Forensic Conjecture

At long last arrives a day warm enough for out-sitting and for drawing inspiration from its largess. So generous has this day been with birdsong, it would be hard to choose the music of only one species about which to write. Instead, with gratitude, I pause long enough to notice the variety, the buoyancy, and the understated exhilaration of the birdsong of early spring---whether it stems from the joy of first warm days or the sexual excitement that comes with the arrival of mating season.

Before I can begin again to reflect on the ever new noticings that reward my return to the backyard, I must tie up an unfinished blog topic described on November 7 & 13, just prior to my long absence---that of the mystery of the half-bird carcass.

My daughter, Hannah, shared the mystery with one of her graduate school professors who is an ornithologist in the field of environmental education. After some Q&A e-mails, Dr. Lisa Zinn conjectured the carcass to be that of an unhealthy tufted titmouse, and I learned more from her two e-mails than from a week of observing and wondering about the unfortunate bird.

I learned, for instance, that birds re-grow all their feathers every year; that asymmetry in bird feathers indicates a mutation, or illness, or injury; and that a stray white feather and white legs both indicate loss of pigment and lack of good health.

Dr. Zinn's response takes the educational value of this blog up a notch, that's for sure. AND, excitement of excitements for an amateur birder, she has invited me to participate in a bird-banding at the time of Hannah's graduation. Wahoo!

She has also graciously granted permission for me to post her e-mails in this blog. Below is a cut-and-paste of our e-mail exchange via Hannah. I reversed the order so you don't have to scroll to the bottom to read backward. Start at the top and read down in correct sequence:

HANNAH:
hey mom--i read your blog and sent the part about your half a bird to lisa my birding professor and thought she would know but she has a million more questions. :) this is her response:

DR. ZINN:
I read your mom's blog and I don't know right off what the bird was. I need a little more info. The most important being size. I am confused by her first thinking it was a mocking bird and than a Tufted titmouse because they are very different in size. Can you find out how big it was? Also, how white were the legs? Could they have been considered light blue? How yellow was the beak? Was it yellow on the top and bottom? She said it had a yellowish breast, how yellow was that? Was it just off white or distinctly yellow? Also, was the white outer tail feather really just one feather or several feathers? Heh! I guess that is a lot of questions. If you could just find out about the size and the legs (and maybe the beak) that would help.

DEB:
Fun---and all good questions. It was an interesting muse for blog, but I would hate for Lisa to spend a great deal of time on it. Only if she can ID from the description, with no extra research. Not that important!

Size: I almost addressed in the blog the absurdity of not being able to distinguish between titmouse & mockingbird, for the very reason Lisa suggests---the disparity in size---but didn't want to go on too long. I really couldn't tell what size it was, however, because only the lower belly and legs, lower back and tail were left--- a partial lower curve of the body. The soft under-feathers on the belly and on the back under the wings were fluffed, which might have made it look larger than it was. We first thought the tail looked long, but later decided it was an optical illusion----partly because we were so close, and partly because the tail made up most of what was left. To put a measurement on it , I'd estimate it to be about four inches from where it originated to tip.

Tail: It was a definite V shape (even more defined than that of a titmouse), not rounded, or pointed (as in mockingbird) --- the white feather(s) was only on one side, making it asymmetrical in color, which I did not understand. It was not the outer feather, but maybe the second or third one in----closer to far left side than center, and the feathers on the right side of center were all gray. (maybe it was a politically liberal bird :-) All I could see was the left edge of the white feather, as the tail was not spread. It looked like a white stripe that ran the length of the tail and was about 1/4 inch wide, slightly narrower at the top, and widening toward the tip. It could have been more than one, but looked singular to me. As I type this, it makes me wonder about a Carolina Chickadee, but that, too, seems too small for this carcass. Soft back feathers at point of tail's origin were a pale gray.

Yellowish underbelly: These feathers were fluffy and almost exactly the color of the belly or sides of a tufted titmouse, sort of a pale yellowish peachy color---or maybe a warbler of some variety?

Legs: White---Possibly could be interpreted as light gray or blue, with buff or tannish colored feet. Legs and feet seemed too long for titmouse, but wondered if it was because they were thrust out in an unnatural position. Feet were definitely more tan than gray, and darker in shade than the legs.

Beak: Was wide open and I could only see the interior----like two triangles edged in yellow, black interior, but probably due to decay----about 1/2 inch sides of the triangles---the tip was a little wider than 45 degree angle, not quite 90 degrees. Seemed shorter and wider than I would have expected---more like a nestling's beak. But I've never actually observed the inside of an adult's open beak :-) Also, too late in year for nestling. I was too squeamish to look directly at it for long---and though I wanted to flip it with a stick, couldn't bring myself to touch it even indirectly. The flesh that was left on the head was too messy to describe and gives me the heebie jeebies to recall it! (had to scrunch my face to type this)

A good puzzle for a Sunday afternoon. Love, Ma

DR.ZINN:
Ok, this is some interesting information. I will respond point by point.

Size: I completely understand how different bird sizes look up close as opposed to at a distance. There is definitely an optical illusion that happens with bird sizes. However, the 4 inch tail length is a very good clue and is about titmouse size.

Tail: The forked tail can also be a bit deceiving. Almost any bird tail can looked forked if you move the feathers apart for each other a bit in the middle. We have had trouble with this in bird banding because there are a few species where you have to look for a forked tail but it is pretty hard to tell when you are up close if it is genuinely forked because you can make it looked forked or not forked depending on how you move the feathers around. It is good to know, though, that the tail wasn't pointed and the tail feather's were not rounded. The information on the white tail feather was very interesting. The fact that it was not symmetrical changes everything! This is most likely not the color that feather was supposed to be but rather a mutation. Birds re-grow all their feathers every year and it is not unheard of for a bird in poor health to grow a white feather instead of the appropriate color. Birds also re-grow lost tail feathers so it could have lost that feather due to injury and the one that re-grew was white.

Legs: The fact that the feet were also darker than the legs makes me further suspect that this was not a healthy bird. It sounds to me like it was under a lot of stress and was unable to produce the required pigments for it's legs and it's feather. Either that or it had a mutation from birth that caused it to lack some pigment.

Summary: My best guess is that this was a rather unhealthy tufted titmouse that showed clear signs of stress. Perhaps that cat put it out of it's misery :)

Thank you, Dr. Zinn!
dkm

Too Easy

Having been away so long, I find I'm out of practice at the art of paying attention. Now, cold rainy weather keeps me inside, challenging my ability to keep winter doldrums at bay. Watching the comings and goings and perchings at the new bird feeder is a suitable defense, though it feels like cheating. Somehow the regularity and ease with which I can now see such variety of bird species at close range robs the thrill of its cutting edge. Instead, I learn to discern unique styles and movements of the feeding pattern of each species---even of individuals within a species.

Yet the first thrill remains---at the length of the growing list of species that visit the feeder. All my bird ID books are going ragged. The list so far: Eastern blue birds, Carolina chickadees, Tufted titmice, Carolina wrens, orange house finches, greenish winter goldfinches, Northern cardinals, Purple finches, Yellow-rumped warblers (not sure of warbler IDs), White-breasted nuthatches, Brown-headed nuthatches, Red-bellied woodpeckers. And ground feeders on the deck floor beneath: Mourning doves, Rufous-sided towhees, and of course the ubiquitous squirrels.

Happily, the squirrels can't get to the feeder itself. They must be satisfied with cleaning up the fallout beneath it. Okay with me. Less sweeping.

I'm also hearing more whistle of hawk above since the introduction of this feeder to the backyard habitat. Here's hoping it does not make sitting ducks of the small perching birds. The increased activity has not escaped the hawks' notice. dkm

Lizard Rain

Skype conversation with my six-year-old granddaughter in Ft. Lauderdale:

Makayla: Omi! Guess what! (giggling)
Omi: What?
Makayla: An iguana fell in our driveway.
Omi: What?
Makayla: Iguana.
Omi: Iguana?
Makayla: Yes.
Omi: What do you mean?
Makayla: I already told you! An iguana fell in our driveway!
Omi: (remembering we had just read Chicken Little when I was there) Oh, I get it. Omi Lomi! The sky is falling!
Makayla: No, Omi! For real! You don't get it. It was like, frozen! My papa put it under the bushes.
Omi: You mean it was dead? Are you just going to let it rot under there? Aren't you going to bury it?
Makayla: No! When it comes alive, it will run away.
Omi: Really? Let me talk to your mom.

Sarah verified Makayla's story. Indeed I had not gotten it. Not only had a very large lizard, a young iguana, fallen in front of them while they were getting into their car, iguanas are free-falling from trees all over South Florida, due to the cold weather. Iguanas, being cold-blooded, apparently go into a hibernation-like state when the temperature falls below 40 degrees. I can attest to the existence of wild iguanas in Makayla's tropical neighborhood, hidden in the flora of the region. Large, scary-looking ones. They poke their ugly heads from the tall grass by the creek near Makayla's house. I wouldn't want to tangle with one. Had I had more time while there, I might have blogged about the shock of mere sightings. Little did I know they would be falling like rain by the time I got home. Need I say more about the surprises of nature, or why this blog is fun? The photo shows the iguana in Makayla's driveway. Below is an excerpt from Sarah's follow-up e-mail, and a link to an article from Miami News, for the doubters among you. dkm

"Poor things. Lizards are dropping everywhere. We can hear them falling. Some are in the street, though, and if nobody moves them, they get run over. Our little friend fell right out of the tree in front of us. I thought it was just another coconut falling, until Thad picked it up and showed it to me. It's about a foot and a half long with the tail. Thad says it happens everytime it gets cold in Florida."

http://www.justnews.com/news/22152242/detail.html

Bingo!

Waiting for me at home, among the mountains of mail (mostly bills) and packages (mostly Christmas) that had collected in my six weeks of absence, was a gift from my brother, Dan. It was a fancy schmancy squirrel-proof bird feeder, which took half a day to read about, assemble, fill, and hang. If it foils our aggressive Georgia squirrels, it will be the first.

The design is a clever inspiration of engineering. The weight of a squirrel on the perches pulls a shroud over the feeding holes, forbidding access to the seed. Lighter weight song birds can feed happily on any one of the six perpendicular perches that can be adjusted in length to accomodate larger birds. It has a special apparatus for cardinals that surrounds the feeder like one of Saturn's rings, because cardinals can't or don't tilt their heads to feed. Who knew?

Sparing you the unnecessary details of my expectations about how the bird population of 710 Pinetree Drive would accept this feeder, I admit to shock and awe. The first was that a pair of cardinals, one bright, one dull, came so soon to the buffet, @ 11:20 a.m. today, only the second day after the feeder was hung. At 12:00 noon, a pair of bluebirds came. What follows is the transcript of the e-mail I sent my brother at 12:14 p.m. today:

"Bingo! Bluebirds! BLUEBIRDS! Then nuthatches, now a Carolina chickadee, and tufted titmice---all within seconds of each other. Not an hour since the cardinals first arrived. The parade goes on as I type. Chickadees fighting over a spot. More and more birds coming and competing for the perches. A pair of rufous sided towhees---brown female, black male---now tons of chickadees. A sudden flurry of activity in last ten minutes---six feet from where I sit reading, with only a sliding glass door between us. Now Carolina wrens---it goes on and on---four and five birds at a time---all over the deck banisters---waiting their turns. Don't worry, I won't report every visit---but these first ones are such a surprise. I hadn't hoped for such an immediate and magnificent response---huge variety of birds in great numbers. I know I have a reputation for hyperbole, but you should see this---far exceedlng what I had imagined. Did the cardinals spread the word? The others arrived all at once. A blog-worthy day. dkm

Giant-Cell Tumor on Thoracic Vertabra #3

Setting out to write a daily topical blog without including personal reflection or family events has proven to be difficult for me. For the last seven weeks it has meant no blogging at all.

On November 18, my 29 year-old daughter Sarah, who lives in Florida, called with the alarming news of a tumor on her spine. Could I come to help her young family through her ordeal of surgery and recovery? Of course, I went---and stayed until she and her husband could manage again on their own, which meant fulltime housekeeping and childcare for my two precious grandchildren, ages 20 mos and 6 years, through the holiday season.

It's not that I didn't write during that time. Regular e-mail exchanges to keep family and friends abreast of Sarah's progress kept everyone informed and me afloat. But I am eager, now that I'm home, to take up my pencil again in the simple act of paying slow attention to the backyard. I feel surprisingly forlorn, though, and out of practice at the art. Learning that my daughter's health is to be fully restored after having feared for her life has not left me unchanged. I wonder what I will see now, as I return to backyard observation. dkm

Forest in Miniature . .

If it's a common phenomenon, I've not noticed it before. On the day after our 5-inch rain, the entire surface of the back lawn was covered with standing pine needles, like porcupine spines poking vertically from the ground. It must be the result of the right combination of hard rain, already saturated ground, and pine needles ready to fall. The 6-inch triple needles of our longleaf pinetrees (southern yellow pines, I think) fell heavy-end-first and drove themselves far enough into the wet soft soil to stay standing upright. The effect was eye-catching and eerie in a beautiful sort of way, and the photos don't do it justice. dkm

Unidentified Half-Bird . . .

It lay there for two days, further molested only by time, yellow jackets, and my own voyeurism. I was drawn to it several times in those two days, mostly because, the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced it was not the bottom half of a body mockingbird, though I don't know yet what it was.

Something there is about an unknown ID that arouses my curiosity. Is it the universal human condition that we want always to name things? A topic for another day.

I first identified our half-bird as that of the mocking variety because it was gray and had a long tail with one white side feather. Later I realized the tail only looked long at close range, relative to distant sightings, and that it was forked. Also, the yellowish under-belly feathers, the white legs, and the smallish yellow open beak on what was left of the severed head were not those of a mockingbird. Except for the white legs, the poor thing was more similar to a tufted titmouse, which seemed plausible, as we have many in this yard. They circulate in small groups, often in low bushes, and would likely attract the attentions of neighborhood cats.

But nowhere in my ID books can I find a small gray backyard bird with white legs. The mystery will go unsolved, because now, after two days of heavy rain (5in. according to our guage) and a third day of bright sun, the specimen is only a dark spot on the lawn. dkm

Half a Mockingbird . . .

Moe found the bottom half of a mockingbird's body in the grass today, with yellow jackets feeding on it in the sun. By the time I saw it, the sun was low in the west, and just one yellow jacket crawled in and out of the carcass. That it was a mockingbird was distinguishable only by its tail and gray fluffed back feathers. White stiff legs protruded akimbo from soft yellowish underbelly feathers. No head, shoulders, or wings. The beak part of the head lay a few inches away, with what looked like eyeballs and messy flesh still attached. I'm more squeamish than I like to admit and couldn't look long. We'll never know the whole story, but a black and white neighborhood cat was stalking the yard earlier today.

I've never thought of yellow jackets as scavengers. Remembering the one that tore the flesh of a dead worm several weeks ago, I looked up their habits. Workers, generally the infertile females, forage on decaying flesh of insects and fresh carrion to feed the larvae in the nest. The larvae, in turn, produce the sugars the workers need.

I'll be curious to see how long the mockingbird remains remain in the grass. A few yellow jackets can't do away with the carcass in total, but will get what they need. I'm guessing some nocturnal predator will finish the job before morning. I'll let you know what I find tomorrow. dkm

Slant Lines . . .

Now on every breeze, long brown pine needles and leaves of varied shapes and colors take the ride of their lives to the ground, falling at different angles, depending on the directions of the breezes that carry them. Some of them swing and float down alone, because they are ready. Are they stronger or weaker than the others? Some of them wait for a breeze. Some, the greener ones, cling on, resisting the drop. They, too, will let go, but on a later day. Are they stronger or weaker?

Life remains in the parent tree trunks. Sap recedes from twig and branch to rise again for the next generation of soft lime-green beginnings. The tiny new leaves will grow to look like their predecessors, then fall, decompose, and nourish the roots of their same species tree for future generations---unless somebody rakes them away to the compost heap, there to decay and become nourishment for some other species.

It's a complicated system of genius. Nothing goes to waste, no matter where or when the leaves drop. The brilliance of it boggles my mind, but I've strayed far from the original subject of this blog entry. Maybe it's precisely the point. Somehow it always boils down to composting. dkm

The Fall of One Leaf . . .

To be brushed by a leaf in its only fall to the earth on a November day in Georgia is to be touched by the comforting truth of life and death. Or is it the appalling truth? Either way it causes me to inbreathe the breath of the universe---the same breeze the leaf rode---and pause for the moment.

To ponder the life cycle of that single leaf among the millions that will fall in this yard in this month in 2009 is to perceive the relative insignificance of my 60th birthday this week. To the earth it is commonplace as a single leaf falling. To me and the oakleaf, our respective turning 60 and falling to the earth are momentous occasions. It is as it should be, this stepping or falling into the third third of one's life, and it signals the truth of what my mother said about many things. "Thus it has ever been."

My thirty-year-old daughter, Hannah, offered an equally comforting truth when I shared with her my angst about turning sixty in the face of unaccomplished goals. "Sixty-schmixty," she said. dkm