How To: Go Snow Day Birding (with Merlin)

I am not what you would call a “Snow Person.” I do not like snow to come to me, per se, I prefer to go to it—on my terms, which means I can leave if I want to. For years, my go-to move when snowy or really cold weather came to me was to hunker down and wait it out. Inside. Then Matt Miller ruined hibernation for me because now, whenever it snows or gets frosty where I live, I hear his voice in my head.

“Winter is a great time to see all kinds of wildlife,” he always says in the cheerful way of a person who clearly was not born in Key West, Florida. “So many interesting birds and animals.”

Sigh. The truth hurts. Still, I am game for most nature adventures so when we got 10 inches of snow near my Maryland home recently, I resolved to get outside. I jammed my feet into snow boots, pulled on my favorite knit cap, my warmest mittens and my more or less good attitude, and set out on one of my periodic Merlin App-Guided Bird Scavenger Hunts.

I was not disappointed. And bonus, I saw so many birds, I hardly even noticed the cold.

Winter Birding with Merlin (How to Give it a Try)

First, an explanation is probably in order. A Merlin App-Guided Bird Scavenger Hunt is exactly what it sounds like. If you have a smart phone and live in a place where Merlin’s sound ID feature works, all you have to do is grab your binoculars or camera (or both), download the Merlin App (if you haven’t already), set it for sound ID and, as the list starts to populate, start looking.

For me, Merlin has always made birding so much more accessible. For most of my life, I wanted to be a good birder, but trying to remember field marks so I could find them later in the field guide (sometimes even just a few moments after I saw a bird) left me feeling overwhelmed and unsatisfied. Merlin changed all of that. And then the addition of Sound ID to the app changed it again.

Which brings me back to my recent adventure in snow day birding. (All told, I spotted 23 different species, and managed to snap photographs of 18. Not necessarily good photographs, but a few personal treasures at least good enough to go back and study to learn more about individual birds and their field marks and behaviors later. I also have those awesome mittens that are really hidden gloves. If I need my fingers free to focus my binoculars or press the shutter button on my phone, I don’t have to take off a mitten, and hold it in my teeth or stuff it in my pocket. Highly recommend.)

Top 10 List

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  So, phone hanging around my neck on a lanyard, Merlin running and layers zipped, I headed out the morning after the snow stopped. And was immediately rewarded with the notification that there was a yellow-bellied sapsucker somewhere nearby. One of my Birds of Nemesis.

  I have been on a hunt to sight one of these woodpeckers since I started trying to be a better birder nearly a decade ago. They have eluded me on birding hunts from Maryland to New York to Florida, taunting me relentlessly from the notorious Heard-But-Not-Seen list for all that time. Well, those days are over.

  It took me awhile to find it—they really do blend in (even in winter), and their drumming can be both quiet and kind of irregular. Just as I was starting to panic sweat at the thought of missing it again, I saw a bird. It was moving slowly up the trunk of a tree in my neighbor’s yard and looked woodpecker-ish.  

  

  

  Cornell describes the yellow-bellied sapsucker, the only sapsucker in eastern North America, as looking somewhat “disheveled.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant until I finally saw one in action. Disheveled is a good description. When I first spotted the woodpecker shape among the branches, I thought I was seeing a hairy or downy woodpecker coming off a three-day winter weather bender.

  

  But no, it was the yellow-bellied. No mistaking that unbroken white stripe from bill to belly, or the black lines around the red on its chin (no white chin patch means it was a male). And bonus! Its yellow belly (not always visible) was occasionally on display. It stayed in one place long enough for me to watch it drill its characteristic horizontal line of holes (sapwells) in the tree trunk. Even in the cold, the tree wept sap that showed in dark lines against the smooth, pale bark.

  Yellow-bellied sapsucker tongues have a kind of brushy tip perfectly suited for licking up the sap, as well as any unfortunate insects that may get trapped in the sticky flow. Yellow-bellies are also the only woodpecker in Eastern North America that is completely migratory. Cornell notes that a few individuals may remain in through much of the winter in the southern part of the breeding range, places like my Maryland suburb, but most winter further south. Some migrate as far south as Panama in the winter and far northern Canada in the summer.

  It turned out to be a good birding omen.

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  Carolina wrens don’t migrate so we often hear them around here in the winter. We have two that seemed to be riding out the cold weather in a small brush pile in the corner of your backyard. We meant to clear it out earlier in the fall, but once the cold set in, I jammed a couple of empty flowerpots under the branches and left them for the wrens. 

  This one popped out of the brush pile and soaked up the sun for a few minutes before diving back under cover. Climate change may be enabling these small birds to expand their northern ranges. Warming temperatures and the increasing prevalence of bird feeders seem to be contributing to some shifts for many bird species, including the yellow-bellied sapsucker above.

  One study found that once winter was over, the density of Carolina wrens in the northern parts of their range had more to do with the presence of bird feeders than mean January temperatures. For birds like Carolina wrens that don’t migrate and are dependent on local food supplies to get through the winter, bird feeders can mean the difference between survival and starvation.

  

  That said, more birds at more feeders means the importance of keeping feeders clean is very important. Project Feederwatch offers a very thorough overview of all things bird feeder. I don’t have birdfeeders in my yard. (I can barely keep my own kitchen clean so taking on responsibility for birdfeeder sanitation and cleanliness is too much commitment for me.) Fortunately, my new-ish neighbor is an excellent birdfeeder (and house) keeper so I supply seed and suet mixes for his various feeders and he keeps everything clean. Win-win.

  Different feeders are attractive to different birds and not all birds eat seed. Robins, for instance, can’t digest seed and their beaks aren’t suited for cracking nuts. Carolina wrens seem to prefer suet mixes, especially mixes that include peanuts. One peanut can supply as much as one-third of a wren’s metabolic need.

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  This hermit thrush gave me fits. I could hear it, but the bird itself was nowhere in sight. Just when I thought this would be another for the Heard-But-Not-Seen list of mockery, I saw movement under a picnic table covered in snow. It was the hermit thrush. Hopping up and down and moving leaf litter with its feet. I went over to the table later and saw a scattering of peanuts and shells that someone may have left for the birds.

  Hermit thrushes are the only thrushes in the genus Catharus that winter in the U.S. The rest, sensibly in my opinion, head for warmer climates. If you want a chance at sighting one of the other East Coast Catharus thrushes like a Swainson’s or gray-cheeked, you need to wait for migration (spring or fall).

  The hermit thrush’s song, haunting and melancholy and among the most complex in the bird world, has long intrigued scientists. In 2014, researchers revealed that the hermits may sound so pleasant to our ears because their singing follows the same mathematical structures that seem to underpin the common basic chords of the harmonies preferred across human cultures. Sadly for me, it’s rare to hear the hermit thrush sing in the winter. The males save that for spring and summer, for courtship, nest and territory defense.

  

  While hermits tend to eat mainly insects (and occasionally small frogs and snakes), in the winter their diet, like the American robin’s, turns mostly to berries and winter fruits. Project FeederWatch notes that hermit thrushes don’t often visit bird feeders. They forage primarily on the ground, but also, like my friend under the picnic table, clearly enjoy the occasional lucky peanut.

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  If birds voted for class clown, I think the white-breasted nuthatch would be high on the list. To me, they’ve always had that kind of engaging, curious and what-is-that-guy doing energy. They move erratically and are one of the most consistently gravity-defying birds to watch (which, considering most birds can fly, is saying something). But nuthatches have an extra gear when it comes to gravity defying. Up, down, sideways—it doesn’t matter to them.

  If you see a bird moving head-first down a tree trunk, it’s most likely a nuthatch. And where I live, this time of year, it’s most likely a white-breasted. They can be mistaken for Carolina chickadees at first glance. In winter, nuthatches, chickadees and titmice tend to flock together for defense and for foraging, but the nuthatch is the one most likely to be hanging out upside down on a tree branch.

  What gives nuthatches that extra boost against gravity? Their feet.

  Specifically, their number one toe (the hallux; the one that points backwards) is incredibly strong relative to the bird’s small size. So while, to our eyes, nuthatches look like they’re “walking” down the tree, they’re hanging by the hallux of one foot and kind of hopping their way down the tree as they alternate feet. There’s a whole world of fascination in the anatomy and functions of bird feet.

  

  

  

  

  I spent 20 minutes just watching this little bird flit and twist and climb and hang upside down while it gobbled down the seed it (or another nuthatch) had stashed sometime earlier. It’s dark black cap marks it as a male. Caps on female white-breasteds are a lighter and grayer.

  (Bonus tip for my Scrabblers: “hallux” is an A+ word and will make your opponents weep.)

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  There are three species of bluebirds in North America (eastern, western and mountain), and none of them are actually blue. They just look blue. This is actually true of birds with blue in their plumage, from bluebirds to blue jays to belted kingfishers. Unlike birds with red and yellow feathers, blue birds owe their colors (or our perception of their color) more to physics than chemistry.

  To seriously over-simplify in the interest of brevity: Birds with red feathers, like cardinals, get their color primarily from their diet. Pigments from the foods they eat, like red fruits, are deposited in their feathers. If you were to grind a cardinal’s feather to dust, it would be red (or reddish). But an eastern bluebird (or blue jay) feather ground to dust would be brown.

  Because that blue isn’t a pigment, it’s a trick of the light.

  In birds, blue is a “structural color” (a structural color is one that’s created by something, well, structural—like a prism—that affects visible light waves). Blue birds have feathers with an area called the “cloudy zone” that includes, among other things, small air pockets (structures) that act as tiny light-scattering prisms. Not all birds have feathers with cloudy zones, but eastern bluebirds (and western and mountain bluebirds) do. So that beautiful color we perceive is created by the way the shapes of those structures within their feathers scatter light.

  Structural color in nature is a fascinating topic. And when it comes to bird feathers, there are a myriad of elements at play. The way bird feathers get their color is as diverse and interesting an area of study as the structure and function of bird feet. If you’re looking for a primer on “where feather colors come from” this piece on Birdwatching Daily is fantastic.

Stalking Birds for Fun and Exercise (and Science)

The beauty of the Merlin-App Aided Bird Scavenger Hunt is that you can also use your adventure to contribute to science. If you connect your account to eBird, when you confirm your sightings in Merlin, your data helps contribute to the scientific picture of what’s happening to birds near you.

You can also take your birding adventure with you wherever you go. I’ve used Merlin Sound ID to listen for birds at rest stops on countless trips up and down Interstate 95 from Miami to Boston. You might be surprised about what’s flitting around in a little strip of woods near the Alexander Hamilton Service Area off the Jersey Turnpike, or in a tangle of coastal dune sunflower off Highway A1A in Florida’s Volusia County. But that’s a whole other blog post.

Here at CGS we’re always curious about what people are seeing and hearing in the world around them, if you do your own Birding Scavenger Hunt let us know in the comments what you’re seeing (or hearing).