Wood Thrush Notes

Brown Creepers and other Winter Migrants

This morning I had the pleasure of spotting one of my favorite birds of winter, the Brown Creeper. It is not a rare bird but is considered an uncommon winter resident statewide from October to April. It is an elusive bird for the backyard birder due to its camouflage plumage and habit of traveling on the trunks of trees. Every fall and winter I catch a few glimpses of a Brown Creeper heading up the trunk of a tree as it searches for insects in the bark. This is the only species we have that only goes up a tree and never down. It has a unique way of foraging for food by creeping up a tree and then fluttering down to the base of another tree climbing up in a spiral or zig zag path. It’s very interesting to watch. Brown Creepers are quite small, about 5” in length, and quite well camouflaged. They are brown above and whitish below, with a slender de-curved (downward curve) bill. Like a Carolina Wren they have a prominent white eye stripe.

Brown Creepers are primarily insect eaters but suet is its preferred food at feeders. As always we suggest watching your suet feeder a little more closely this time of year as many more unusual birds are seen at suet feeders. Birds seen at local suet feeders the last few winters include; Orange-crowned, Pine, and Yellow-rumped Warbler, Baltimore Oriole, and Western Tanager

It’s time for the Great Backyard Bird Count

Take Part in the Great Backyard Bird Count

Today begins the Great Backyard Bird Count.  This Year’s bird count is February 12th thru 15th.

It’s going to be a cold weekend. We know you will be watching your feeders so you might as well assist with the GBBC. All you have to do is sit and watch your feeders for 15 minutes at a time and record your observations. It’s easy, fun and it collects important scientific data.

The GBBC which was launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society is essentially a worldwide online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds and display results in near real time. Go to www.birdcount.org for complete details on how to get involved.

There are multiple ways that you can report your sightings using your mobile phone or home computer. To see the different options and find out which one will work best for you visit birdcount.org and click on the how-to participate section.

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Photo taken by Graham Gerdeman.

Rare Sighting of a Western Tanager

Just one day after our last blog about recent rare bird sightings in TN I experienced a rare bird in my own yard in Pegram, TN. A beautiful adult male Western Tanager appeared at a suet feeder and has been seen intermittently since. It has been seen feeding at a platform feeder with sunflower chips and dried mealworms, too. This bird calls home areas west of Texas to the California coast up into southwestern Canada. I was totally surprised when I trained my binoculars on this bird and realized what I was seeing. There have been only a few sightings of this species in TN, one of them last winter by Wood Thrush Shop employee Eli. We must be doing something right.

Bird Bio: Western Tanager

Just when I started to write off this winter as an uninteresting bird feeding season due to warm and wet conditions, our own Eli Haislip witnessed and photographed a Western Tanager at a feeding station. There have only been a handful of reported sightings in TN going all the way back to 1960 and this is the first ever reported in Davidson County! The bird appeared at a feeding station probably interested by the other bird activity. Like Bluebirds, Western Tanagers are primarily insect and fruit eaters but during winter may take advantage of “alternative” food sources like seeds out of the shell, suet, mealworms, or dried fruit.

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Female Western Tanager

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Western Tanager range map

This Western Tanager is truly out of its normal range which is well west of the Mississippi during the breeding season. See range map. During the non-breeding season these birds normally migrate to Central and South America, like our Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. In the past ten or twenty years, however, it has become commonplace to see some western hummingbirds, like Rufous, Anna’s, Caliope, and Black-chinned migrate to this part of the country for the winter rather than to Central and South America. Why? There’s no absolute answer but it is interesting and gives one cause to pay closer attention. This is why bird researchers and banders encourage people to leave a hummingbird feeder up during winter months.

Adult male Western Tanagers are strikingly beautiful in breeding plumage sporting a red face and throat with yellow underparts and nape, which contrasts sharply with the black back, wings, and tail. As is the case with many bird species females are much less colorful. Female W. Tanagers have a yellow head and underparts while the back is olive-gray and wings are gray with white wing bars.

Keep an eye on your feeding stations. Winter is always a time when something “different” may appear. If anything looks a little different to you stop and take a closer look with binoculars. Let us know what you see.

Next week get ready for the Great Backyard Bird Count.