The Mating Dances of Spring

   I was lucky enough to witness yesterday the mating dance of the Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum). A pair of these beautiful birds were fluttering up to each other on a pebble path next to the grape trellis in our backyard. It is not a complicated dance.

   We have had Brown Thrashers living in our yard for several years. The last nest we spotted was in a tall bush in between our house and that of our next door neighbor. The rufous brown feathers, curved beak and striped breasts of Brown Thrashers make these birds unmistakable.

   Six or seven years ago, Berry and I were lucky enough also to see the mating dance of the Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus). We were birding behind a casino in Tunica, Mississippi. The pair of large woodpeckers played peek-a-boo on either side of a large branch. We were 25 feet away, inside a car, with binoculars and a clear shot. It was amazing.

   Here is an excellent video of two Pileated Woodpecker's mating dance. They are dancing around a tree. A third woodpecker approaches but is chased away. This dance lasted ten minutes, according to the author. I am not the author of this video. Thanks to srb1071 on Youtube.



Robert

Osmolarity Problem in Western Gulls

   I was studying the osmolarity problem of sea gulls. How do these beautiful animals maintain a constant level of sodium chloride in their bodies ? They must live in and drink sea water to survive. How do they get rid of the extra salt so their cells do not swell and burst ? And how does this compare with the same osmolarity problem in salmon which swim from fresh water into salt water and then back into fresh water during their life cycle.

   According to Macfarland, Martin and Freedman¹ in the Journal of Cellular and Comparative Physiology, Western Gulls (Larus occidentalis) use various enzymes in its beak to secrete salt through the avian nasal salt gland. The salt gland is stimulated to secrete its highly concentrated fluid (700–800 mm Na) by enzymes which cause a nerve reflex in the back part of the eye. The tears from both eyes then mix in the nasal septum. The excessive NaCl excretes from these orifices on the beak of the gull.

Monterey Gull

   In this photograph of gull's head, you can see the small dimpled orifice on the upper side portion of its beak. That is the avian nasal salt gland. When it discharges saline waste, it looks like the gull is weeping or has sinus problems.

   According to Mark Briffa², a marine biologist at the University of Plymouth, the Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) does the same osmolarity trick using different means. The surface cells of the gills secrete the salt. As the salmon enters the sea, there is an involuntary change in the cellular structure of the gills which enables them to start secreting salts. This is not strange, in that all marine fish must do. The salmon's trick is that he turns it on in salt water and turns it off in fresh.

Atlantic Salmon

Robert

photos courtesy of jurvetson, pnicklen

¹McFarland, L. Z., Martin, K. D. and Freedland, R. A. (1965), The activity of selected soluble enzymes in the avian nasal salt gland. Journal of Cellular and Comparative Physiology, 65: 237–241. doi: 10.1002/jcp.1030650210

²Mark Briffa, forum administrator,
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/

Springtime 2011

   Memphis suffered a series of severe thunderstorms yesterday and today. Six inches of rain in two days. Tornados touched down violently in the states around us. Three people died in northern Mississippi. There were broken tree limbs littering our street this morning. Power lines are down in parts of the city. There is flooding in low lying areas. Such storms as these are unusual but not unheard of here. We are situated in "Tornado Alley" where most tornados happen in the United States and it is springtime, so rain happens. Last night the wind and rain were just extra rambunctious.

Weather Map

Mrs. Migratorius, the female American Robin (turdus migratorius) who is nesting on our downspout under the eave of our house is perfectly dry. She cleverly built her nest on the leeward side of the house and there avoids the worst of the straightline winds and driving rain. It is difficult to take a photo of her guarding her nest without spooking her. She stays close to the nest at all times, so we think she is protecting eggs, or even chicks.

Robert

map by the weather channel

Mourning Doves on the Pergola

   Here's that thing about photography and birds again. There were two Mourning Doves (Zenaida macroura) perched on our pergola. I snapped this picture with a FinePix S1500 digital camera at a distance of fifty feet. It was dusk and there was not much light, so I used a flash.

Mourning Doves

   When communicating, Mourning Doves coo softly which sounds like old women mourning at a funeral. They enjoy the water in our birdbath. They flew away when I let out the dog.

Robert

photo courtesy of rfowler

Our Life List

   We are assembling our Life List, a list of all the birds we have observed in our entire life. Cobbled together from hundreds of birding trips, several birding vacations, and our personal sightings, this will be quite an enormous list.

   We don't obsess about making lists of the birds we see, as much as we did in the beginning. That is why we have left to now the task of creating such a list for this website.

   I think we have both gotten away from needing to see a spectacular, championship bird to be satisfied with our birding experience. I do remember the amazing Snail Kite (Rostrhamus sociabilis) that we spotted in the Everglades; it had a beautifully curled beak, well-suited to opening snails, its primary food source. The handsomest bird I've ever seen was an orange and black Bat Falcon (Falco rufigularis) in the jungles of Calakmul Biosphere in the Yucatan.

Bat Falcon

   Now we are interested in bird behavior and the everyday life of birds. But this can quickly get somewhat competitative too, only because we have birded long enough to have seen some quite exotic birdic phenomenon.

   In Northern Mississippi, right behind a casino, we witnessed the mating dance of the Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus). Two Pileated Woodpeckers did a peek-a-boo dance as they moved up and down on either sides of a large tree limb. They were oblivious of us and we were only thirty feet away. We had no camera, but we had binoculars. People can bird their entire lives and never see the mating dance of the Pileated Woodpecker. We have been lucky.


   The work on our "Life List" for this website continues. It will take a while.

Robert

photo courtesy of keasley

A Clean, Well-lighted Place

   What a place to build a nest. A family of American Robins (Turdus migratorius) has built its nest on the downspout of our drainpipe.

   They can sit on the nest and look out over the zinnias in our front yard. The nest looks very sturdy, but it is so very close to where we park our cars.

Robin's Nest

   We have provided two bird houses in our yard. A large holed box model in the magnolia up front and an alpine-looking store-bought bird house in the side yard. There is a family of English Sparrows in the side yard. And a Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) in the magnolia. The Robins just found a platform and fabricated their own place out of grass and twigs.

Robert

photo courtesy of rfowler

Brown Thrasher

   Berry and I were eating oatmeal and fruit for breakfast on the patio and we were greeted by a Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum) enjoying the spring morning. He flew into the yard, swooped down at our birdbath then perched on a branch of the large Magnolia tree in the side yard.


   The song of the Brown Thrasher is a series of paired musical phrases. "Ticca, ticca... chirp, chirp... kwa, kwa..." The performance lasted through the entire meal. His breast is covered in short brown stripes. His downcurved beak and his light brown, rufous feathers were diagnostic.

   We have had this same Brown Thrasher nest in our yard four years in a row. He probably likes the fresh water in our birdbaths. But also, I'm thinking, four years ago was when I first planted the grapevines.

Robert

photo courtesy of jpatterson

Cedar Waxwings

   April 6, 2011 Wednesday at 7pm

   Tonight while eating dinner in our garden, we spotted three Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) perched in our neighbor's large hickory tree. Robert ran inside and fetched binoculars so we could examine them closely.

   The Cedar Waxwings were lovely and sat very still for us to admire them. I especially like the tip of their tails which look like they'd been dipped in a paint bucket. We continued to enjoy them while eating dinner.

Cedar Waxwing

   This is not our first time to see Cedar Waxwings in our backyard. We have several grapevines, so we usually get Cedar Waxwings in the autumn.

Berry

photo courtesy of cwunsch

A male American Kestrel in our yard

Just after we created this club's website, on 2011 April 5 at 1500 hours, a young male American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) flew into the large tree at the end of our yard.

American Kestrel

We had never seen a kestrel here before. The little one year old falcon did not mind my looking at him. He was concentrating his attention on the flock of Common Grackles (Quiscalus quiscula) squabbling loudly in our pine trees.

I coaxed Berry outside to see and the kestrel swooped down to land on the branch of a pine tree. The grackles scattered in all directions, squawking their alarm.

It is interesting that we usually view grackles as the roughhouses of the local bird community. I have witnessed a Common Grackle murder an English Sparrow (Passer domesticus) with his beak. So one can imagine the real sense of comeuppance in the kestrel's sudden appearance in our yard and all the fleeing grackles.

We have seen the American Kestrel many times before, usually out in the countryside. This was the first time to see one in our backyard.

Robert

photo courtesy of fotolia

The Painted Bunting Bird Club

This is the website of the Painted Bunting Bird Club of Memphis, Tennessee. It is just the two of us, Berry and Robert, who travel around the world looking at birds.

We have been to Mexico, in the Yucatan and into the jungles of Chiapas.

Chichen-Itza

We went to the amazing Olympia Forest and then to British Columbia in the Pacific Northwest. We took off along the Texas Coastal Birding Trail where we really enjoyed an incredible variety of birds. We have birded the Florida everglades. We even blogged our birding trip to the island of Iceland. Click here to read that trip report.

This website will be a convenient place for us to record our birding trips. I made up a pack of business cards with our logo which we'll hand out as we go.

We hope you enjoy this adventure along with us.

Robert and Berry

photo courtesy of beknown