BRDL 35

 2/27/22 - GOEA- Golden Eagle

Now these are majestic birds. Being mainly in the western US, I haven't seen one in person but just thinking about them makes me want to plan a trip. They are one of largest birds in North America, mostly brown, but with a golden nape. I didn't know they have feathers all the way down to their toes, or that they are at risk for lead poisoning from consuming bullet fragments in their prey. Really stunning birds -- the national bird of more countries than any other.

Edited to add: My 12 year old daughter tried this BRDL at the end of the day....and got it on her first try!

By Jarkko Järvinen - Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44848627

BRDL 34

2/26/22 - PIPL- Piping Plover

These birds are well known to the residents of the beaches around Boston, since there has been a concerted effort to protect their nesting habitat along beaches. And some of the people around the beaches don't appreciate being restricted from using those parts of the beaches. These little plovers have a dark breastband and a black crown stripe, an orange black tipped bill, and yellow legs. They seem to be similar to semipalmated plovers, although the latter are more common and darker in color. I didn't know that there is a larger population of plovers that migrates to the upper midwest US and Canada, particularly, it seems, in North Dakota. 

By Mdf, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4698896

BRDL 33

2/25/22 - BLJA- Blue Jay

This puzzle reminds me of why I shouldn't always go right to the book when I can't come up with a bird that fits. I had the 'BL' but couldn't come up with a 'black' or 'blue' bird that would fit. How can I forget the blue jay? Admittedly, they haven't been around my feeder much this winter, but I realize now that it's because the platform feeder isn't out this year (the squirrels finally got to the baffle, and I never got around to replacing it)

Learned a few things about them today -- their fondness for oak acorns, the fact that no one really knows how or when or why they migrate, the fact that their blue color is really brown melanin, that is refracted through special feathers, and their proclivity for 'anting' - a term I had never heard before, but involves picking ants up, rubbing them on their feathers, and then eating them.

I've always thought them to be pretty majestic, if a little loud.

BRDL 32

 2/24/22 - COTE- Common Tern

BRDL threw us a curveball this morning. I woke up early, and solved it with some help from my birding app. The winning code was 'GRFR' -- never heard of it before. It was a Gray Francolin. Learned a little bit about it though -- it's native and relatively common in India and Iran, but has been introduced in Hawaii. It's a gray partridge looking bird. So I got home tonight, to remember what bird it was that I had learned about....and there was an update! The BRDL software messed up somehow, and loaded the wrong bird! Scandal! Or, bonus! Two BRDLs in one day!

The bird of the day, the true bird of the day, is the Common Tern. And it's pretty common, yet I have only seen one, convincingly, once -- while on our 'Escape the Pandemic' week vacation August 2020 on Cape Cod. Medium sized tern, black cap, grayish body with darker wingtips, red/orange bill with black tip, and forked tail. I have trouble with terns -- they move so quickly it's hard to get all of their markings down. Interesting facts though-- they drink water as they're flying, and can drink salt or freshwater. Many birds can, apparently, and excrete excess salt through nasal glands. Pretty clever.

By Badjoby - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4537951

BRDL 31

2/23/22 - WHIB- White Ibis

First BRDL doing together with my daughter. (We had done the one last night, too, but I had already completed it). We have both seen tons of these birds during our visits to Florida. They are pretty common overall. A few things I didn't know about their characteristics. Their bills, which are famously curved down at the end, do not start out that way. Baby ibises have straight bills that curve after a few weeks. Second, first year ibises are not white -- they are brown above. Finally, there seems to be some question as to whether white ibises and scarlet ibises (more common in South America) can hybridize, and how frequently, and whether or not they are in fact the same species, but different morphs. 

 

BRDL 30

 2/22/22 - KILL- Killdeer

Not the banding code I would choose for myself, and the killdeer doesn't really live up to this code (unless you are one of the insects or invertebrates it scratches up from the soil). Although this bird is in the plover family, it tends more towards open fields than beaches. Two black chest bands distinguish it. The name comes from the sound that it makes. Once again, I am amazed at the nest failure rate of a lot of these birds -- one place I read put the failure rate at 53%. And yet they keep going. The killdeer is well known for behaviors that distract predators and lead them away from the nest -- one is the broken wing display, where they limp along and drag their wing to tempt predators away. Another one is pretending to incubate a false nest far away from the actual nest, and flying away to leave the predator with an empty scratch behind. Finally, sometimes they'll charge straight at a grazing animal (that doesn't always work out so well for the killdeer).

Alan D. Wilson, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

BRDL 29

2/21/22 - WESO - Western Screech-Owl

This was a first in BRDL for me -- I guessed the code, but had no idea what the bird was! The prior guess had been SEOW (short-eared owl) and I knew all the letters were right. So I just plugged them in. I have seen the Eastern screech-owl before, but never the western version. These are tiny little owls - just 8 inches long on average - but you don't want them around if you are a little mouse or a newly hatched bird.

By Anonymous - U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Central California Area Office, Public Domain

 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10970028

BRDL 28

2/20/22 - COPO - Common Poorwill

I don't know how anyone ever finds one of these birds. Their calls, of course, but they are nocturnal birds that are incredibly well camouflaged during the day. They live mainly out west in the desert scrubland, and eat loads of insects. One thing I didn't know was from allaboutbirds.org -- in harsh winters, when food is scarce, they can reduce their body temperature to 41 degrees (Fahrenheit!) and reduce oxygen consumption by 90%. The first known hibernating bird. The Hopi word for the bird actually means 'sleeping one' Another fun fact -- they can often be found on south facing hills, soaking up the sun. 

By Connor Long - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45594864

BRDL 27

   2/19/22 - KIEI - King Eider

Another one I haven't seen, but reportedly these ducks make a huge spectacle when migrating across Alaska. By one count there were hundreds of thousands passing over in just 24 hours. They sometimes come far enough south in the winter to see in New England. The male has a multicolored head with a yellow knob above the bill. I would use the word 'striking' to describe it, but I think I need to use a new adjective. Take a look for yourself below. These birds dive deep underwater to get their food.

By Ron Knight from Seaford, East Sussex, United Kingdom - King Eider (Somateria spectabilis), 

CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32940131

BRDL 26

  2/18/22 - CITE - Cinnamon Teal

Another tough puzzle - got through Cape May Warbler, Common Grackle, and Chipping Sparrow before arriving at the answer.

Have never seen a Cinnamon Teal but they are beautiful birds, common in the western US. Reddish body, red eyes, grey bill. Similar to the Blue-winged teals we see in Florida. Interesting fact about these birds is that there are two separate populations -- one in the Western US/Mexico, and the other in South America. Unsure why they aren't separate species, unless they separated only recently. 

By "Mike" Michael L. Baird, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2800659

BRDL 25

 2/17/22 - WEGR - Western Grebe

Another tough puzzle. Once you get the 'WE' part and know that it's a western bird, there are a number to go through. Got it on the sixth try...

Have never seen a Western Grebe before -- they're mainly in lakes of the western US but I find it interesting that they migrate West -- to the Pacific Ocean -- during non-breeding times. Largest of the North American grebes, black with a white neck and face and striking red eyes. Known for a courtship dance where the male and female run along the surface of the water together.

By dominic sherony - Western Grebe, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5828481

BRDL 24

    2/16/22 - CAWA - Canada Warbler

This puzzle was a harder one for me, even using the bird guide. Almost didn't make it, guessing on the sixth try (complicating the guessing was that I entered 'CIWA' on a lark, which it turns out reperesents a citrine wagtail - a bird I have never heard of before, as it's mainly an Asian species. BRDL is supposed to represent, I think, mainly North American birds, but, no worries, learn something new every day! Per bird, citrine wagtails have shown up in America twice in the past 30 years, once in Mississippi, once outside of Sacramento)

Canada Warbler, though, the bird of the day, is another striking bird. My first sighting of a Canada warbler came in the Green Mountains, outside of Wells VT in 2008. Didn't see another one until 2020, in the shrubs around our local reservoir. It's a little yellow warbler with a striking eye ring and a broken 'necklace' of black on its yellow breast. I didn't know that it is one of the last warblers to arrive north, and first ones to head south. So much for that 'Canada' thing (although reportedly 82% of these warblers breed in Canada, so there's at least some connection)

By William H. Majoros - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16127252

BRDL 23

   2/15/22 - PUFI - Purple Finch

I've only seen a purple finch once, during a Christmas vacation visit to Wells, VT. They breed in the coniferous forests of Canada for the most past, and irrupt south from time to time.  Looking at the eBird abundance animation maps (which are awesome - I can spend a long time looking at the pictures there) it seems that they migrate south in Sept/October through New England, although I've never seen them. They also don't seem to have a re-migration back north. Wonder if that is a quirk of their irruption.

Purple finches have been outcompeted by house finches when they show up together. Also, it's the New Hampshire state bird!

By Cephas - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15362339

BRDL 22

  2/14/22 - AMCR - American Crow

A common bird that everyone knows, but a really interesting one. I have distinct memories of the thousands of crows that would roost every evening in the fall along Old Georgetown Road in Rockville, MD, as I would drive home from work. An incredible sight. It has become a sign of the fall for me, when the crows start their huge communal roosts. There are a lot of interesting theories about why they roost -- is it to share information about where the best food sources are? Is it for safety (in numbers) from predators such as owls? Is it just like a hotel, where the birds all come to the best place to stay, or a bar, where they just like to hang out together?

It is really interesting how social crows are. Family units stay together -- pairs are monogamous, from what I gather, but children stick around for years to help raise the other young. There are also plenty of stories of people getting to know their neighborhood crows and recognizing their personalities.

A lot of good information is here from the Cornell lab, and there's a whole course available through the Cornell lab for loads more on the crow.

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2310490

BRDL 21

 2/13/22 - OSPR - Osprey

Now this is a bird that I have seen and heard. I most recently associate it with a week long trip to Cape Cod when we were escaping the pandemic. There were loads of nesting platforms and you could hear their whistling calls throughout the day. I have seen them plenty of other places as well -- anywhere there is water nearby, you may see them (although they need relatively shallow water to hunt their fish -- they dive no more than 3 feet to catch their prey. 

It's not uncommon to see osprey flying away with a catch in their talons. They are unusual in that they have a toe that they can move so that they have two toes in front and two behind. And when they carry away their fish, they always carry the fish headfirst, for aerodynamics.

Etymology of the name osprey is interesting -- either it's from the medieval Latin avis prede, meaning 'bird of prey', or else it's from the Latin ossifraga meaning 'bone-breaker'. It seems that ossifraga was actually used by Pliny in Latin to mean a certain kind of vulture, but may have been confused with another French word when it evolved in Normandy, and got applied to the osprey. Then the scientific name is interesting - Pandion haliaetus - given presumably by Linnaeus when he classified everything in the 17th century. Pandion apparently refers to an Athenian king, whose children were turned into birds at death, one of whom (Nisus) became an (you guessed it ) osprey.

That's enough word-nerding around. Last thing I found interesting -- this bird is found all around the world, but the species are pretty hard to differentiate. It seems that the populations that winter in Scandinavia migrate over to India in the winter. I love these migration maps from eBird.

BRDL 20

2/11/22 - SAGU - Sabine's Gull

I've never really heard of this bird before. Which is why looking up birds in your guide when you're playing BRDL is alright by me. Probably haven't really heard of Sabine's gull since they breed in the Arctic and are mostly seen at sea if they're in the US, and then, it's usually on the west coast. They are pretty striking with black head and yellow tipped bills and red eyes, as well as a forked tail, which is pretty rare for gulls. Joseph Sabine was a naturalist on Captain John Ross's arctic exploration in the early 19th century which is where the name comes from (not that I know much about either of them). What the name really reminds me of, though, is a book from the early 1990's called Griffin and Sabine. I recall the book being quite novel (no pun intended) since the text was all correspondence between the two title characters, and you could actually take the letters out of the envelopes in the book to read them. Clearly no relation between the Sabines, and pretty sure that the Sabine of the book never saw one of these gulls, as she was living on a tropical island. These gulls never get that far into the Pacific.

By Ómar Runólfsson - Sabine´s Gull - Larus sabini - ÞernumáfurUploaded by Snowmanradio, CC BY 2.0, 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15327503

BRDL 19

    

2/10/22 - GRCA - Gray Catbird

This gray bird of bushes and thickets is aptly named. It's gray, and it's typical mewing call is a pretty good match for a house cat. What I didn't know until recently was how good of a mimic it is. I recall sitting outside of our friends Kurt and Rachel's house one day trying to figure out what strange bird songs were coming from their front bushes, when a friend said 'I think that's a catbird'. No way, I thought. There's no mewing. But sure enough - there is was. Also just learned that when catbirds sing their mimicked songs, they typically sing each phrase just once, as opposed to thrashers or mockingbirds, that sing multiple times. 

By Hari Krishnan - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89881817

BRDL 18

   2/9/22 - ANHI - Anhinga

The famous 'snake bird' - I first remember seeing this bird during trips to Florida. It sails along in the waterways with its head and neck just about water, and then suns itself on the banks. Didn't know that its feathers are not waterproof. This helps it to sink down in the water and catch fish, perhaps, but also requires it to sit out in the sun.

BRDL 16-17

  2/8/22 - MALL - Mallard

Everyone knows this bird. It's found worldwide. It's in Make Way for Ducklings. It makes for a challenging BRDL. This is a bird that made me appreciate just how hard it is to try and bring young birds into the world. I'm sure it's true for others as well -- but once the mother mallard lays her eggs and starts incubating, the male mallard takes off to hang out somewhere else, and the mother sits on the eggs for a month, barely leaving the nest. And when she does, the eggs are at high risk of being eaten. Infant mortality for mallards is high - there are a lot of predators out there. But somehow they keep on going. 

The photo below is from the UMass Campus Pond -- the bird on the left is a Mallard/American Black Duck hybrid. Apparently mallards have hybridized with a number of other duck species, potentially endangering the black duck gene population, but we'll get to that if BRDL ever has an ABDU.

2/9/22 - SNKI - Snail Kite

Cool specialized bird. It's pretty common in South America, but the only population in the US can be found in the marshes of the Everglades. The snail kite has pretty much one food source -- apple snails. When the marshes of Florida get overdeveloped, or polluted, the snail population decreases and the kite population is affected. 

Fun fact -- apparently the Limpkin (totally different large wading bird found in the same area as the snail kite) also depends on the apple snail, but they don't really compete because the Limpkin pokes around in the reeds, whereas the Snail Kite flies around and gets the snails that are in open water.

Additional interesting fact -- both male and female will stick around until the young are about to fledge, and then one bird leaves while the other raises the young. And then sometimes the bird that leaves goes on to find another mate and have another brood that year. And sometimes it's the male that leaves, and sometimes it's the female -- it's about equal. Which is really interesting when you read about what the mallards do. 

By Andreas Trepte - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42840456

BRDL 13-15

 2/5/22 - PABU - Painted Bunting

These birds are incredible - colorful, beautiful. They were the first bird I targeted when we went visited Boynton Beach, Florida for the first time, and I saw them at the feeders at the Green Cay Nature Center. Love that place, and its nearby nature preserve - Wakodahatchee Wetlands. The city of Boynton Beach has taken their water treatment plants and created wetlands right next door. They treat the city water, then pump it out into the wetlands for further filtering. Then they built boardwalks for a mile or two and you can get right up close to loads of nesting egrets, herons, storks...

But this post is about the Painted Bunting. Here's what I never knew -- there are two main populations of Painted Buntings, one along the the east coast of Florida, that migrates north to Georgia and South Carolina, and the other in Mexico, that migrates north to Texas and Oklahoma. As far as I can tell they are subspecies, but they haven't done the genetic testing to figure out if they are completely separate species.

Either way -- incredibly beautiful birds. My amateur photography needs some practice, but you get the picture.

2/6/22 - PUMA - Purple Martin

I've only seen purple martins down in Florida, at the same Green Cay mentioned above. In the east, the purple martins reportedly live mainly in big nest boxes, whereas in the west they live in natural crevices and caves. There's a lot of info online about how to build purple martin houses to attract them -- they mainly eat insects and need large bodies of water so they can fly along and scoop up water as they go. Makes me think it would be fun to put up a house near our local reservoir and see what we attract, but they're pretty rare up this way in Massachusetts.

At least I have one of my own photos from Florida -- still have some work to do!

2/7/22 - LAAL - Laysan Albatross

So far as BRDL goes, this one was tough. Only two letters in the code. And I had forgotten that I have actually seen these birds during a trip to Kauai in 2017. Fun fact about these birds -- the oldest living bird known right now is a Laysan Albatross that was named Wisdom that is at least 70 years old, that nests on Midway Island in the Pacific. Apparently these birds return every year to the same patch of sand to nest. This one has been coming back for a long, long, long time. Photo below

By John Klavitter/U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service - http://gallery.usgs.gov/tags/NR2011_03_08, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14580487

BRDL 10-12

2/2/22 - AMDI - American Dipper

I'll always associate this little bird with Kyle and Ann's wedding out in the Methow Valley in Washington state. There were a bunch of these little gray birds dunking down into the winter streams, searching for prey, then popping up again. I always thought they were called dippers because they dipped down in the water, but online sources say that it's because they dip their tail feathers in display. Either way, they're cute little birds. Also, they have white feathers on their eyelids, which makes them look interesting when they blink.

By dominic sherony - American Dipper, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4251303

2/3/22 - ANHU - Anna's Hummingbird

I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for this little hummingbird. I have not convincingly seen one, but they are pretty widespread in the West. Story behind the name is a little curious -- presumably named after Anna Massena, Duchess of Rivoli in the 1800s. She was married to an amateur ornithologist, and had the bird named after her by a French naturalist who discovered a specimen in someone's collection while visiting Italy.

By Robert McMorran, United States Fish and Wildlife Service - Anna&#039;s hummingbird, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39739922

2/3/22 - NOCA - Northern Cardinal

People know the cardinal. Pretty striking bird, particularly when standing out against the bright white winter snow. What I didn't know, is that the male cardinals often will feed the females. And I never really recognized their little metallic chip note. For that, I have to thank an app called BirdNet which has allowed me to record birds in real time, and figure out what is hiding in the brush. About a week before this post, I heard the note coming from my front yard, used BirdNet to determine it was a cardinal, and looked out again to spot the cardinal just past the treeline. Love these birds.

By FWS - USFWS website, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10586270

BRDL is so much better than Wordle

 Most of you have heard of Wordle. It's the word game that makes you guess the word of the day using the rules of the old game Mastermind.

But you may not have heard of BRDL. Same rules. But, instead of guessing a word of the day, you guess the four letter banding code of a specific bird species. Totally inside bird-nerd baseball stuff going on, but I have loved it ever since finding out about it.

And one of the reasons was that, apart from the fun of guessing the bird of the day, it gave me a chance to learn something new about a different bird every day (kind of like one of those Page-A-Day calendars, but you don't have to deal with tearing off the page and being left with that paper rind at the top)

And so I started writing them down in a notebook, but putting in on line is fun, and gives me a chance to practice being online. So here goes.

Thing is, I'm already a good week or two in, so I'll have to do some catchup. Maybe two or three a day until we get caught up.

Here's the way I see it -- it's kind of like Rex Parker for the NYT Crossword puzzle. But a much shorter puzzle. 

1/30/22 - HOME - Hooded Merganser

The first time I saw a hooded merganser, there was a small fleet of them cruising around the reservoir a half mile from our house, during fall migration season. They're the smallest mergansers, are diving ducks, and mainly eat fish.

By Rhododendrites - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99102166

1/31/22 - TUVU - Turkey Vulture

This was the second bird that came up once I started with BRDL. And I imagine that most people don't have a real high opinion of the 'TeeVee'. Two things changed my mind about that, though. First, the podcast This American Life had a bird themed episode a few months back called 'Spark Bird'. It's here if you want to give it a listen. The first story is about how the turkey vulture sparked an incredible birder to start his life passion. Cool story, and podcast, for that matter.

Second, though, was the fact I learned through cursory reading: Turkey vultures have a pretty well developed sense of smell, compared to other birds. And they're attracted to carrion and rotting material. You likely know that natural gas companies put a chemical into natural gas so that people can smell a leak. It turns out that when natural gas companies were trying to find a leak in a pipeline that was way out in the rural countryside, they would follow the circling turkey vultures, since they would be attracted to that smell.

By Charles J. Sharp - Own work CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47807279

2/1/22 - SNOW - Snowy Owl

Have never actually seen one of these incredible birds, although they do irrupt south into Massachusetts from time to time. The general thought used to be that irruptions would happen when there was a poor food supply up North, and owls would go further south in search of food. Now, the thinking goes, is it's actually the opposite -- a good food season leads to a bumper crop of owls, so there is more competition for food and they need to head further south.

By Jongsun Lee - Imported from 500px (archived version) by the Archive Team. (detail page), 

CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71361042