GREEDY GREBES GRABBING GRUB

I have been following the Pied-billed Grebes at Magnuson Park in Seattle for about two months now, and they never fail to be interesting and always offer good photo ops. Various members of the family often rest among the lily pads; presumably they are expending most of their energy digesting a good meal.

The adults continue to feed their young Oriental weatherfish (Misgurnus anguillicaudatus), a loach from Asia that has invaded the pond from Lake Washington, where it was unintentionally introduced. We have now found four species of fish in the pond, including Prickly Sculpin (Cottus asper), Pumpkinseed (Lepomis gibbosus) and Largemouth Bass (Micropterus salmoides). The first is a native species, the other two introduced long ago throughout the region for sport fishing. I still don't have any idea how they got into the pond.

Anyway, there must be a lot more loaches, or they are easier to capture, as again and again that's what I see the adult grebe feeding to the young. In this case, one young got the fish and another followed it around and around for a while. It was obvious the lucky young was trying to swallow it but was having a hard time because it couldn't slow down. But finally it managed to gulp it down.

The adults feed to the young anything than can catch, here a dragonfly, an adult male Common Green Darner (Anax junius) that perhaps was captured when it was mated with an egg-laying female at the water surface. I doubt if a grebe could pluck one out of the air.

Another one is about to swallow the larva of a California Spreadwing (Archilestes californicus), a large damselfly that is common in the pond.

There are no more ducklings for the male grebe to savage, and it seems to be getting along with the single American Coot that now lives in the pond. Maybe this is the stage in nesting when that fierce aggression is relaxed. But I've seen the male chase its own young violently on several occasions in exactly the same way, rushing it from underwater, not sure what that is all about. I still haven't been able to get a photo of it, as it happens very quickly and only once. Maybe it's just "I've had enough of all that begging."

Grebes swim amazingly rapidly underwater, and here you can see the size of the foot that, together with its mate on the other side, propels them like that. The long toes are lobed rather than webbed as they are in a duck, and both adaptations seem to work equally well.

Dennis Paulson

A COMMUNITY OF SAPSUCKERS

North America has the distinction of being the only continent on which a group of birds has evolved the ability to tap into the sap of living trees. These are the four species of sapsuckers (Sphyrapicus): Yellow-bellied (S. varius), Red-naped (S. nuchalis), Red-breasted (S. ruber) and Williamson’s (S. thyroideus). The first three replace one another from east to west across North America, while Williamson’s occurs with both Red-naped and Red-breasted in the West.

Sap flows through the xylem and phloem of a tree with a function rather similar to that of blood in animals. It’s not important in respiration, as it is in us, but nutrients and other chemicals circulate in it. It is full of sugars, presumably an important component of its nutritive value. Phloem sap of deciduous trees can contain concentrations of greater than 25% sugars in summer.

Sapsuckers dig holes in the bark of trees to get at this sap. They dig phloem holes, usually square and shallow, and continue to enlarge and add to these holes, excavating new ones above the old in a vertical arrangement. They also dig xylem holes, smaller and usually circular and penetrating the cambium layer to reach the xylem. These are arranged in horizontal rows. Some trees show both types of holes, easily distinguished.

As soon as these holes are dug, sap begins to flow into them, and they can then be considered sap wells. They continue to flow while temperatures are sufficiently high, but when air temperatures drop below freezing, the sap freezes in the wells and is then inaccessible to the sapsuckers. This is why sapsuckers are the most highly migratory of woodpeckers. As temperatures drop during the winter, many Red-breasted Sapsuckers, normally nonmigratory, descend from the mountains to appear in Pacific Northwest lowlands in numbers.

Sapsuckers may spend over half of their foraging time constructing and maintaining their sap wells. They seem to prefer tree species with higher sucrose content in the sap rather than those in which flow rates are higher. However, their wells have been found in about 1,000 species of woody plants, native and introduced.

They also feed on insects attracted to or trapped in the sap as well as additional arthropods captured on the bark or in the air. They also take some fruit and leaf buds. Insects are captured to feed the young, but the adults often stop at sap wells and dip the insects in sap before taking them to the nest. This may be for added nutritional value or to acclimatize the young to feeding on sap.

Numerous other species find these sap wells nutritious, including both birds and mammals. In the Pacific Northwest, species that I have seen coming to the wells include Anna’s and Rufous Hummingbirds, Downy Woodpeckers, Black-capped Chickadees, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, and Eastern Gray Squirrels. The wells may be especially important to hummingbirds, some of which actually follow individual sapsuckers to note the distribution of their wells. Sapsuckers actively defend their wells against some of these species, but each sapsucker has so many wells that this isn’t a very productive tactic.

The fact that there aren’t any sapsucking woodpeckers in the temperate forests of Eurasia is an elegant example of the idea that not all niches are filled. But of course sapsucking insects of the order Hemiptera (true bugs, aphids and their relatives) are everywhere in the world.

Dennis Paulson

WHITE PELICAN—ANOTHER SUCCESS STORY

Just as happened with their cousins the Brown Pelicans, American White Pelican populations fluctuated greatly during the 20^th Century. Having bred at Moses Lake and probably Sprague Lake in the interior of Washington early in the century, by the middle of it they had disappeared from the state as a breeding bird.

As the second half of the century crept along, these pelicans remained in the state as nonbreeding visitors, sometimes as many as hundreds of them at fish-rich lakes of the Columbia Basin. Oddly, there is no evidence that American White Pelicans suffered from DDT poisoning as did North American Brown Pelicans. So there must have been other reasons for a general decline in their populations, and human disturbance of breeding colonies is considered a very likely factor.

However, late in the century a turn-around was observed, and White Pelican populations began to increase all across the range of the species. In the 1990s, a few breeding colonies were discovered along the Columbia River in the Tri-Cities area. The primary one now is on Badger Island in McNary National Wildlife Refuge, where as many as 1,000 pairs have bred. An injured flightless Bald Eagle spent the summer of 2013 there, and the pelican population may have suffered from that.

In 2010, a small colony formed on Miller Sands Spit, in the Lower Columbia River, reaching a few hundred pairs by 2012. The Army Corp of Engineers covered the nesting area with dredge spoil that fall, but small numbers continued to be seen the next summer.

A great number of nonbreeding birds, up to a few thousand, occur in the state every summer along the Columbia River and some of its tributaries. It would have been unheard of to see White Pelicans in the Yakima River 20 years ago, but now they feed all along its length. Small numbers even spend the winter along the Lower Columbia River, something never observed before the last few years.

The species has increased all over the continent in recent years. Counts made in 1998-2001 totaled about twice as many birds as in 1979-1981. Those counts, now 15 years old, estimated over 150,000 birds, a respectable number of individuals for a very large bird such as this. And the estimate is conservative, as some known colonies were not surveyed. Further surveys are to be carried out.

Brown Pelicans and their close relative Peruvian Pelicans are both confined to the marine environment. They forage by flying, often in small flocks, well above the water surface and diving into it when prey are sighted. American White Pelicans, on the other hand, feed like other species of pelicans all over the world.

American White Pelicans spend much time on fresh water, although they are equally at home on salt water, and large numbers winter coastally. When foraging, several birds move through shallow water, dipping the bill in the water rapidly to capture nearby fish. Sometimes a whole line of birds forms and moves forward steadily, individuals dipping their bills one after another as they herd schools of fishes ahead of them.

Like gulls and other fish-eating birds, they also collect at dam spillways where their prey is delivered to them, often too stunned to escape. Dams are usually not good for fish but often good for birds!

Dennis Paulson

PSYCHEDELIC ROBIN OF THE NORTHWEST

Some people, seeing their first Varied Thrush (Ixoreus naevius), wonder if they are having vision problems. This psychedelically colored thrush looks more or less like an American Robin (Turdus migratorius) and feeds on the ground or in fruit trees like a robin, but the similarity is only superficial.

Male Varied Thrushes are vividly colored in gray, black and russet, much more brightly patterned than robins. Females are more subdued, with less conspicuous facial markings and breast band, but they still show the vivid wing markings typical of the species. Note also their black instead of yellow bill.

While robins run about our yards looking for earthworms that have surfaced, Varied Thrushes are foraging for a much greater variety of invertebrates. A robin is a visual forager, cocking its head to scan for worms, but a Varied Thrush gets down and dirty, pulling leaf litter up and hopping backward to examine the ground exposed. The complex web of life beneath the litter furnishes up dietary items one after another to the thrush.

In addition, Varied Thrushes take fruits and seeds of all kinds, even acorns, from the ground. They often visit bird feeders to take seeds or suet, something robins never do. Both species are attracted to fruiting trees and shrubs, where they may gobble berry after berry, jumping up or briefly hovering to pull them from branches to small for a comfortable perch.

Varied Thrushes breed in wet conifer forests in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, and they are present in the lowlands only in winter, when they come down from the mountains. In some winters, probably the colder and snowier ones, they are more common than at other times, numerous enough to be called an invasion. At intervals they wander much more widely than their usual range in the far West, turning up as far east as the Atlantic coast.

The call note of a Varied Thrush is a sharp 'tup,' much like that of a Hermit Thrush, but the song is magical. It is a series of drawn-out notes at different pitches, sometimes with overtones. Note after note comes out of the bird with an ethereal quality that seems well suited for our dark evergreen forests. Fortunately for us, they sing commonly in the spring before they depart for the mountains, so you may hear this song in your suburban yard.

Watch for the psychedelic robin; it's that time of year!

Dennis Paulson

FLOCKING BIRDS

A question that is often asked is why birds flock. And why do some of them form mixed flocks?

It is certain that birds flock for evolutionarily sound reasons:  to avoid predation and to find and capture prey.

By flocking, birds have a better chance to avoid predators than when they are by themselves. First, with more birds together, there is a higher level of alertness, as individuals are likely to be looking in different directions, and not all of them will have their heads down at the same time. In fact, it has been found that birds spend more time feeding and less time looking around when in flocks. Some shorebirds that feed by constantly probing the substrate, for example godwits, may flock with other species that forage with heads up, for example curlews, for the added vigilance.

Second, when birds fly in flocks, they make it more difficult for aerial predators such as falcons to catch them, because the falcon has to concentrate on a single bird, while a group promotes confusion. Furthermore, a bird in a flock of 20 has only a one in 20 chance of being caught, whereas a bird by itself has a statistically more serious problem. When a Bald Eagle flies over a flock of coots, they scatter in all directions.

Third, birds in flocks can actually intimidate predators. Starlings form a swirling superentity and dive on any hawk that approaches them; the tactic works quite well.

There are other advantages. Birds may discover food by associating in groups. Vultures and gulls roost in flocks, then spread out to feed while keeping a distant eye on one another. A vulture that drops to the ground is at the center of a contracting circle of birds heading in its direction. Gulls and terns have been attracted from boats by a handkerchief thrown in the air, simulating a bird dropping to the water.

Birds may also flock to capture prey more effectively. Pelicans in a line drive fish in front of them. Auklets surround a herring school and control its movements just as border collies herd a flock of sheep (why don’t falcons do this with shorebirds?).

Presumably birds form mixed-species flocks for the same reasons. If a flock of 100 is more effective than one half its size, then it makes sense for 50 blackbirds and 50 starlings to forage and fly together. For the most part, birds of similar size and habits flock together, so you’re unlikely to see a mixed flock of murres and juncos.

One of the most commonly seen mixed flocks is a winter feeding flock. In this area, it usually contains chickadees of one or more species, often Red-breasted Nuthatches, and sometimes Golden-crowned and/or Ruby-crowned Kinglets. The flock may be joined by a Downy Woodpecker or Brown Creeper or Townsend’s Warbler or Hutton’s Vireo. By moving through the woods together, these birds may help one another spot particularly good feeding areas, and they are surely more alert to predators as a group than if they were foraging individually.

I wonder if it’s possible to explain any of our own social behavior by this reasoning. Or can we explain bird behavior by what we know of our own? Perhaps some birds flock just to check out members of the opposite sex for the next breeding season.

Dennis Paulson

BLACK SWIFT, BIRD OF MYSTERY

The Black Swift (Cypseloides niger) is one of the more poorly known North American birds. Seen by most people in flight high overhead, its comings and goings are only poorly documented.

Swifts are aerial insectivores. Their very long wings, with extremely high aspect ratio (length/width), allow them to glide effortlessly or move forward at high speed by rapid wingbeats. They are large enough that their wingbeats are more obvious than those in smaller swifts such as Vaux’s. Not only can they fly for long periods while foraging, but they can fly long distances as well, This serves them not only for long-distance migration (they winter in northern South America) but also for daily foraging trips.

The diet of these birds is of course made up of flying insects. The prey is usually about a centimeter in length or less and may be flying ants, wasps, flies, beetles, leafhoppers or anything else that they can find in the air. Foraging is often very high, beyond the limits of human vision, but during cloudy and cool weather, the birds come much lower, often feeding over water bodies, where insects are usually present even in bad weather.

Because they are such superb fliers, the swifts can wander 80 km or more from their montane nesting areas in a single flight to look for food. They stay away for many hours, accumulating insect prey in a sticky mass in the throat. When they return to the nest, they feed the young by regurgitating this mass a bit at a time.

Nesting is always on cliffs, either on rugged coasts or in mountainous areas, usually behind a waterfall. The nests are built of moss (or moss and seaweeds for coastal nests). Because foraging is an uncertain business if you’re a swift, creating quite a challenge when feeding young, this species lays only one egg. Food delivery must be spotty, even with two parents providing it, as the young takes about seven weeks to leave the nest. Compare that with a nestful of five baby robins that fledge in two weeks!

While censusing birds at Port Susan Bay, Snohomish County, Washington ornithologist Steve Mlodinow observed numbers of these swifts at close enough range to get magnificent photos, perhaps the best ever taken in flight. These photos generated a lengthy discussion about why some birds had white tips to the feathers of their underparts and others didn’t. The consensus, aided by examination of specimens in the Slater Museum, is that the white-scalloped birds are females. In addition, the spotted birds had shorter tails. Sexual dimorphism is quite unusual in swifts, and its significance in Black Swifts is unknown.

Much is to be learned about this species, perhaps not easily. For example, no one has seen Black Swifts copulate; there is a challenge for an adventuresome field observer!

Dennis Paulson