Re: [cobirds] Ideas to Up Your Backyard Birding Game During Quarantine

Great suggestions Caleb.   I've been watching some determined Northern Flickers try to get some squirrels out of the next boxes they used last year.   I'm not sure if it was the right thing to "intervene", but today I put Coyote Urine around the trees and around the nest boxes.   I'll keep watching.   

Allison Hilf

Aurora, CO 

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 6:49 PM Caleb A <calebscotta@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello, CObirders!

In light of quarantine during this year's spring migration, I thought I'd offer a few of my tips that I've used to enjoy backyard birding (and find a decent number of species).

I know that it gets a little tedious when all you see is House Finches and American Robins over the course of fifteen minutes, but to cure my backyard birding boredom, I've compiled a list of things that have helped keep backyard birding interesting, but also very educational and help me improve in other facets of bird watching.

1) Use a scope! Granted, this could be a little weird to your neighbors if you're at really close quarters, but positioning a spotting scope away from homes and into an open field can wring in those extra three or four unique backyard species that you might not otherwise see with just binoculars. For example, I've gotten Chipping Sparrow and Horned Lark by using a scope in my backyard and aiming at a nearby open field.

2) Study the minute of the minute of details. Keep a list of all the unique House Finch calls you hear, or maybe pay really close attention to the behavior of birds at certain times of the day. Create mental bird clocks, tracking when the peak of daily activity is, and when it "dries up." A personal example of this is when I studied the flight styles of Red-winged Blackbirds and compared it to Common Grackles and European Starlings. Since their numbers were all but plentiful every single day, I was able to do careful observations of landings, takeoffs, flight-styles, and many nuances and exceptions.

For example, I discovered that (in general) European Starlings favor a more linear flight, whereas Red-winged Blackbirds will often undulate slightly. This undulation occurs because Red-wings often do a flap-flap-tuck-and-glide on repeat, which emulates the American Goldfinch's undulating flight style as well. European Starlings on the other hand have a fairly constant rate of flapping, which makes them look a lot more dynamic and bullet-like when combined with their straighter trajectories.

3) Practice sketching birds. Drawing has never been a favorable skill to my clumsy motions with a pencil. However, when in the event of observing the same few species every day, we birders are given a relatively rare opportunity to study a single species in incredible detail. Sketching your local species that you see on a daily basis can help be an honest check of how much detail you really pay attention to on even common birds.

4) Stay on the lookout for nesting behavior. It's springtime, which means we'll be seeing evidences of nesting! For my personally, I've been tracking three pairs of House Finches who have been carrying nesting materials into three separate trees, visible from my yard. A pair of American Robins have been displaying and feeding together, and this morning I observed them copulating. (Not sure where they're building their nest, however.) Pairs of American Goldfinches have been more frequent, and I'm excited to see all the young birds that hatch this summer!

So, let's stay positive, and use this quarantine to brush up and hone our fine-observation skills! And once this is all over, you may be impressed or surprised by how beneficial intentional backyard birding can be. I know I was; and the skills I learned in the yard only helped me enjoy my birding experiences later on in the Parks.

The birds are happy, and so am I

~Caleb Alons

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