“Restaurants and Hardware Stores” for Your Bird Neighbors
The authors have noticed a resurgence in American robins singing as they walk through their neighborhood. Courtesy of Jeff Wells
It's difficult to find a photo of a chimney swift nest, so instead here's a public domain drawing by famed illustrator Ernest Thompson Seton from a book by ornithologist Frank Chapman called "Bird-life: a guide to the study of our common birds" published in 1898. It shows the nests made of twigs that they build inside chimneys.
Cedar waxwings are experts at finding fruiting trees throughout the years. Courtesy of Jeff Wells
The authors have noticed a resurgence in American robins singing as they walk through their neighborhood. Courtesy of Jeff Wells
It's difficult to find a photo of a chimney swift nest, so instead here's a public domain drawing by famed illustrator Ernest Thompson Seton from a book by ornithologist Frank Chapman called "Bird-life: a guide to the study of our common birds" published in 1898. It shows the nests made of twigs that they build inside chimneys.
Cedar waxwings are experts at finding fruiting trees throughout the years. Courtesy of Jeff Wells
Walking our little black chug through the leafy streets of our neighborhood several times a day for years continues to give us an appreciation of the small things that can otherwise be easily missed in our daily lives. We notice when someone plants a new shrub in front of their house. We take notice when the first peonies start blooming.
Lately, we’ve noticed that the robins have started singing more vigorously again now that their first brood has fledged.
Over the years, we have tracked three cherry trees in our neighborhood, all within a mile of our house, that come into ripeness every year about this time. As our we near each of them on our walk (they are about a half mile from each other—one in the park and two in neighbors’ yards), we hear the distinctive, hissy trill of cedar waxwings coming from the trees. As we get closer, inevitably one or two larger, chunky American robins fly out with their little squeal. The sleek, tan waxwings hold in the upper reaches of the trees until the last minute. They usually fly up into a nearby tree to wait for us to pass and then re-alight to resume their gorging.
Yesterday, we heard what sounded like the begging calls of young crows up ahead as we approached the cherry tree that adorns the corner by the brick house. Sure enough, two or three crows were awkwardly perched near the top of the tree, trying to reach for the hanging cherries.
These highly productive trees are obviously a valuable resource for the fruit-eating birds of the neighborhood. For a bird, knowing where these fruit trees are located and when the fruit is ripe must be a major advantage. The human equivalent might be like knowing what’s on the menu of the local restaurants and when they are open.
Another valuable and scarce resource in our neighborhood for one particular species of bird is a certain tall tree with lots of dead twigs at the top. Every day for more than a month, we’ve been watching chimney swifts flying into this one particular elm tree at the corner. Chittering loudly all the while, these stubby brown “flying cigars” fly quickly across the sky, slow down, and flutter into the top of the tree. They grab at a twig, sometimes breaking a small end piece off and fluttering away excitedly. Sometimes there are a dozen of the little birds circling around this particular tree.
Chimney swifts make their nests by gluing together little twigs to make a tiny cup nestled against the inside wall of a chimney (rarely in a hollow tree, although that had to be the original type of nesting site before humans built houses with chimneys). We keep wondering why so many of these birds are still gathering twigs when nesting had to have begun in May. Are they practicing? Are they building new nests because the first breeding attempts were unsuccessful? Do they keep adding to their original nests throughout the nesting season?
We joke that this tree, so popular with the local chimney swifts, is a sort of hardware store or home supply store for birds!
Birds need the same things we do for their survival: food, safe places to raise their young, clean air and water, safety from things that do them harm, weather that is not too extreme. Sure makes you appreciate the need for healthy habitats where birds of all kinds can count on finding their version of the local grocery stores, restaurants, hardware stores, and homes.
Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Vice President of Boreal Conservation for National Audubon. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. He is a coauthor of the seminal “Birds of Maine” book and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the popular books, “Maine’s Favorite Birds” (Down East Books) and “Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: A Site and Field Guide,” (Cornell University Press).
