could, the skins with feathers were preserved and used for later study and comparison; the rest were cooked up for all to savor, e.g. four and twenty blackbirds all baked in a pie sort of thing.

Observing the birds at or in hand so to speak enabled the birders to see characteristics not easily observed in the filed. Ever wonder how the Red-Bellied Woodpecker (above left) got its name? The slight rosy blush to the feathers on the abdomen would fit this name, but it is hardly a field characteristic. What about the Ring-necked Duck? Same thing; a duck hunter could see this thin light-colored band around the duck's neck, but this is hardly visible to the observer of living birds on the wing. There is a distinctive and easily seen ring around the bill of this species, (see left) however, and wonders why they were not called Ring-billed Ducks instead; it would make more sense. I defy anyone to explain to me how the name Purple Sandpiper is relevant to that species of shorebird. Speaking of Sandpipers, neither Western nor Semi-palmated have any field relevance today.

And don't get me started on Warblers! Nashville, Connecticut, Kentucky, Orange-crowned, Tennessee are just a few approved warbler names that have no field relevance to the birder trying to make sense of this complicated group.

Two closely-related species of woodpeckers possess names that are difficult to fathom even amongst seasoned birders, the Downy and the Hairy. What do these names refer to? Again, the names are based on characteristics that can only be seen when the birds are passed around the table at the end of a day's birding. The terms refer to the quality of the feathers around the beak of the bill; they are much finer in the Downy compared to the coarser ones of the Hairy (left), characteristics not seen in the field even with binoculars.l

I like the Little Blue Heron, so named because of its size relationship to the Great Blue Heron. Beginners, not knowing this, are puzzled when they discover that the color of the immature, or "little", member of this species is white! So why not Little White Heron? I was once asked why Little Blue Herons are white when they are young and I answered, "for the same reason that blackeberries are red when they are green." The neophyte stomped off in a huff.

From time those in charge of standardizing bird names suggest that American species with European counterparts retain the names in common use in England. I see several problems with this. Fir example, although I think the Brit name for what we call a Common Loon, Diver, makes more sense, I doubt that the latter will ever take over in the US of A. For one thing, Loon is so well entrenched in American bird lore, e.g., "Crazy as a Loon". "Crazy as a Diver" just doesn't cut it! Similarly, I don't think we should adopt the Brit name for some of their hawks; they call them buzzards. We have spent too many years getting American rustics to quit shooting "buzzards", a term embedded in pioneer lore for any rapacious bird that carries off lambs and babies. When the term "buzzard" is used in American, it is usually misapplied to vultures.

But where I think the biggest stumbling block in America would be encountered in adopting British terms would be as applied to the Family, Paridae. I don't think the term, Carolina Tit, will catch on here, at least for our friendly little winter bird!

MUSHROOMS CAN BITE IN OTHER WAYS

We are all familiar with the many ways that mushrooms may cause toxic or fatal reactions after eating them. This is bad enough, but the subjects of my interest and admiration have found other sneakier ways to do us in as well!

Although the myth persists that the explanation for the occasional toxicity seen with certain mushrooms in only some individuals, but not all, after ingestion is one due to allergy, real evidence to support this popular assertion is very hard to come by. I am aware of one case following eating of Sulfur Shelfs that almost certainly was an allergy. The symptoms were not from the intestinal tract however; they were referable to the skin in the form of hives and most seriously, some initial tightening of the larynx. The mushroom was not fresh and one other person ate parts of the same mushroom without ill effect.

I also have only been able to find but one case of a person breaking out in a rash (something like poison ivy) from merely handling a mushroom, but even this case was not clear cut. It occurred in a worker who grew mushrooms commercially and in addition to his contact with the mushrooms, he had recently sprayed them with an insecticide, a material much more likely to have caused his rash.

Speaking of mushroom growers, they have other problems. A disease known as hypersensitivity pneumonitis sometimes occurs in these people. This disease is a much more serious and complicated form of allergy and is usually due to the bacteria and molds that grow in the compost, but some cases have been reported from Japan where it was caused by the spores of the mushroom being cultivated, Pleurotus ostreatus, our common Oyster Mushroom. This is commonly found in supermarkets these days, but there is no harm from them to the ordinary consumer.


In New Jersey, a few people suffering from seasonal hay fever were found to be sensitive to mold spores rather than pollen. The air was unusually laden with fungal spores. It appeared that the offending agent was spores from Ganoderma applanatum (Artist Conch) which enjoyed a particularly heavy fruiting in that locality and which produces prodigious amounts of spores.

One form of endocarditis results from microorganisms, usually bacteria, growing on diseased heart valves. It is a chronic, serious disease unless treated properly. In 1971 a man died from this disease after failing to respond to conventional antibiotic therapy which is extremely effective against bacterial causes of this disease. His heart valves proved to be infected with a fungus that most of the medical mycologists could not identity. Cultures of it were sent to various laboratories and finally an agricultural lab figured out that it was the imperfect (non-fruiting) stage of a Coprinus most likely Coprinus lagopus.

That covers intestinal, pulmonary, and even cardiac systems, but there is one more and much more common. Enthusiasts who examine mushrooms closely often resort to breaking apart the specimen in various ways and in so doing, tiny amounts of liquid may get on the fingers. No problem unless you later happen to absent-mindedly wipe your eyes with these same fingers. This will produce an intense burning which may require medical treatment. The juice of the mushroom (Lentinellus ursinus, the Bear Mushroom) is extremely acrid in taste as well.

Then there is a guy I know who got chased out of a pasture by an enraged bull while he was collecting mushrooms, but that is another story.