26 September 2016 – Lincoln’s Sparrow

We finally had a decent cold front push through with the first nip of autumn in the air but, unfortunately, it also brought us the first Lincoln’s Sparrow casualty of fall.  This was an AHY-U, bulging with fat (scored it a 3).  This one is also the first window casualty in front of a treated window.  I can’t tell if the bird flew into an untreated pane above the treated area or if it hit one of the treated panes.  That’s a design flaw of my study, stemming from the logistical challenge of treating such large expanses of glass.

Lots of birds were moving through campus today.  I found a pair of Brown Thrashers and this Grasshopper Sparrow flitting around the plantings in the southwestern alcove.

22 September 2016 – Indigo Bunting

The photos illustrate how obvious it is to find many of the carcasses at the Noble Research Center.  Today it was an Indigo Bunting in the southeast alcove.

This was a hatch-year bird and probably a male owing to the faint bluish tinge in the wings and tail.  Were those blushes of color resigned to the upper tail coverts, female would be a bit more likely.  Fat = 0 on this bird.

 

19 September 2016 – Nashville Warbler

That southwestern alcove continues to get a workout this fall, but again, the unfortunate victim was found in front of untreated glass panes.

Today it was a hatch-year (HY) Nashville Warbler; sex undetermined with fat score = 2.

 

When I found the bird in position on the cement as indicated in the above photo, it had already been heavily scavenged by ants. I moved the carcass to a location on the grass on the north side of this southwestern alcove (see photo, top right) to set up a removal trial.

12 September 2016 – Yellow Warbler

The southwestern alcove was again the site of a window-killed bird this morning but, again, it did not appear to have struck one of the treated panes of glass.

The unfortunate victim was an after hatch-year (AHY) female Yellow Warbler, and the ants had gotten to her, big time.

5 September 2016 – Ruby-throated Hummingbird

The HY male Ruby-throated Hummingbird I found this morning means that, for 2016, a young male of this species was both the last casualty of “spring” (on July 11th) and the first official casualty of fall.

This bird was in the southwest alcove, illustrating the urgency with which I must complete my ABC bird tape treatments of the west entrances!

11 July 2016 – Ruby-throated Hummingbird

I found a presumptive HY male Ruby-throated Hummingbird in the southwest alcove of the NRC today.  I left it in place for a removal trial.

I did not obtain photos of the bill showing corrugations.  Instead check out the single ruby gorget feather and concave tip to primary feather #6 as indications of a male.  The bird carried no fat.

5 July 2016 – Red-eyed Vireo and Indigo Bunting

Today I found a Red-eyed Vireo in the southwestern alcove and an Indigo Bunting at the main north entrance.

 

The Indigo Bunting was a second-year male with zero fat and an impressive contrast of old and new feathers. I left him in place for a removal trial.  The Red-eyed Vireo, an ASY female with a brood patch and no fat, is the first vireo I’ve ever recovered as a window-kill from the NRC.

15 June 2016 – Number 250

This morning, a dead Tufted Titmouse achieved some grim and arbitrary notoriety as the 250th window-killed bird I’ve found at the Noble Research Center since monitoring began on 20 August 2009. She’s right near the entrance to the northwest alcove, and I left her in place to see how long it takes for her to be removed.

Like so many birds I find in June, this was a female (AHY) with a brood patch. This one had a faint stripe of mulberry juice down the front of her breast and little on her beak.

 

Intrigued by the pattern, I queried my database for June casualties, 2009–2016.  Out of 22 window-kills, at least 8 have been females with brood patches (and additional 7 might have been but the data weren’t recorded).

13 June 2016 – Field Sparrow

I found a second-year female Field Sparrow at the main north entrance this morning.

This female too, had a well developed brood patch.  She also had some fat laid down; I’d say coded a 2. Here again, it looks like we’ve got post-breeding dispersal on display.

21 May 2016 – Mourning Warbler and Yellow-billed Cuckoo

With apologies for the 1) poor and 2) non-existent photos . . .

I found an ASY male Mourning Warbler (fat = 0) at the main north entrance this morning. He was waaaaay better looking than these photos attest, and I bet he was even more handsome in life.

 

In the northwest alcove lay a female (with well-developed brood patch!) Yellow-billed Cuckoo (no photo).  I left the cuckoo in place, as the ants were already doing a number on her.

 

In scavenging news, the starling from 5/18 was both moved and eaten: I found a remnant pile of its larger feathers about 5m away from the bird’s location. Whatever picked it up had taken it south to the bushes in front of the northern entrance.

18 May 2016 – European Starling

This was an odd find, both for species and location.  In monitoring since 2009, this is only the second starling I’ve ever found, despite the fact that starlings nest on the NRC in spring and roost there year ’round. Starlings are pretty well urban-adapted, however, and I guess that explains the infrequency with which I come across them. They either know how to recognize glass as a barrier or they are so likely to perch on the building as opposed to flying past it that they’re more often at a safer “stalling speed” on the wing when they get close.

Except, of course, when they aren’t, and then they’re just as susceptible as any other passerine to death by window. That happened to this inexperienced youngster (HY) at some point over the past 24 hours. I left it in place for a removal trial.

The other weird thing as I alluded above was the location: left side of the main north entrance, close to where the building begins to curve on the east side.

17 May 2016 -Painted Bunting

I found yet another Painted Bunting at the NRC this morning; this time a SY female was the victim. She didn’t have much fat, but otherwise she was in fine condition. Of course, she was a bit damp from this morning’s drizzle, so I put her in front of the fan for a couple of hours to dry her out.

4 October 2015 – Clay-colored Sparrow

Autumn arrived with a thud for this poor Clay-colored Sparrow today.  It was one of the fattest of these little sparrows I’ve ever seen (easily a 3 on my 0–3 scale), which was impressive for a youngster:  HY-U.

13 September 2015 – Nashville Warbler

Today I found a window-killed Nashville Warbler in the southwestern alcove.  The brownish cast to the upperparts and tapered rectrices suggest a HY bird, sex undetermined.  Fat = 2.  I have included a radar image of last night’s flight on a rare evening that felt a lot more like October than September.

20 August 2015 – Yellow Warbler

Yesterday’s powerful cold front gave us this morning’s Octoberish morning, and a big flight of migrants last night. Check out this explosion of migrants in the Plains from around 10:30 last night:

At least one of those migrants, a HY-U (prob female) Yellow Warbler, made it no farther than Stillwater last night.  She was in great shape with fat = 2.

30 May 2015 – Tufted Titmouse

 

Imagine you are holding a deck of cards.  Now toss that deck on the floor and look at all 52 of them.  Now imagine that each one of those cards represents a different species of bird.  There are sparrows, warblers, thrushes, woodpeckers, etc. With the addition of a Tufted Titmouse this morning, there have now been 52 different species of birds killed in window collisions at the Noble Research Center since I started keeping track in 2009.

Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve featured Tufted Titmouse on this site: On 24 May 2012, I found a Tufted Titmouse at the Kerr-Drummond residence hall immediately to the west of Ag Hall.  That was unusual in that it was a female with a brood patch and she had actually lain down fat (I scored her as a 1).

Today’s bird was similar:  She was a second-year female with a drying brood patch and fat I would score as a 2.

According to Yogi Berra, “You can observe a lot just by watching.”  My watching has just suggested to me that 100% of the Tufted Titmice that have struck windows on this campus have been females in the last week of May with some fat accumulation in the furcular hollow and a brood patch suggestive of having recently produced fledglings.  Is this post-breeding dispersal?  Wandering to find a mate for a second brood?  Wandering after loss of a brood? Dispersal to a molting area?  Questions abound, but with my n = 2, it looks like the beginnings of a pattern to me.

26 May 2015 – no casualties, but a correction

Thanks to concurrent surveys between Corey Riding’s project and my own, I learned Monday (5/25) of a bird that I had missed on Sunday (5/24): At the north entrance and tucked under some shrubs is a Mourning Warbler.  I missed the bird on two consecutive surveys.  Corey thinks it must have come in sometime during the day on Saturday (5/23).

I’m not too upset to have missed this bird – twice! – because it is waterlogged and cryptic against the background mulch on which it lies and I could only see it from a specific angle that I rarely take when investigating that section of shrubbery.  The key is not to never miss a bird on a survey, it’s to conduct redundant surveys to estimate how many I might be missing. Thankfully, that number seems to be quite low, but we’ll know better what it actually is in a few months.

Both Mourning Warbler and the Swainson’s Thrush were in place this morning.

24 May 2015 – the first Ovenbird

This morning I found the 51st species casualty on the project – a horribly drenched Ovenbird that needed a couple of hours in front of my space heater to dry out and reclaim its former beauty.

Can you see it? I can.

At this point, I already knew what it was. That belly was just too white.

This was a southeast alcove casualty:

Once dried and re-sheveled, I could tell that this beauty was an after-second-year bird, but its sex could not be determined.  What was obvious was that it was bulging with fat in the furcular hollow and all across the belly.  This bird was in prime condition.

9 July 2012 – Painted Bunting

Today’s casualty will sadden my nephew: he loves Painted Buntings.

I found this female on the north side of the Noble Research Center this morning.  Like other recent casualties, I have no explanation for what this bird was doing at that location today.  We occasionally get them here in town in early May, but it’s early July and this bird should still be on a territory somewhere.  Two days ago, I found three singing males in the shrublands of the OSU “North Fields” cross country course, so it’s still breeding season for Painted Buntings.  Early migration?  Post-breeding dispersal?  Rounding up a wandering juvenile?

Regardless of her behavior that led this female to her unfortunate demise, she did have some fat laid down (fat = 1) and a dry brood patch.  I don’t have my Pyle guide on hand this morning so my assessment of her age will be tentative:  ASY.

Update: On the advice of a veritable zen master when it comes to passerine molt, this bird is now correctly aged as SY.  Thank you Bob Mulvihill for pointing out the molt limit in the top photo:  the distal alula covert is an original, issued to this bird when it fledged some time during the summer of 2011.

18 May 2012 – Red-bellied Woodpecker

Most folks think this bird is the “red-headed woodpecker” but in the actual Red-headed Woodpecker, the entire head, face, neck, and nape are scarlet red on both sexes.

Found a male Red-bellied Woodpecker outside the north entrance to the Noble Research Center today.  If you don’t know this bird, you might be familiar with its call.  Red-bellies are common forest birds from the Great Plains to the Great Lakes, and south to the Gulf Coast and into Florida.  They are non-migratory, although I bet they occasionally disperse over long distances.

This one looks to have been out on a foraging run from which he will not return.  His fat score was 0 and he had a nice (though drying stages) brood patch.  I’m not sure about all species, but woodpeckers are well known to be unusual among birds in that the male also incubates the eggs, and usually is the default parent on the nest overnight.  Thus, brood patches occur in both males and females during the breeding season.  This male’s brood patch indicates that he has or had an active nest somewhere, i.e., he wasn’t some vagrant woodpecker dispersing over a long distance when he met his demise.

The combination of a “zebra-stripe” back and red crown and nape might look familiar if you have these birds in your neighborhood.

 

It’s only with a specimen in the hand – or on the table – that the red belly of Red-bellied Woodpecker becomes obvious.