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July 2024

· Pine siskins may nest in loose colonies and will tolerate the occasional visit to one another’s nests after their young are hatched

· The Pine siskin is the most common of the “winter finches” to be found at your feeders…but not every year.  An “irruption” migration usually takes place every two or three years that can bring large numbers of siskins to your backyard

· The Pine siskin irruption migrations mainly occur when the seed crop has failed in the boreal forests.  In some years large flocks may appear as far south as Florida

· Some “irruptive” siskins may stay near a dependable food source and nest far south of the normal breeding range

· The primary natural food of Pine siskins are the seeds of hemlocks, alders, birches and cedars

· Pine siskins, like most northern finches, are fond of salt.  They seed out natural salt licks and in the winter they can be found along highways eating the salt used to melt ice and snow

· Siskins, crossbills and other finches have been observed eating flaking mortar as a source of sodium and calcium.

THE PENGUIN was originally a name for the Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis), it’s the genus name, a flightless diving seabird native to the north Atlantic with a black back, flipper-like wings, and a white belly.

When Europeans started exploring the southern hemisphere, they used the same name for the unrelated black and white, flightless, diving birds that lived there.

Meanwhile, the Great Auk, the original bearer of the name penguin, was hunted to extinction in the 18th century and largely forgotten.

The next time you open a jar of honey, consider the grueling days of our honeybees, and how much work has gone into making the delicious Honey.  In the average worker bee’s brief lifetime of four to five weeks, She will make just one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.  It takes about 60,000 bees, collectively travelling up to 88,000 kilometers and visiting more than 2 million flowers, to gather enough nectar to make just 0.5 kilograms (one pound) of honey.  Very busy bees indeed!

If you missed the guest speaker, Dr. David Bird speaking about “American kestrel—common or scarce” you missed a great presentation and some very interesting thoughts on why the American kestrel is becoming more scarce.  So the following information supports and offers some interesting opinions:  and it is not all dismal. So the Wild Bird Store Birding News will present this editorial over the next four months.  Below is part 1:

Students and faculty walking near University Hospital in London. Ontario in December 2023 were treated to an unusual sight—five out-of-season baby geese and their parents.  Apparently confused by unseasonably warm weather, the adult geese had nested and bred months before the onset of spring.

It was a cute story, but with a bittersweet end.  Three of the goslings quickly disappeared, apparently eaten by predators. The other two were taken into care by an animal sanctuary when it seemed likely they wouldn’t survive the winter. The story of the winter goslings is just one small example of the effects climate change is having on birds around the world.   Even as they suffer from habitat destruction, pollution and other threats, they face increasing danger from changes caused by the climate crisis.  At Western University  researchers are tackling questions vital to the survival of birds,  Their work ranges from the basics of bird physiology to creating global radio networks to track birds as they migrate around the world.  “You have to understand the fundamental biology, the physiology, the mechanisms.  And then you can figure out when the environment changes, why the bird responds the way it does,” says  Christopher Guglielmo, biology professor at Western and director of Western’s Centre for Animals on the Move. “We’re interested in the fundamentals.  But we’re doing this because we care about birds,” he says.

WINGED WONDERS

Birds are some of the most successful animals on Earth.  They evolved from small, meat eating dinosaurs that existed more than 150 million years ago, gradually sprouting feathers, growing wings from forelegs, and developing a number of other adaptations that helped them to thrive as flying animals.  Today there are 10,000 species of birds, ranging from the tiny two gram Bee hummingbird to the 140 kilogram Ostrich.

Birds have exquisitively tuned physiologies—from feathers to hollow bones, from powerful hearts to extra efficient lungs—that they need to let them perform the implausible trick of heavier than air flight.  Even today’s flightless birds are descended from birds that once flew.

Birds range from seed eating vegetarians to meat-eating predators; from forest dwellers who live in the same small range their entire lives to birds that fly between continents.  The Arctic tern, for instance, travels 90,000 kilometres every year as it chases summer from the Antarctic to the Arctic and back.  The tiny Black-capped chickadee, on the other hand, stays put through the Alaskan winter, putting on fat every day and burning it to stay alive during the frigid 18-hour night.

But despite their success, today one in eight bird species is threatened with extinction, and most others are seeing their populations decline, according to the international conservation organization BirdLife .  In North America alone, the total number of individual birds has declined by almost three billion since 1970—a 30 per cent drop!

Continued on next page…..
 

WINGS OF CHANGE

Amidst these alarming statistics,Western stands as a beacon of hope and innovation in bird research, thanks in part to the Advanced Facility for Avian Research (AFAR).  Opened in 2009, the facility houses labs, environmental chambers where light and temperature can be controlled, and sophisticated equipment such as a wind tunnel that researchers use to study birds in flight.

The facility helps attract researchers and students to Western, and also helps keep them there.  “It’s like once you have a facility like this, where else are you going to go?” Guiglielmo asks.

For instance, the wind tunnel is one of few in the world that lets researchers control not only wind speed, but temperature, humidity and air pressure.  It is a massive piece of machinery that takes up a good chunk of the building, can generate winds up to 65 kilometres per hour and simulate air pressure of up to seven kilometres altitude.

The working section is a small chamber about two metres long and a metre tall.  Once the wind gets going, researchers release the birds, who will happily fly in place against the wind for hours at a time, like a swimmer in a stationary pool.

The chamber is equipped with windows, cameras and measurement devices that allow researchers to study the mechanics of bird flight.

The wind tunnel also lets them study the effects of flight on the bird’s body, and the impact of different foods and environmental conditions.

For instance, Guiglielmo wondered what would happen to birds on long migrations as temperatures rise and the air becomes drier.  “one of the big thing birds face if they’re flying overnight for 12 hours is, unlike a marathon runner, they don’t stop to drink.  So they generate all of their water internally from their metabolism.”

They do that using the water that is produced as they burn fat, organs and muscle for energy.  Even under normal conditions, birds’ internal organs will shrink dramatically as they are burned for energy and water; the heart can shrink by 25 per cent, livers and intestines by half.  Even flight muscles get smaller.

When the humidity goes down, the researchers found the birds burn even more organs and muscles than they would otherwise.   It turns out that burning these non-fat body components generates five times more water than burning fat does.

It’s a useful adaptation, and better than dying of thirst.  But as the world becomes hotter and drier, it could mean migrating birds show up at their destination even weaker and more exhausted than they normally would, making them less likely to survive and reproduce.

Below are a couple of suggestions as to where to go to see birds on your own while Jim is away—

CARBURN PARK is always a great destination for songbirds as well as waterfowl and shorebirds.  But any of the destinations within Fish Creek Park are not only a wonderful way to spend the day, but sure to include lots of bird sightings.

INGLEWOOD BIRD SANCTUARY enjoy not only the history and the trails, but you just never know what birds you will see and be sure to enjoy the Nature Center

FRANK LAKE American white pelicans, Double-breasted cormorants, Grebes—the list goes on and on.  Enjoy being up close viewing waterfowl and shorebirds from the boardwalk and blind.  You are sure to add a few birds to your life list!

ELLIS BIRD FARM outside of Lacombe.  Purple martins, Bluebirds, House wrens, American goldfinch and Hummingbirds just to mention a few.  Enjoy the Nature Center and stop by the Tea House (best to make reservations for lunch).

Thank you for your support

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JULY 11 and 25

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