HART BEAT: MIMIC THRUSHES AND TRUE THRUSHES

Wood Thrush

Recently a Hart Beat reader and good friend from Vero Beach sent me a couple of photos of a bird in her yard hoping that it was a Wood Thrush (top), but not sure whether it was a Brown Thrasher (photo 2) instead. The two can appear remarkably similar superficially but are readily distinguishable when one knows what to look for. My friend’s photos were clearly of a Brown Thrasher.

Brown Thrashers are members of the Mimidae genre of birds commonly known as mimic thrushes for they can sing like true thrushes. While their songs can be somewhat like true thrush songs, to my mind they are not nearly as beautiful as that of the Wood Thrush. In addition to the Brown Thrasher, other eastern mimic thrushes are the Gray Catbird (photo 3) and the Northern Mockingbird (photo 4).

All three sing incessantly with the Mockingbird having the most varied call which seems to just go on and on imitating a vast number of other bird species occasionally even at night. The Brown Thrasher sings a varied call as well but is different from the Northern Mockingbird in that it repeats its phrases twice with each double phrase different from the previous one. The Gray Catbird is so named because it often has calls much like a cat meowing.

Conversely, the Wood Thrush has a more melodious song and is a delight to hear singing in our woods in the early evening. The Hermit Thrush (photo 5) although uncommon, is the only brown thrush species, with its reddish tail, that is likely to be found in Florida in the winter.

The most common true thrushes are the American Robin (photo 6) and the Eastern Bluebird (photo 7). While their songs are not quite as melodious as the Wood Thrush, they are quite beautiful and can go on and on at times, particularly when trying to attract a mate.

While Wood Thrushes and Brown Thrashers have some similarity, none of the thrushes have wing bars, as the Thrasher has, nor the longer tail or curved bill. Finally, the Brown Thrasher has a distinctive yellow eye. The other two eastern mimic thrushes, Gray Catbird and Northern Mockingbird, both are shades of gray whereas there aren’t any true eastern thrushes colored gray. While none of the bird books I am familiar with mention this, it seems to me that the mimic thrushes are all horizontal birds always seeming to be in a bent over posture, whereas the true thrushes are all vertical birds always seeming to be standing up straight.

On our Pennsylvania farm we are fortunate to have all the birds mentioned here coming to our feeders or in our yard all summer except for the Hermit Thrush which is primarily a winter visitor both in Pennsylvania and Florida. All these species particularly love the meal worms we put out for them as you can see in the Brown Thrasher photo. Catbirds love the grape jelly we put out for the orioles.

Mimic thrushes are so named because of their ability to imitate the songs of other bird species. Many humans try to imitate other members of their species as well but go much further in their efforts than merely imitating their favorite singers, although there are comedians making a good living doing exactly that. Teenagers love to dress like their favorite actresses. Young ball players pretend to be their favorite star; many youngsters follow in the footsteps of their parents, and sometimes adults, often without realizing it, do just what their neighbors are doing.

On the national and international level many politicians pretend to be actual leaders, and occasionally one will even advance to becoming a dictator because he has fooled a great many people. Adolf Hitler succeeded in his efforts because his followers thought he was imitating someone doing a good job for his country. Thankfully, mimic thrushes only imitate other birds’ songs and not the habit that other species have of dropping their whitewash on our vehicle windshields. Seems some politicians drop their whitewash too. If only we could duck out of the way.

For more on mimic thrushes, click here.

For more on the true thrushes of Florida, click here.

HART BEAT: THREE EXCITING DAYS

We don’t know where he came from, nor where he went when he left. But we had the most unusual and unexpected visitor for three days recently. Jewel discovered him quite by accident as she sat in our sunroom and suddenly found him looking back at her from behind the flowers on the patio out front late in the afternoon of the day he arrived (top). Incidentally, all these photos were taken by Jewel who carefully documented the bird’s visit.

He explored our entire property including our garage and parking area, (photo 2) and settled in under an Autumn Olive tree in our back yard where he was pretty well concealed. We don’t believe he spent the night there, but he was back early the next morning and spent the entire day just hanging around our house. He seemed to particularly enjoy looking at his own reflection in our front sunroom picture windows (photo 3) but eventually walked across our deck (photo 4) and headed back over to the Autumn Olive.

Later, he spent considerable time feasting under our bird feeders gorging himself on dropped birdseed and suet pieces. (Photo 5) Our front patio, however, provided just the right stage for him to strut across (photo 6) and pose upon. He spent most of the afternoon of the second day on our patio stage, finally just settling in and lying down to rest and relax (photo 7).

We contacted all our surrounding neighbors, none of whom had any idea where he might have come from or to whom he might have belonged. The mystery only deepened. Early the next morning we spotted him strolling across our fields between our house and the road into town apparently heading directly into possible traffic danger. We never saw him again but did begin hearing reports that he was seen wandering about in other locations within about a mile of our home.

A couple of days later our son also sent us a photo he took of him strolling down the sidewalk two doors from where our son lives in the next town about five miles from our farm. Several days later there was a local news article with a photo of the bird with his owner, reporting that he had finally been found and returned to his home.

We recently discovered that our Peacock has his own Facebook page entitled, “Petey the Perkasie Peacock” along with a great many photos of him wandering far and wide for about two weeks, with photos from as far as 15 miles from our farm. All the photos displayed on that page were taken some time after his appearance at our home.

Peacocks are not uncommon in Florida and can often be found wandering about in the wild. I have seen family groups of as many as six, one Peacock and five Peahens, foraging along Indian River Drive in Fort Pierce, and of course, there is a large group of Peacocks on Orange Avenue (I have heard estimates as high as 100 birds) about two blocks west of Route 1 in Fort Pierce. While the Orange Avenue Peacocks all seem to be well fed and cared for, they do wander about “free as birds,” and I suspect many do from time to time wander off and perhaps become truly wild. But in Pennsylvania neither Jewel nor I have ever seen a Peacock anywhere but in zoos or on large estates and public places where they are closely monitored and certainly not likely to wander off into the wild.

Our friendly three-day Peacock never did fan out his tail and give us that fantastic display for which they are famous. We hoped that he might when he discovered his reflection in our windows, but I guess without a female to impress he never really felt the need to flair.

Birding is a sport/hobby that proves time and again that one should always expect the unexpected. Rare birds frequently appear in the most unlikely and unexpected places often far from their native habitats and ranges. Several days after the Peacock left a bear came and destroyed our entire bird feeding station. Some visitors are very welcome and a delight to see and have around. Others only do damage and are dreaded. Not on a Russian invasion of Ukraine scale, but certainly on a negative impact scale. Beauty or the beast?  I’ll take beauty every time.  

HART BEAT: "THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED TO ME"

PLEASE UNDERSTAND: IT IS ILLEGAL AND ACTUALLY DETRIMENTAL TO SCRUB JAYS TO FEED THEM BY HAND.

Great Gray Owl (from PetaPixel, link below)

“This has never happened to me.” The statement came in an email from one of our best friends in Florida accompanied by a link to an article (see below) with numerous photos of the photographer’s experience. The featured photo is at the top of this column, and no, the photo is not mine and that particular experience has never happened to me.

In fact, the only photo I have ever taken of a Great Gray Owl was with a Super 8 movie camera back in the late 1970s, long before I began using digital SLR cameras. It is now totally unsatisfactory for this column, but fortunately Jewel had a slide from a photo she took of a Great Gray Owl (photo 2) that we saw near Williamsport, Pennsylvania, back in 1992, also long before I was using a camera. While the scan from the slide to the computer does not look as good as the original slide, it is still infinitely better than my movie frame copy.

That does not mean I have never experienced a bird landing on my hand, although never on my camera. Many years ago, before Florida Fish and Wildlife authorities became so zealous of instructing all visitors not to feed peanuts to Florida Scrub Jays, it was great fun to find Jays and while holding out a handful of unsalted peanuts have the experience of having them land on your hand and grab a peanut (photo 3).

On one occasion we ran into a fellow we did not know who was feeding unshelled peanuts with both hands and had the double-header experience of having a Florida Scrub Jay on each hand at the same time (photo 4). One of the birds then flew with the peanut to the top of the man’s head before flying off with its trophy (photo 5). On another occasion this Florida Scrub Jay seemed to take issue with my taking its photo, or maybe he was upset that there were no more peanuts in the hand (photo 6).  

All of these Florida Scrub Jay photos were taken at the Indrio Savannas just north of Fort Pierce many years ago. At that location years ago we often saw folk feeding Florida Scrub Jays, which became quite accustomed to people feeding them and looking for peanuts. I’ll never forget another birder friend who thought it was not a good idea to be feeding them peanuts, so he went out and gathered a collection of native acorns to take to the Jays. When he offered the acorns, one of their natural foods, the Jays brushed them off his hand and seemed to say to him, “Where are the peanuts?”

At other Florida Scrub Jay spots, now becoming harder to find, Scrub Jays are more reluctant to come to the hand and just wait for the offered peanuts to be thrown on the ground by the disappointed person trying to lure them to the hand (photo 7).

One time, at the Indrio Savannas, we did have the experience of a Red-bellied Woodpecker closely watching the Jays come to the hand for peanuts and proceed to land on the closest tree about five feet from where we were standing. He seemed several times about to make the leap to the hand for some peanuts but just could not overcome that fear of the final jump even for peanuts.

I also remember taking our 7-year-old grandson (now 35) to the colony of Florida Scrub Jays on Savannas Road in Fort Pierce and having him flinch when the Jay landed on his hand. But it never phased the Jay which just stayed and gobbled peanuts to our grandson’s delight. Unfortunately, that small colony of Florida Scrub Jays disappeared during the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005.

There are any number of videos on the internet depicting people hand-feeding birds, from Hummingbirds to Chickadees, but I have never tried to lure birds to my hand other than the Scrub Jays. At our bird feeders in Pennsylvania (Our condo association doesn’t allow feeders in Florida, although some folk feed birds anyway, and I have seen others hand-feeding Sandhill Cranes illegally in our complex) the birds remain very close by, even within about three or four feet from the feeders while the feeders are being filled. I’ve sometimes wondered whether they could be tempted to the hand with a great deal of patience.

I apologize if you thought this column would be about Great Gray Owls from the lead-in paragraph, but the bird-human interaction is the theme today. It’s all about trust and feeling safe in the company of our fellow creatures, human or otherwise. How much better place the world would be if we all could trust every fellow creature with whom we make contact. That strikes me as something we can all strive for. Now if we could only get Vladimir Putin on board. 

Article about wildlife photographers experience with a Great Gray Owl landing on his camera, with numerous photos documenting the experience: https://petapixel.com/2022/05/11/huge-grey-owl-lands-on-wildlife-photographers-camera/.

HART BEAT: PARASITE BIRD

Brown-headed Cowbird, male

“What bird’s nest is this?” The question came from a high school classmate and long-time friend of Jewel’s accompanied by a photo of a bird’s nest (photo 2). The friend and her husband found the nest on top of a light on their back porch. With our suspicions that it was probably an Eastern Phoebe’s (photo 3) nest, we were easily able to quickly confirm that was correct. However, along with the two whitish eggs (the left one looks a little bluish in the photo because of the lighting) there was a third larger egg with some dark spots on it. Once again, we were able to quickly confirm that the larger egg was indeed a Brown-headed Cowbird egg.  

Brown-headed Cowbirds are parasite birds. They do not build nests of their own or ever raise their own chicks. They have developed the practice of always laying their eggs in the nests of other birds and leaving the chore of feeding and raising the young to the parasitized unwitting host birds that went to the effort of building their own nest with the expectation of raising their own offspring.  

Not only do the female cowbirds sneak in and lay their egg in the other species’ nest, but they also brazenly remove one of the host parent’s own eggs to increase the likelihood that the Cowbird’s chick will be the lone survivor of the nesting effort of the host birds. To further increase that likelihood, the Cowbird’s egg is programed to hatch quicker than the host bird’s own eggs. When the Cowbird’s chick is born it has an innate reflex to push anything else in the nest over the edge and out, whether it be any other eggs or even the host bird’s own babies that may have hatched before the Cowbird chick.  

Female cowbirds will lay up to 30 eggs in a single breeding season. One of the saddest moments in my entire birding lifetime was observing a beautiful little male Hooded Warbler feeding a Brown-headed Cowbird chick that was more than twice its size. In Michigan, the Brown-headed Cowbirds were a very serious threat to wipe out the Kirtland’s Warbler, an endangered species particularly susceptible to cowbird parasitism. Fortunately, the U S Fish and Wildlife Service undertook a widespread cowbird trapping program in the Kirtland’s breeding areas which has contributed significantly to the gradual regrowth of the Kirtland’s population. 

Brown-headed Cowbirds developed this parasitic breeding technique many years ago in the mid-west when they followed the traveling buffalo herds and had to keep moving as the herds kept moving. They could not take time off to build a nest or raise their own young as the constantly moving herds were their only food source. As settlers came and cut down the forests, they opened whole new territories of potential cowbird food sources with numerous stationary cattle farms. The Brown-headed Cowbirds expanded their territories both east and west so that they now are found throughout all North America. And bird feeders have become a new and popular food source for the cowbirds. 

Male Brown-headed Cowbirds are a shiny black with distinctive brown heads (top of page). Females are a dirty brown with light streaking on the back and belly (photo 4) while juvenile males become a mottled black and brown until their full adult plumage develops (photo 5).  

In addition to Brown-headed Cowbirds there are two more species of cowbirds with limited ranges in North America. The Bronzed Cowbird, a primarily Mexican species, (photo 6) with its bright red eye in both the male and female, has a very limited range in southern most Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. They overlap with Brown-headed Cowbirds and it is not uncommon to see both species on a feeder at the same time (photo 7)  

The Shiny Cowbird is a bird of Cuba and the West Indies, but in the past 35 years they have been found in south Florida and along the coast as far north as South Carolina. Jewel and I have seen them at Flamingo in the Everglades, but unfortunately, I don’t have any photos to share with you. Another project for another day. 

The Cuckoo was made famous by William Shakespeare who was familiar with the same trait of the cowbirds that the Cuckoo also has, that is, laying its eggs in other birds’ nests and having the host bird raise the Cuckoo’s young. Shakespeare made the Cuckoo famous as the symbol of male infidelity, probably because there weren’t any (and still aren’t any) cowbirds in Great Britain.  

While cowbirds parasitize over 160 different species of birds, some species have learned to identify their eggs and either abandon the nest or build a new nest on top of the old nest with the cowbird egg in it. I have seen Yellow Warbler nests with as many as three nests on top of each other, with the lower nests each containing a cowbird egg.  

Red-winged Blackbirds are notorious for chasing cowbirds out of their nesting areas. When it comes to human Cuckoos/cowbirds the offenders are fortunate that there are no identifiable eggs visible to give them away. Then again, in the United States with its strong 2nd Amendment rights, that offender, if discovered, may be in a very precarious position. Too bad that such human offenders don’t have an easily recognizable persona that, like cowbirds, would give them away and make them easy to trap and remove from society. There’s a project for another day that I am not going to touch with a 10-foot pole.            

For more on Brown-headed Cowbird history, see: nationalzoo.si.edu/migratory-birds/news/brown-headed-cowbirds-buffalo-birds-modern-scourge. 

For more on Shiny Cowbirds breeding in North America, click here.  . 

For more on Cowbird impact on Kirtland’s Warbler, click here.