April 27, 2007

Cool cloudy and light rain. I don’t have time to do anything except a quick tour around the yard and a little jaunt into the woods. Little change since yesterday. I continue to be amazed at how many birds are in the back yard, versus anywhere else around. At any moment there are 25 to 30 birds in the half acre of the back yard. They change over about every 15 minutes. Goldfinches, then Chickadees, Titmice and Nuthatches, Downy Woodpeckers in pairs and threes. Red-bellied Woodpeckers too. Cardinals and Juncos are heard often but seen less. Song and Chipping Sparrows stay low. House Finches are sticking to the Spruce trees in the front.

When I was a boy I found great entertainment in watching the feeder. Watching the turn over has always been interesting. To do that you need to recognize individuals. In “Kingbird Highway” Kenn Kauffman often talks about birding an area to a point of seeing the same individuals again and again. A discerning person can learn to recognize individual birds, and watching the turn over is a matter of learning to recognize individuals. This way you notice when one mixed flock move in and another moves on. The Chickadees who were here ten minutes ago are not the same ones who are here now. Sometimes you can tell by differences in feathers, the shape of the tail, the line of the cap or bib. Sometimes by the company they keep. One flock has a several Nuthatches, another has a pair of House Finches.

Birds must be very visual and spatial thinkers. Their world is more 3 dimensional than ours, in they make more use of the vertical axis than we humans do. I wonder how they use the 4th dimension. Their perception of time. We humans seem to put a lot of our awareness into that dimension. I wonder how bird use it?