Keep Calm and Bird On: June 2021
“If you don’t look, you don’t see. You have to go and look.”
-Edith Andrews
June is baby bird month, and in some ways the hardest. Some adult birds stop singing. Birds on the nest are more secretive, unless a cat, dog, hawk or human blunders in. Many adults, usually the female, give award-wining performances of “Look at me, I’m injured, chase me,” to draw predators away from the nest—before taking off at top speed. This is what’s called a distraction display.
June is when the most patience is required, but also rewarded. If you find a nest, take time to watch avian parents at work. Watch young birds grow from naked, peeping, blind mouths to downy fuzzballs (see the Barn Owl below!), to pinfeathers, to flight feathers, graduating to awkward flight, growing agility, and dawning awareness.
If a corner with a nice messy tangle is allowed to exist in your backyard, it’s a sight you might be able to enjoy right at home. Birds need food, usually insects, so a no-spray, poison-free yard is a must. It should be a cat, dog, and deer-free area. Surprisingly, Bambi is not a vegetarian. To guard against hawks, some really dense shrub cover is also a must.
Then there is always the question, what do I do if I find a baby bird out of the nest? Usually, the answer is to leave it alone. Unless there’s an obvious injury, such as being caught by a cat, it’s likely that the parents are nearby, waiting for you to leave before returning to parental care. Mass Audubon has a good flow-chart for decision-making about intervention.
Barn Owl boxes were checked the last week in May; results were mixed. In a couple of boxes, dead adult owls were found. This is very unusual. Something is going on with Nantucket’s Barn Owls. We don’t yet know what, but we are currently looking over the survey data. More information to come.
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