Laura Erickson's For the Birds

This year, I saw robin fledglings in early June, saw new ones in July, and recently have been seeing a whole new batch. It’s exceptional for robins to succeed in raising three broods up here. Last week I also saw a new batch of House Wren fledglings.

Besides baby robins and wrens, I’ve seen begging Northern Flickers, Black-capped Chickadees, Brown Thrashers, and Gray Catbirds, and fledgling Red-bellied Woodpeckers and Blue Jays all in my backyard. I’m pretty sure hummingbirds and Red-eyed Vireos also raised young near here.

But the baby birds I most wanted to see but didn’t were Pileated Woodpeckers. Last year, I noticed BB, my banded male, bringing fledglings here on July 10 and got to see him feeding at least one of his chicks just about every day through August 9. Pileated Woodpecker parents split up their brood from day to day, each parent taking one or more. Over time, I saw BB bring two different young females once or twice, and two different young, so he’d for sure produced a minimum of four young.

This year, I saw BB at the feeders with what I presume was his mate on January 10. Like last year, she didn’t stick around—females choose the nest site, which must be in her part of the neighborhood—and BB kept to about the same routine he did last year. So I was very eager through July, keeping watch whenever he showed up to see if there was a young one nearby, but no luck. Now, at August’s end, I’m seeing him more frequently, but never with a chick. At some point, his nest must have failed.

Now for the past week or so, an adult female has been coming to the feeder not with BB but a few minutes before or after him. I can’t tell most Pileateds apart—the only way I can be sure I’m seeing BB is by searching for the band on his leg—so I don’t know if this is the same female he was with in January, nor if that female was the same one he’d raised babies with last year. I’ve encouraged my backyard birds to wear name tags, but so far they’re resisting. All I know for sure is it made me sad not to see him with babies again.

As is normal for adult birds in late summer, BB looks bedraggled. Growing an entirely new set of feathers each year takes a lot of nutrients. Birds can’t afford to molt when they’re producing young and then giving most of the food they find to their young. They start molting once their babies are on their own, while the weather is still warm enough that insulation isn’t too critical, so this is when many birds look their absolute worst. One of my Blue Jays was almost bald, looking utterly ridiculous a few weeks ago. That same bird looks much better now, but you can still tell its new facial feathers are not all the way in. I can see newly erupting feathers on my adult Brown Thrasher and a Northern Flicker, too. On Monday after spending a bit of time at the birdbath, an adult male flicker spent a lot of time preening in my apple tree, giving me quite a photo op.

The catbird who lost its tail in early July delayed growing new feathers while feeding young, but now that the babies are on their own, the parent’s new tail is just about entirely grown in, making it hard to distinguish this bird from its mate again.

Tails grow back on birds, but not on mammals. Dizzy, my favorite little chipmunk who stuffs her cheeks with sunflower seeds or peanuts while letting me pet her, also apparently got into a tussle with a predator recently. On Saturday, I noticed that half her tail was missing—well, the furry part. A thin string of muscle-covered vertebrae was still there. That can be expected to fall off fairly soon, and the wound will heal, but the tail won’t grow back. Fortunately, like all chipmunks, Dizzy is a little survivor and will do just fine with a short tail.

Even as I’m relishing all these backyard summer creatures, migration is seriously kicking in. This week we had a spectacular nighthawk flight over Duluth which I’ll tell you about tomorrow.