Northern Mockingbird

A rare summer resident in Wisconsin, the northern mockingbird is often seen so sporadically around the state that searching for evidence of breeding is not unlike looking for a needle in a haystack.

In fact, Sam Robbins wrote in 1991 that on average eight sightings were reported each year since 1960. With that knowledge, Goose Pond Sanctuary staff felt very fortunate to spot a northern mockingbird atop a tree along the eastern edge of the Hopkins Road Prairie on June 25th.

The northern mockingbird is fairly easy to identify and frequently gives a "wing flash" display, where it half or fully opens its wings in jerky intermediate steps, showing off the big white patches. We frequently think of the northern mocking bird as a southern species. This might be one species that increases in Wisconsin with climate change.

The bird was heard before it was seen, stringing together many different calls in a seemingly endless effort – a characteristic of the species. An adept mimic, the northern mockingbird is able to perfectly replicate many of Wisconsin’s beloved bird calls, including those of the American robin, eastern bluebird, mourning dove, tree swallow, whip-poor-will, and meadowlark. Each individual continues to add new sounds to its range, and an adult male may learn around 200 songs in its lifetime.  Northern Mockingbirds sing all through the day, and often into the night. Most nocturnal singers are unmated males, which sing more than mated males during the day, too. Nighttime singing is more common during the full moon.

Several days after the first sighting, David Shealer, a black tern researcher from Loras College, spotted a northern mockingbird on a telephone wire near the intersection of Highways 22 and 51/60 in North Leeds, less than a mile northeast of Hopkins Road Prairie. Despite our best efforts to locate the bird, this was the last sighting near Goose Pond Sanctuary.

Northern mockingbirds are often seen singing high atop vegetation, fences, and telephone wires, but prefer feeding in areas with open ground and shrubby vegetation, like hedges, fruiting bushes, and thickets.

In early summer, Sue Foote-Martin, co-manager of Goose Pond Sanctuary, spotted a northern mockingbird at their property in Columbia County that has an easement held by Madison Audubon Society. That made three sightings in one summer in Columbia County – not too shabby.

Columbia County has a history of northern mockingbird nesting activity, with two of the seven confirmed nesting sites found within a few miles of Goose Pond during the six years of the first Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas. Nests can be found in trees and shrubs 3-10 feet off the ground, but may be even higher.  Hopefully our shrub plantings at Goose Pond will attract northern mockingbirds in the future. Atlas workers will have to be extremely vigilant and very lucky if they hope to find the needle in the haystack.

Written by Tony Abate, former Goose Pond Sanctuary Land Steward

Photo by Eric Heupel, Flickr Creative Commons

Black-Billed Cuckoo

A long-tailed bird flies past us, into a thicket of brush. The interns and I stand for minutes, peering into the brush. We see a flash here, a tussle there. Someone spots a red eye. It's a black-billed cuckoo, an admittedly secretive bird. Standing only feet from the tangle of willow and aspen where the bird landed, we still couldn't make out where it was located.

The unique call of the cuckoo—“coo-coo-coo”—often greets early mornings or fills late summer nights during the breeding season. The black-billed cuckoo is one of the fastest birds to rear its young, taking on average 17 days from egg laying to fledgling.

Like most wild animals, the cuckoo's diet dictates its habits and ecology. Cuckoos especially enjoy caterpillars, and large infestations of caterpillars can attract higher populations of cuckoos. Additionally, high caterpillar density during the breeding season can cause these birds to deliver a second clutch of eggs. The problem with caterpillars, for cuckoos, is that the spines and defense mechanisms of the caterpillar can get caught in their digestive system. Cuckoos periodically shed their stomach lining to combat this issue.

Relatively common in Wisconsin, cuckoos prefer upland wooded or shrubby areas. You can find black-billed cuckoos, or at least hear them, at our Faville Grove Sanctuary along North Shore Road.

Photo by Jeff Bryant, Flickr Creative Commons

Sedge Wren

The somewhat late arrival of sedge wrens this year at Goose Pond Sanctuary has not affected the overall numbers of this small bird.

The Birds of North America publication states that “The sedge wren appears to be one of the most nomadic terrestrial birds in North American with breeding concentrated in widely different portions of its range at different times of the breeding season.  A first period of nesting is concentrated primarily in the upper midwest (Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota) and occurs during late May and June. A second, more widespread, nesting period occurs late in the summer (July-September) with birds expanding out into southern (Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri) portions of the breeding range.”

At Goose Pond, we expect sedge wrens to return around the 4th of July.  We anticipated their return this year so we could confirm nesting for them in our Breeding Bird Atlas blocks.  However, while on a frog count at Goose Pond on July 14 at 10:30 p.m. we were listening to the calls of two Virginia rails when we heard our first harsh introductory notes followed by a slow buzzy trill of a sedge wren. Sedge wrens can call throughout the day and night.  

Goose Pond staffers Tony Abate and Maddie Van Cleve found four sedge wrens west of the pond the next morning. Two days later while working with interns in the Wood Family Prairie, nine male sedge wrens were counted and Tony spotted a bird carrying nesting material in its feet, a confirmation for the Arlington priority atlas block. Over the next few days we found sedge wrens present at many of our prairies including the Browne and Sue Ames Prairies.

In the first Atlas project, sedge wrens were found primarily in sedge meadows and in native and restored prairies that provide tall, dense habitat. Their close cousin the marsh wren is primarily found in cattail marshes.

In 1991, Sam Robbins listed the sedge wren as a common summer resident. He went on to mention that in 1911, Columbus area farmers reported that they saw “hundreds” of eggs” destroyed by machinery when cutting hay, most of which were likely to be the eggs of sedge wrens. Sedge wrens were probably “abundant” at the turn of the century.  

In 1999, the Fish and Wildlife Service “identified the sedge wren as a conservation priority in the Midwest due to its rarity and declining population.” Researchers believe that Wisconsin is in the center of the sedge wrens breeding range. There have been relatively few field studies of this species, and thus many aspects of its natural history remain poorly understood. It would be nice to learn why sedge wrens return in July to Goose Pond when they are reported to nest in Wisconsin in late May and June.

We invite you to visit Goose Pond in August to view your beautiful prairies and to search for the nomadic sedge wren.

Written by Mark Martin & Sue-Foote Martin

Photo by Arlene Koziol

 

Turkey Vulture

A dark, brooding, and indifferent bird, reading the wind like a well-worn novel, the muse of mortality. Taking a thermal, teetering against the wind, soaring in circles, the turkey vulture's mysticism is imagined from a dark and deceased place.

Turkey vultures projectile vomit to defend themselves from predators or intruders.

Edward Abbey imagined himself in “the fierce greedy eyes and unimaginable consciousness of a turkey vulture... soar[ing] on motionless wings high over the ruck and rack of human suffering. For most of us a promotion in grade, for some the realization of an ideal.” An accessible bird, vultures can easily be spotted soaring in the midday sun. Indolent up there, skimming thermals above it all, turkey vultures aren't difficult to track, and their dihedral V-shaped wings are diagnostic.

People often see vultures along the roadside, cleaning up carrion. Groups of turkey vultures last seen among the cumulus will congregate around deceased animals. The habit of scavenging may seem repulsive to some, but turkey vultures play an important ecological role. They clean the earth of its dead flesh. Able to metabolize biotoxins in decaying animals, turkey vultures filter the right-of-ways of roads across America, roads so ubiquitous that it is more accurate to talk about where roads aren't (“roadless areas”) than where they are. The vehicular swarm covering the continent bodes well for vultures, since animals end up crossing these roads for resources or migration. An animal that has crossed enough roads will eventually meet its Buick; until then the turkey vulture waits.

On a warm summer day I trudge into an old field in the process of being converted to tallgrass prairie. Over the stubble of a soy field comes a turkey vulture, flapping its wings as it rocks to the east. I've never seen a vulture work so hard. It flaps its wings hard, rising above the soy and fencerows. Ambition, perhaps, or the bird found something interesting, maybe even edible.

A sharp sense of smell allows the turkey vulture to identify sources of prey. One of a few birds with olfactory expertise, turkey vultures can be alerted to dead flesh by as little as a few parts per trillion in the air. For this reason, black vultures, which lack a developed sense of smell, will follow turkey vultures to a carcass and harass the turkey vultures away from the prize.

In Texas, researchers at the Texas State Forensic Anthropology Research Facility are using vultures for a unique reason: to solve crimes. In a delusive field in Texas, researchers have scattered remains throughout the bluestem and mesquite of the Texas blackland prairies. Theses remains that they've scattered are human. Hoping to nail down the chronology of a crime, turkey vultures could help solidify a timeline, and this research is helping to better identify subjects as they decompose. Dirty work, but work the turkey vulture is cut out for.

The avoidance of death and dead bodies in western cultures wasn't always that way. Up to and even beyond the nineteenth century, churches and crypts in Europe were sometimes decorated with human bones, known as ossuaries, sublime art that provided a link to the dead. Linked with dead bodies, turkey vultures loiter in the land of Poe and Hollywood horror.

Yest, many cultures still revere vultures as a necessary and welcomed birds. Its scientific name (Cathartes aura) means “purifying breeze.” Throughout India and Tibet, a practice known as a sky burial commences upon death, and the turkey vultures remove the body from the earth. Interestingly, Disney's The Jungle Book movie touches on the importance of vultures in Indian culture. The four vultures sitting in the tree quipping “whatchya wanna do? I dunno what you wanna do?” end up saving Mowgli. Rewatched with my well developed “loathing” of vultures, the song “What'cha Wanna Do” becomes almost comical. The birds sing, “When you're alone/ who comes around/ to pluck you up/ when you are down.” These are the precise habits of a turkey vulture, but they are seen as friends in this bildungsroman.

Different species of vultures are found throughout the world. The Turkey Vulture and Black Vulture are known as New World vultures. Yet none of the old world vultures are even found in the same family as turkey vultures. This suggests a convergent evolution for the role of scavengers in the sky, high soaring birds with bald heads. These bald heads are another reason to admonish the turkey vulture, yet these too serve a purpose. Its pink head keeps it clean as it scavenges and helps prevent disease. A bird with a fully feathered head poking around in carcasses wouldn't be the cleanest and must have been selected against.

On the east coast, turkey and black vultures have become a bit of a problem. Suburbanization tends to favor these birds, as more roads mean more roadkill (to a point) and more landfills. The vultures have been nesting in suburban neighborhoods where their excrement runs down trees and splatters rooftops. A black mass of hundreds of vultures probably violates the suburban aesthetic. As a result he USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has harassed tens of thousands of vultures in suburban areas. It is speculated that the black vultures are moving north, partly due to climate change. A warming climate means that the line where carcasses used to freeze is headed north. Along this line, the vultures tip their wings as they pass the growing human populations along the coast. Tipping their wing, thankful for the landfills and the roadkill .

In Wisconsin, turkey vultures often nest on cliffs or concrete structures, secluded from human populations. But about 9 am daily, the vultures soar high above the glacial plains, perhaps seeking an urban heat island, looking for a thermal. Driving on I-94 to the east, past Johnson Creek, I see about 50 vultures hovering over a landfill. Gorging themselves on the offal of our society, turkey vultures are doing alright.

Written by Drew Harry, Faville Grove Land Steward

Photo by David A. Hoffman, Flickr Creative Commons

Clay-Colored Sparrow

Clay-colored sparrows are one our most common grassland birds at Goose Pond Sanctuary. Inexperienced birders can confuse this plain and pale sparrow with field or chipping sparrow but they are easily identified by their harsh, drawn-out monotonous buzzes. Goose Pond Sanctuary Manager Sue Foote-Martin remembers hearing them for the first time at Goose Pond seven years ago when walking in the Browne Prairie.   

In late June and early July, clay-colored sparrows were confirmed nesting in the Browne Prairie for the Breeding Bird Atlas project at Goose Pond. Kristy Larsen observed and then photographed an adult carrying food in the Browne Prairie for the atlas project.

Historically clay-colored sparrows nested in southern Wisconsin. Sam Robbins wrote in 1991 in Wisconsin Birdlife that the last time clay-colored sparrows nested in the Madison area was 1920. He stated that they are a fairly common resident in western and northern Wisconsin and a rare summer resident in southern and eastern Wisconsin.

The first Breeding Bird Atlas project confirmed Sam’s comments. There was only one location in Columbia County for clay-colored sparrows in the first atlas.  In the late 1990’s their habitat was described as “grass and early succession woody habitat”. They like to build their nests in shrubs about two to three feet above the ground. Madison Audubon helped coordinate the development and printing a Grassland Birds of the Midwest poster that lists 25 grassland birds with the clay-colored sparrow missing from the list. At Goose Pond they are nesting in prairies with only a scattering of shrubs.

It will be interesting to see if clay-colored sparrow numbers increase in southern Wisconsin in the second atlas project like they have at Goose Pond Sanctuary. Hike the prairie trails at Goose Pond and observe this interesting sparrow for yourself!

Photo by Tom Benson, Flickr Creative Commons