Tag Archives: birds

Pikes/Pines | Why mixed-species flocks enjoy communal winter meals on Capitol Hill

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A Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula), a less gregarious winter migrant to the hill. They are often found in mixed-species flocks but are outnumbered, at least 10-1, by Golden-crowned Kinglets. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

Everywhere I looked there were birds. Sprites in perpetual motion, determined to find their next meal. Kinglets, chickadees, creepers, nuthatches, and wrens worked through the forest understory as I sat watching. It hardly felt like they noticed me. If I kept still enough, I’d just melt into the background, or at least that’s how it feels when you encounter a winter feeding flock.

Back in October I started noticing mixed-species flocks of chickadees, Golden-crowned Kinglets, and a few Pacific Wrens around my yard. This is my personal cue for the changing of the seasons. When the last of the year’s fledglings are self-sufficient, the winter migrants have arrived, and breeding territories are moot, it’s officially winter. The majority of birds are now much more concerned with surviving the cold, less abundant months, than defending their corners of the forest or your backyard.

Call them mixed-species foraging flocks or winter feeding flocks, every year these groups of birds form during the non-breeding season on Capitol Hill and across our region. They move together, across the landscape, foraging as they go, all day long.

The birds that make up these flocks in our part of the world have a fair amount in common. They are all small, active birds that eat a lot of insects (but also seeds and fruit). Most of them glean their meals from tree bark crevices and the undersides of leaves. Some are faster moving and more balletic, like kinglets, twirling about foliage and eating unseen tiny morsels. And others feel more methodical, like Brown Creepers, who do as they are named and crawl up and down tree trunks in search of sustenance. But they all seem to see the value of keeping close together while foraging this time of year. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | A vote for Barred Owls, Capitol Hill ambassadors to the wild

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A Barred Owl looking blending in beautifully in the bigleaf maples in the background (Image: Brendan McGarry)

If you have seen an owl on Capitol Hill in the past decade, there is a strong chance it was a Barred Owl (Strix varia). In our highly altered habitat melange full of rodents and other gulpable creatures, they reign supreme. These days, almost no other owl species are regularly seen on Capitol Hill.

I think Barred Owls are cool, but they also happen to be a sticky subject. They are recent arrivals, colonizers from Eastern North America. People paying attention to owl populations can agree that until the late 1990s, there were very few occurrences of Barred Owls in Washington State.

I recall a late 90s trip to Bainbridge Island to see a “for sure” pair of these owls during a 24-hour birding extravaganza. At that point in time it was worth the late night ferry trip even when our next destination was the mountains near Cle Elum. Today, that would be an absurd proposition (I suppose it always was but you get what I mean). I could probably choose any park on the Hill of decent size and adequate habitat and summon a Barred Owl with my moderately good impression of their barking,“Who cooks for you, who cooks for you owl” call.

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Pikes/Pines | The Seattle Cooper’s Hawk Project is tracking a bird on the rise despite window strikes and rat poison

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Cooper's Hawk

A steel gray bolt slashes across the blue of dusk. Rolling around corners, it disappears into darkening trees, apparating with a scrape of feathers through branches, and vanishes below the horizon. As it passes robins in the nearby holly tree squeal in alarm. They know twilight is trouble: the killing hour. If you’re a Cooper’s Hawk, it’s the time to make hay.

My first love of birds sprung from a woodpecker, but I’ve always loved raptors. As enchanting aerialists, they live long, interesting lives, and they are relatively easy to observe if you know to pay attention. Some of my best memories involve unwittingly getting too close to breeding Northern Goshawks and hearing the screaming rush of Peregrine Falcons in a dog fight over my Eastlake apartment building. I especially love Cooper’s Hawks. They occupy an ephemeral realm, wild, impressive creatures that permit our presence.

Cooper’s Hawks are the most common North American members of the Accipiter family, a group of hawks known for short wings, long tails, and a specialization for hunting other birds.  According to Ed Deal, President of Urban Raptor Conservancy, a Seattle area nonprofit focusing on research, education, and conservation of urban raptors, Cooper’s Hawks have become increasingly common in our area over the past several decades. They have been able to not only endure but flourish amidst our rising human density. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | The how, when, and why of the Hill’s birdsong

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Male and female Marsh Wrens look alike, but when I find one singing along Portage Bay, it’s undoubtedly a male.

Despite knowing it happens annually, I’m always surprised when I hear birds begin to sing every year. I spend most of my days outside and I wake up early, so I notice subtle changes in the seasons acutely, and my ears are always pricked for avian voices. That’s how I detect many of the birds I watch. As a result, I noted that within the last week, more birds have been singing than a week earlier.

As days lengthen in the temperate world most organisms have physiological reactions, and birds are no different. One result is that male birds’ testes swell, and increased testosterone expands song volume and frequency. Many resident birds sing year round; I hear Song Sparrows and Pacific Wrens regularly throughout winter. But, when the daylength broadens, birds ramp up the energy they put into singing. The other morning in the vicinity of 17th and Roy I counted six species singing, not an impressive number. However, four out of the six I hadn’t heard since last summer.

Why do birds sing? Overall it’s a pretty simple answer. Birds generally sing either to impress the opposite sex or defend a territory. In the vast majority of cases, if you hear birdsong the vocalist is going to be a male bird.    Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Where Capitol Hill’s summer birds go — And where our wintering birds arrive from

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Barn Swallows lined up in their gathering before starting their journey South. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

You may have noticed, but most of our birds have stopped singing and there’s a few more geese in the air. It may still feel like summer, but the resources of spring and early summer have dwindled and those further North are long since gone. Birds are on the move. I think most people are aware, certainly, that birds migrate, but where do Capitol Hill’s summer birds go and where do wintering species arrive from?

Most people generally assume that migration is a simple point A to point B process, that our birds cruise South or North and make regular stops along the way. While it is a good assumption to make, it’s not an absolute.

Many species make strategic stops to fuel up or find a way station to get back up to speed after a busy breeding season before really getting going. Even swallows, our heralds of spring, don’t merely start flying South individually but gather for days on end, building great flocks in ideal locations before taking off for Mexico and Central America. Even then, they don’t just go straight there, they take their time and stop lots for food. Continue reading →