A Torrent of Mis-Named Birds

The tannin-stained waters of the Cascade River churned frothily into the cold, blue waters of Lake Superior. Upstream, impressive torrents of spring melt poured through the sculpted canyons as if they were a root beer float fountain belonging to a giant. My partner and I stayed well back from the edges of overlooks. Though unlikely, the thought of falling in and getting swept up in the flood was terrifying. How do the fish and aquatic invertebrates survive? Or maybe some don’t, and that’s why a couple dozen ducks had gathered to feed around the outflow.

The Cascade River floods through the canyon. Photo by Emily Stone. 

This is the outflow of the Temperance River, but it looked very similar to the mouth of the Cascade! Photo by Emily Stone. 

First, we squinted, then we peered through binoculars, and finally I zoomed in with my camera to make sense of the dark shapes. The ducks had a funny conehead and a gracefully swooped patch of gray on their side. The pale ring around their dark beak was the most distinctive character. I’m not good at waterfowl, so I wracked my brain for a likely ID…were they ring-billed ducks? That would be logical. But no, a quick peek through the Merlin app’s helpful photos confirmed that these were ring-necked ducks. Huh?

A very zoomed in shot of the ring-necked ducks. Photo by Emily Stone.

This name is a throwback to the days before binoculars and zoom lenses when ornithologists studied birds by shooting them, stuffing them, and then storing the preserved specimen in a museum drawer. Study skins are usually stored on their backs, so the first thing those early ornithologists would see upon opening the drawer was the belly of the bird, or in the case of the ring-necked duck, a handsome collar of chestnut brown. As valuable as museum specimens are, they can’t replace direct observation of a living being.

In life, ring-necked ducks have a prominent white ring around their bill. This fades quickly after death. Instead, early ornithologists named them for a band of feathers that’s most visible when laying on their back as a study skin. This taxidermy mount is old and looks like a female, so that makes the colors even less prominent.
Photo of the Cable Natural History Museum collections by Emily Stone.

My partner—a beginning birder—was interrupted from his rant about the negative impact of poorly named birds on the ability of people to get into birding by the squawk of a yellow-bellied sapsucker. We spotted the handsome little early returner nosing around an aspen tree. Although they are about the size of a downy woodpecker, and share the black-and-white checkered back feathers, sapsucker males have a matching throat patch to go with their crimson forehead. In contrast, the lemon-colored wash on their belly feathers is only visible in good light. Early ornithologists got their behavior wrong, too. They don’t suck sap; they lap it up with a brush-tipped tongue. This is one character that should have been more visible in a dead specimen than through binoculars, if anyone had been curious enough to look.

Open a drawer of bird study skins in any museum, and you’ll be treated to a look at their belly feathers. This led to birds being named for colors that are often hard to see in real life—like the yellow-bellied sapsucker.
Photo of the Cable Natural History Museum collections by Emily Stone.

Arriving home after the waterfall tour, we were thrilled to find our front yard filled with dark-eyed juncos. Our arrival startled the flock into a reverse cascade of gray and white feathers that whooshed lightly up among the birch twigs. Every grassy lawn and roadside across the Northwoods lately has been witness to these swirling flocks. Juncos winter only as far south as necessary to find bare ground and seeds. Now most of these common forest birds are headed far into Canada, while a few will stay here to nest.

Wetlands aren’t a place you’d expect to see juncos, and yet the word junco refers to Juncus, a genus of wetland plants that includes bulrush. One hypothesis is that juncos reminded those early ornithologists of a European bunting who does actually live among the reeds. In their defense, habitat isn’t so obvious once a bird is in a drawer. On the other hand, maybe they should have done a little more research.

Juncos are a type of sparrow, and joining the flock were two cousins. For once, the white-throated sparrows were aptly named. The American tree sparrows, though, spend most of their time on the ground or in low bushes, and nest on the tundra beyond the reach of true trees. This is likely another case of being named for a European look-alike that turned out to not have much in common with our North American neighbor.

White-throated sparrows are aptly named. Photo by Emily Stone. 

The list of mis-named birds is long, and more will be arriving any day now! Tennessee warblers will pass briefly through that locale before they go to breed mostly in the boreal forests of Canada. Cape May warblers do the same. Palm warblers will keep going—they are the second-most-northern-breeding warbler.

It could be worse. A study by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and New York University found that almost 90 percent of birds are named for their appearance, habitat, or other personal characteristics. Only 11 percent are named after people, with no connection to the birds’ natural history at all. So, 90 percent of the time, early ornithologists tried to be helpful and descriptive. It’s just that sometimes they described the wrong thing.

Maybe it’s understandable. In the 1700s and 1800s an entire continent of new species had just become accessible to people whose experience was based an ocean away. Many unfortunate barriers stood in the way of learning from the Indigenous peoples who already had names for and knowledge of these feathered relatives. There were more birds back then, too. Just since 1970, we’ve lost an estimated 29 percent of birds across North America. How many more birds would there have been during those early days of colonization?

Can you imagine the chaos of a spring with more than double our current number of birds feeding, singing, migrating? Amazing! But perhaps to those early ornithologists it felt a bit like an overwhelming torrent. Like the ring-necked ducks feeding on stunned invertebrates, they would have had to wait for birds to be incapacitated to get a better look. It’s no wonder those first birders got a few wrong.

But as we walked into the house, a black-capped chickadee scolded from the neighbor’s trees, reminding us that occasionally those early ornithologists got it just right.

Black-capped chickadees are named after their jaunty hat and scolding call.
Photo by Emily Stone. 

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! The Museum is closed until May 12 to allow for construction of our new exhibit, The Wetland Way. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

A Shorebird in the Forest

A small strip of open water reflected the blazing sunset sky. Although my partner and I dug our toes into a sand beach at the Day Lake Recreation Area near Clam Lake, Wis., the punky ice with glimmering puddles of gold prevented any notion that we might still be on vacation in coastal South Carolina. Surprisingly, we experienced similar air temperatures on both beaches, but a stiff ocean breeze had chilled us even more than looking at this frozen lake.

Sunset at the Day Lake Recreation Area near Clam Lake, Wis., 

 

The beach in South Carolina got surprisingly chilly once a breeze picked up!

With one last glance at the fleecy orange clouds, we moseyed back to the car and started rolling slowly down the entrance road. In just the same stretch as last spring, a bit of movement caught our eye, and we followed the fluttering descent of an American woodcock as he returned to his dancing ground. Starting up his slow rhythm of distinctive peent calls, the small gent directed romantic messages to any female woodcocks hiding in the scrubby forest nearby.

Just having returned from a week of birdwatching on the Atlantic coast, the plump-bodied, long-billed silhouette of this “hokumpoke” reminded us of the sanderlings, dunlins, and willets we’d watched scurry ahead of the waves. It’s a strange fact that despite their preference for damp thickets instead of beaches, woodcocks are the most numerous sandpiper in North America.

American woodcocks are the most numerous sandpiper in North America.
Photo by Keith Ramos, USFWS.

Sandpipers are a group of small shorebirds in the family Scolopacidae who like to feed on little critters picked out of soft soil. Long, narrow wings aid in their impressive migrations from northern breeding habitat to southern wintering grounds. Their streaky gray-brown camouflage blends perfectly into the forest floor, or matches sand, rocks, dune grass, and wrack. And that camouflage comes in especially handy when they sit on their eggs, since their nests are just scrapes in the ground.

Sanderlings probe wet sand quickly for bits of food. Photo by Emily Stone.

This lesser yellowlegs stalked a mudflat and seemed to be catching aquatic worms.
Photo by Emily Stone.

Willets are shorebirds who breed in the Western U.S. and Canada. Photo by Emily Stone.

In the fading light, we could just make out the shape of the woodcock’s head bobbing and long beak opening in a hiccup-like reflex. Peent. Like all sandpipers, the tip of the woodcock’s beak is filled with touch sensors similar to those found in your tongue, but more focused on sensing vibrations. Can you imagine thrusting your tongue into mud and feeling a worm at the other end? Even if you could, how would you grab the tasty tidbit inside a narrow hole? Sandpipers solved this problem with rhynchokinesis (rin-koh-ki-nee-sis), which is just a fancy way of saying that they can flex open the tip of their upper mandible instead of opening their whole beak evenly like chopsticks.

Despite many similarities, sandpiper species forage using a variety of techniques. On the beach, we watched flocks of sanderlings chase the waves, then rapidly probe wet sand like feathered sewing machines. A willet spun in circles and grabbed for prey visible in the surf. Lesser yellowlegs stalked aquatic worms with staccato motions in the mudflats. I’ve never been lucky enough to watch a woodcock feeding, but in a video I found online, the bird repeatedly vibrated their beak into the ground like a gentle jackhammer, then paused thoughtfully. Presumably they were waiting to sense the vibrations of invertebrates in the soil with their beak.

What astounded me most about the video was how much time the “bog sucker” spent alone with their head in the sand—far more than any of the other shorebirds I watched feeding. For a tasty prey animal, that’s dangerous! Adapting to this behavior has rearranged woodcocks’ entire noggin. As their eyes moved upward and backward to give them a 360 degree view while feeding, their ears found a new home below their eyes and their nostrils approached the base of their bill. Then the parts of their brain that control movement migrated from the rear of their skull to the top of their spinal column. Their brain has essentially turned upside down to match their feeding posture!

After two minutes of peents, each preceded by a little hiccup if we were quiet enough to hear it, the “Labrador twister” burst up from the gravel with twittering wings. Rising in a broad spiral, the “timberdoodle” cleared the treetops and circled toward the gray clouds. Fatter than a robin, smaller than a grouse, the winged shape twittered ever higher into the navy blue. About 200 feet up, the twittering became sweet chirping, and the “night partridge” sideslipped down like a falling leaf. Peent. Back on his gravel dancing ground, the male continued his courtship display.

The entire sandpiper family is known for elaborate, fluttering mating displays with their own weird sounds. Maybe someday I’ll visit the Arctic tundra where many of them breed and witness that wonderful pageant of nature.

In the meantime, I’m happy to watch our most common local shorebird peent on a gravel road and flutter above a patch of tangled Northwoods. The female woodcocks laying low may pretend to be unimpressed by this display, but my partner and I have no reason to hide our delight.

 

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! The Museum is closed until May 12 to allow for construction of our new exhibit, The Wetland Way. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

The Heron's Plan

Turkey vultures and black vultures circled above the trees. As expected, I’d spotted my first turkey vulture of the year the day after I wrote the article about them. Then, I promptly headed south to meet their migration.

Now, here I was on the entrance road to Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina, which follows a causeway through the salt marsh. Richard, a park volunteer who leads birding walks each Wednesday morning, patiently detailed the identification clues for the vultures in his New Jersey accent. Turning back to the shallow channels exposed by a falling tide, our group of about 15 regulars and vacationers focused binoculars on greater yellowlegs, willets, snowy egrets, great egrets, and more. With every sentence, Richard’s information gave me more confidence in birding this strange new ecosystem.

Out among cordgrass, finally I spotted a bird I didn’t need help identifying. The elegant silhouette of a great blue heron towered above the rest of the shorebirds. I’ve observed herons from coast to coast, since they thrive in a wide variety of wetlands. This bird lacked the striking black crown and head plumes of a mature adult, and the bit of mottled brown mixed into their plumage further gave away their youth. They stalked diligently, but unsuccessfully, for a meal.

I stalked the mudflats, too, but not for fish. Someone had pointed out the oyster beds being exposed by the receding tide, and told us to watch for the fountains of water they squirt at random intervals. They were excreting waste, but purifying the water in the process. It felt like winning the lottery every time I caught a squirt in my binoculars.

Then, with a whoosh, our attention returned upward. Another great blue heron, seeming huge in their proximity, swooped in on their six-foot wings and landed near a small, wooden observation pier. I admired the pale highlights on their slate-gray body feathers while sunshine highlighted their yellow beak and graceful black head plume. With fully adult plumage, this bird must be at least three years old.

The heron seemed to hold their breath as they peered into the shallow water, seeing things hidden from us by the glint of ripples. Feeling the bird’s intensity, I held my breath too. Then, in a swift motion, the heron’s legs bent backward as they leaned forward. It’s a strange sight, since we expect the joint in the middle of a leg to bend like our knees. But birds’ knees are hidden up near their body, and the knob halfway between feathers and feet is equivalent to our ankle. Herons’ necks have an odd hinging system, too. A pivot point between their sixth and seventh vertebrae allows their neck to double back in an S shape while at rest, then shoot out with lethal force.

When the heron straightened up, a fish at least as big as the bird’s own head was clasped in their ferocious beak. Patiently, the heron gripped tight while the fish thrashed. I’d read that herons will sometimes whack a fish to stun it, or drop it back in the water to try for a better grip. This heron just held on, their huge yellow eye appearing to bug out a little from the effort.

The fish appeared to be a striped mullet, a common species of coastal waters. At first, the mullet appeared to be winning. They flopped and slipped father through the herons bill, surely about to escape the final grip on their head. Then the heron’s plan became apparent. All the movement was maneuvering the fish’s head to aim aerodynamically into the heron’s beak. With one last toss of their head, the fish disappeared. The heron straightened their neck to help the bulge slide down, then gulped water, wiggled their long pink tongue, and snapped their beak. A few silver fish scales glinted on their lower mandible.

Watch my Facebook Reel of the event here! 

We moved on to get out of the midday sun, but I’ve read about what the heron would do next. Catching fish can be slimy business, and to keep themselves clean, herons use comb-like claws on their middle toes to preen “powder down” through their feathers. This removes slime and grime. The powder comes from the tips of down feathers that break into dust. These feathers are never molted, they just keep growing as they are used.

Despite the dozen or so new species of birds I spotted in the salt marshes, beaches, and forests of South Carolina, witnessing the amazing behavior of this familiar friend stands out. Black vultures, great egrets, and white-eyed vireos, will probably never be part of my daily life, but herons could be. And every sighting teaches me something new.

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! The Museum is closed until May 12 to allow for construction of our new exhibit, The Wetland Way. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Spring Cleaning with Turkey Vultures

PSA: you might want to finish eating your breakfast or lunch before you read about turkey vultures eating theirs!

Mesmerized, I paused in the warm, South Carolina sunshine to watch a kettle of turkey vultures circle lazily, their wings tracing the invisible movements of air. From a nearby tree line came the lusty singing of a brown thrasher, and the sweet trill of a pine warbler. The week I spent at Loon Camp on Lake Jocassee in early March was a delightful preview of spring.

Most people probably don’t associate turkey vultures with spring—or even realize that vultures may have flown as far as South America for the winter—but they are one of the earliest returning migrants. “What blazes the trail,” wrote Mary Oliver, “is not necessarily pretty.” Vultures need warm weather so that the smell of their food can rise skyward, and because it’s far easier to eat fresh roadkill than frozen dinners.

Of course, food spoils more quickly in warm weather, and eating the putrefying flesh of deer, raccoons, and other beings who’ve met their demise has its dangers. Getting hit by cars is an obvious one. Plus, rooting around in rotting meat would make you or me very sick. Despite their gross diet and appearance, every adaptation of the turkey vulture is aimed at cleanliness, and they have some ingenious ways of staying healthy.

For example, they defecate on their own legs, using the super acidic liquid as a disinfectant and to cool their body as it evaporates. The bare, red skin of their heads not only gives turkey vultures their name, it also allows the sterilizing effects of ultraviolet radiation from sunlight to kill bacteria. That’s very useful after sticking one’s head in a rotting carcass. UV sterilization works on their feathers to some degree as well. Especially after damp weather, you may notice them perched with their wings spread to the sun.

On the inside, turkey vultures’ intense stomach acids can kill the microbes that cause botulism, anthrax, cholera, tuberculosis, salmonella, and rabies. How appropriate that the birds’ scientific name—Cathartes aura—means “purifying breeze.”

Their digestive system is so powerful that it even destroys the DNA of their food. Isn’t that normal, you may wonder? Not at all. In fact, wildlife researchers often test the scat of their target species for the DNA of their prey to determine what they are eating. It even works for humans. Scientists have found it’s more accurate to test the DNA in a stool sample than to rely on people to self-report what they eat each day when doing dietary studies. That wouldn’t work for vultures.

At a roadkill, though, venison isn’t the only thing on the menu. Even if vultures find a dead animal quickly, they may eat on it for a few days. In that time, plenty of other critters join the feast—the meat will be colonized by a host of potentially pathogenic bacteria and invertebrates. Plus, if an animal’s tough hide wasn’t breached by the cause of death, vultures may need to use an existing hole to get inside, putting them in contact with feces, too. Despite the effectiveness of bare skin and sun baths, one study identified roughly 528 different types of microorganisms living on a vulture’s face.

See how the turkey vulture's eye looks cloudy? Like many birds and other animals, turkey vultures have a third eyelid called a nictitating membrane. It acts like goggles to protect their eyes while feeding. Photo by Emily Stone. 

What’s even more amazing was that only 76 (14%) of those microbes survived the vulture’s stomach and made it to the large intestine. It takes a very special microbe to make that journey intact!

In particular, researchers from Denmark discovered in 2014 that there are two groups of pathogenic bacteria possibly acquired from carcasses, that thrive in a vulture’s stomach. Clostridia bacteria cause food poisoning, lockjaw and malignant edema in people and cattle. Fusobacterium are flesh-digesting bacteria that would make most critters very sick. It’s thought that the vultures have developed a symbiotic relationship where they allow microbes who were starting to decompose the carcass to continue their work on into the vulture’s stomach, thereby assisting with digestion and releasing nutrients where the vulture can absorb them.

While this idea would once have been far-fetched, scientists continually uncover more examples of symbiotic relationships in nature. It’s not at all uncommon for an animal to rely on microbes to help digest their food—that’s how our stomachs work, too. And it’s also common for parents to pass those partners on to their children. Since vultures feed their chicks through regurgitation, they likely get a dose of those bacteria even before they start feeding on carcasses by themselves.

As of March 27, I still haven’t seen a turkey vulture in the Northwoods, but soon they’ll be showing up on the wind and helping us out with a little spring cleaning!

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar opens for registration on April 1st at 9:00 a.m.! The Museum is closed until May 12 to allow for construction of our new exhibit, The Wetland Way. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.