
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.
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