Ok....I'm on a roll!  Let's see if I can can keep it up....

Today I'm going to post a short excerpt from my book which is a natural history narrative about all my years studying bushtits.  It has plenty of science in it, but fun stuff as well.  I've already shared some other excerpts in earlier posts.  The following belongs more or less to the "fun" category.  Enjoy!  

Caging bushtits 1989

I have several plans for the season this year that will give me information beyond what I have already collected in the field.  One of these plans involves mist-netting bushtits and studying them in captivity.  I have heard that bushtits are exceptionally difficult to keep in aviaries as they require live food and do not take kindly to cages.  

This year I have two completely different plans in place to safely provide me with caged bushtits.  The first is to capture adults relatively early in the day and late in the season -– adults unassociated with a nest -- and to provide them with an abundance of live waxworm larvae as soon as I have them safely in cages.  These larvae best mimic the soft-bodied caterpillars that bushtits adore.  Instead of holding the birds overnight no matter what, I plan to release the adults before dark if they don’t eat in the cage so that they can forage and survive on their own.  I don’t want to be responsible for the deaths any captive bushtits.   I really care way too much for them to see that happen. 

To temporarily house the bushtits that I catch I fashion three 1m x 1m x 1m cages out of hardware cloth. I‘m not concerned about the size of the cages because bushtits are not strong fliers and I reason that they will be perfectly happy in these temporary digs while we build a larger aviary.  And I expect I’ll only be housing perhaps four in each cage anyway.  

One morning, on a lark and feeling a bit lazy in my pregnant state, I string a mistnet right outside our little stone cottage where I have been seeing fairly predictably a small flock of bushtits foraging on most mornings.  Because the speakers and the begging fledgling tapes are being used in the field to colorband on the main study site as usual, I don’t have access to them.  Consequently if bushtits do end up in the net at all, it will be a bit of a surprise.  But I give it a try anyway….. 

…..and catch the entire flock of eleven birds on the first day around 4 PM.   After carefully removing each bird from the net, I place them all in the same cage.....so they will be together and happy....with a little vegetation  for perching and masses and masses of waxworms for eating – I hope.  In fact, there are so many waxworms in the cage, there is no way they can move without stumbling over one.  And I wait.  I stay a respectable distance from the cage at first so as not to disturb the birds, but I can see that they are frantic.  Being in the enclosure is not making them happy and, instead of settling down and eating the abundance placed so conveniently there for them, they are flying about and smashing into the hardware cloth walls, clinging to the sides, spitting loudly, and attempting to force their little heads through the holes in the hardware cloth which are thankfully way too small to cause any damage to the little birds.  

I let them struggle like this for about 2 hours, feeling quite sorry for them, and beginning to think that it will soon be time to release them.  I can’t imagine they are ever going to settle down and eat and I know that their metabolism is too high for them to survive this much energy expenditure and loss overnight without eating.  Releasing them is clearly the kindest thing to do. 

It seems unlikely that my presence will change anything so I move to sit next to the cage.  They don’t seem to notice me – that’s not really a surprise – and their behavior doesn’t change.  I watch for awhile as they continue their frantic attempts to get out of the cage.  Finally I’m feeling frustrated and ready to do anything.  I really want this to work.  Without any expectation that a wild bird will take food from my hand,  I pick up a wiggling waxworm and hold it out near a perch through the wire.  Remarkably and quite magically one of the birds notices, hops over, looks quizzically at the larvae I am holding in my fingers, and then grabs it and hops off with his prize.  It takes him a bit of time to process it before he can eat it.  But in that time the others notice his fortune and (hallalujah!) suddenly become aware that the cage is full of delectable and delightful and delicious waxworms.  Now all the activity changes dramatically.  Now everyone is single-minded as they gorge themselves on waxworms.  After 15 minutes, they are all stuffed and sated and very happy little bushtits.  As the sun goes down they huddle together in row, quietly spitting and chirruping, and dramatically fall asleep – every single one of them with one or two waxworms still hanging from their beaks.  It’s as if they couldn’t quite believe their luck and couldn’t eat more, but gave it a valiant try.  I wish I had a camera!    And so I leave them to sleep it off and to see what the morning brings, happy in the knowledge that they will at least survive the night.  

Dawn comes and I open my eyes with some trepidation to a relatively quiet room.  To my great surprise, I see no frantic activity in the cage just on the other side of our room.  I hear no frantic spitting.  Instead all 11 bushtits are either hopping about the cage quietly spit-spitting their contact calls and foraging or perched and preening.  In other words, they seem perfectly happy.  Not a single one is trying to go elsewhere.  I move slowly as I dress, but I needn’t.  Just as bushtits are nonchalant about our presence in the field, so they seem to be even so in this unnatural situation.  I can approach the cage, reach in and clean it, and move around the room perfectly naturally and the little flock simply goes about its business.  They seem to have adapted overnight to their caged existence and don’t even mind the large primates in the room. They even happily perch on my hand to eat.  This couldn’t be better.  Bushtits are born cage birds as long as they have food.  The little darlings.  

 I promised more about 2023 and so I will deliver.  We'll see how long that lasts.  

This year the bushtits made a liar out of me.  I am convinced it was a plot.  In Arizona, young females, as far as I could tell because finding them was hard, left their natal flocks in small groups and then settled in different flocks nearby.  They didn't move far.  But they did move out and to new areas.  

This year in Portland, I had the good fortune of finding all the nestlings from one of the nests that fledged late last summer -- now, of course, full grown and breeding age. BTW, both the parents of these guys nested successfully together again this year...sweet.....but that's another story in itself.  

Anyway.  We found all 5 kids on Reed campus near where they hatched and could identify the sex of them all -- keeping in mind that bushtits all hatch with dark down eyes and only after a few weeks morph into the striking yellow/cream eye that distinguishes females.  Lo and behold, there were 3 males and 2 females.  The females were still not far from where they had hatched when I recaptured them early in the season.  Within weeks two of the males and one female built nests not far from where they hatched.  That was a surprise. At least the female was.  I expected her to be long gone given what I thought I knew about bushtits.  That'll teach me.   

And then there was another female hatched last year who nested -- twice -- just 25 yards or so from the nest she hatched out from.  That was even a bigger surprise.   

Honestly?  Annoying.  So now I need to rewrite that part of the bushtit story.  Females may not be leaving their natal flocks in Portland.  At least some females seem to be hanging out with their bros.  Sigh.  

I do wish they'd be consistent!!  But, alas, that appears not to be in the cards.  Once the DNA gets analyzed, things may become much clearer.  At least one can hope.      

2023 in a nutshell

I've said all this before, and I'll say it again:  I am a bad blogger.  I admit that.  The problem is during the bushtit breeding season I am (surprise!) busy out in the field finding nests, banding birds, and watching birds all day long.  I come home ready to eat dinner, relax, plan the next day -- not an easy task if there are competing priorities.  Which nests desperately need watching because we haven't watched them in a long time?  Which nests desperately need watching because there's something odd and interesting happening there?  Which nests have birds that need banding -- now?  Which nests have babies that need banding -- yesterday?  Where are we certain there is a nest but we haven't found it yet?  Ad nauseam.

You get my drift.  It's a job in itself just figuring out what takes priority the next day.  And then, of course, I need to organize the various assistants and myself around that plan for tomorrow.  And, finally, sleep. 

Repeat.  Day after day from March and at least through June.  In fact, I have the reputation of thinking a day off involves strolling around and looking for new nests or banded birds.  Obviously, I like what I do. But that does mean I have little time to blog during the most exciting part of the year and so......I am a bad blogger.  Apologies to those who have dipped into my blog, found it interesting, and been disappointed with the rarity of my posts.  

But now I am back in Maine and trying to find a publisher or agent for my book about my 37 years of bushtit research.  It's a frustrating and odd process.  I somehow have to convince an agent (preferred) that this tiny, boring-gray bird is actually interesting and, even more important, there are people out there who would buy a book devoted to this tiny, boring-gray bird.  I have no doubts, given what I know about bushtits and the interest I see in the public about them.  But convincing an agent or publisher is another story.  

So I am going to try to step up my blogging both because I would like to prove there is an audience and because there are parts of the bushtit story, especially the Oregon story, that haven't been written and this seems to be a good place to do that.  Rather than write into the certain void that is my computer, I'll write into this uncertain void that at least has the potential to reach some curious readers.  

I'l start with a brief recap of 2023 and move onto some fun stories in future blogs.  

Recap:  Well, it was an odd year in some ways.  The bushtit built their nests at about the same time of year that they usually do, beginning in March and "finishing" sometime in early April.  But what stood out this year was the lateness of egg-laying. First egg dates were about 3 weeks later than in most previous years.  It's easy to assume that was the result of a cold and wet spring.  But last year was a cold and wet spring as well and egg dates were as expected.  So...a mystery to be solved.  How do bushtits decide when to lay their eggs?  I have no idea.  Moving on......

Because eggs were laid so late, there were no fledglings at all until almost the end of the season.  I verified that this was weird by looking at past year's field notes.  In June we usually see fledgling flocks all over the place.  This June we saw very few.  And these few were "accounted for" fledglings.  In other words, they were fledglings from known nests.  That verified that we hadn't missed a bunch of earlier nests.  They just didn't exist.  

Late nesting also meant that no nests were reused for a second brood.  Which means only one brood of kids was added to the population.  But all was not lost!  Maybe because they nested so late, predation on nests was relatively (relatively) low and those kids that did hatch fledged successfully at a higher rate.  So a trade-off.  

Ok.  That was the boring update.  As in previous seasons, there are some fun stories to tell about the little guys and I will (try!) to post those over the next few weeks.  

So, stay tuned!!  

The first nests of 2022!!

I've been back in Portland for about a week and have encountered only flocks -- foraging and behaving un-interested in nesting.  No chases.  No little wing-flutters of romantic interest.  Nothing but food, food, food albeit in smaller flocks than those found in the winter.  We've found some old banded friends hanging out together.  That's been rewarding, but no nests.   

This is typical of March in these wet and raw climes.  Who wants to build a soggy nest on a soggy day?  Better to wait for a nice sunny one.  Which is what we had this afternoon.   On a sunny day, even when it's cold, food is easy to find.  A nap can be taken in the warm rays.  I have found that sunny early afternoons are prime bushtit nest-building time during this unpredictable time of the year.  

And so it was no big surprise when my assistant, Amit, found the first nest of the year around 1PM.  It's a loose hanging sack -- somewhere between a Stage 2 and a Stage 3 -- entangled in the lower branches of a very large juniper and only about head high.  Nice!  The unbanded pair was building rapidly, but quit around tea-time when all good bushtits without completed nests return to their flocks to forage and prepare to find a cozy, safe place to huddle together for the evening.  It's one reason early bushtit nests take so long to build --- the work day is short.  

The next nest was only a Stage 1.  It was a thick and sloppy tangle of spiderweb fixed to the small fork of a branch hanging on the very lower branches of a hemlock.  If it survives, it will be an easy nest to watch and to band at.  If it survives.  Already the goldfinches were there pilfering spider web.  The bushtits were annoyed and tried to chase them off but, unfortunately, the goldfinches made off with about half the load.  Only time will tell if this means the nest-site will be abandoned. Even if it is, it's likely the pair (also unbanded) will build nearby.  

Fingers crossed!! 

 

Interlude......San Juan Island bushtit story (2014 and earlier)

 I thought it would be fun to insert a draft from the book I've been writing that chronicles my research (and parts of my life) on bushtits beginning in 1986.  I began my research in the Sky Islands region of southeastern Arizona, briefly tried to study long-tailed tits in Spain, and then finally settled in the Pacific NW, beginning with the San Juan Islands.  This excerpt is about my short time on Shaw Island.  Just for fun:

Many years ago, in 1997, when I was contemplating moving my bushtit study to the Pacific NW where I, as a redhead, wouldn’t have to deal with the heat and the sun, I explored the possibility of the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound near Seattle.

These islands are beautiful and have the advantage of having a far lower yearly rainfall than the coastal areas of Washington, which deserves its reputation for being wet.  The islands are also relatively undeveloped so that there was plenty of land for bushtit habitat and little “suburb” to negotiate.  And there was a field station, albeit primarily for fish researchers, conveniently situated on the largest island of San Juan. Having lived at SWRS for so many years, I recognized the advantages of having colleagues and meals provided, leaving the days free to follow bushtits.  

 

So my husband Drew and I, dragging our then 1 year old Ellie and 6 year old Hannah, across the country (again) settled into a modern and comfortable apt within Friday Harbor Lab of the University of Washington.  Unfortunately, it was too early for the fish folk and so the dining room was closed.  But we had our own full kitchen which also made for a convenient bathtub for the baby. 

 

One of the things I learned about bushtits in the San Juan’s is that they are relatively new immigrants to the area and that they inhabit only a few of the larger islands.   In fact, they were observed on San Juan for the very first time in 1935.  (Coincidently, the same year Alexander Skutch described them as having helpers at the nest in Guatemala.)  Before then….no bushtits.  In retrospect, that makes sense.  Bushtits are pretty bad fliers.  They certainly can’t make any kind of distance easily.  Flights are usually confined to kind of weak, wave-like movements from tree to tree.  During the nesting season, pairs collect nesting material and often fly a great distance (for a bushtit) in a beeline to the nest.  But I can’t imagine any bushtit thinking it was less than suicide to cross a large body of water.  

 

On the other hand, it’s relatively easy to imagine one being blown off-course in a violent storm.  But you need more than two birds to make a flock, or even a nest.  So one bird would be a dead end.  Literally.  (It’s even possible, I suppose, that early bushtits somehow clung to the ferries that made their way from island to island.  But that’s a little far-fetched.)  

 

Females, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, are the primary dispersers and so I imagine the first group of bushtits making it to the islands were female bushtits in small groups.  They must have arrived with great hope, only to find no males.  So no nests. And they died lonely spinsters.

 

In any case, since 1935 some brave or unlucky or stupid bushtits did eventually make it to San Juan, Orca, and Lopez and established themselves as breeding flocks. 

 

But my greatest hope in the San Juan islands was an outpost of the University of Washington on the smaller Shaw Island.  It had a cottage specifically reserved for researchers and two full-time caretakers.  There were no facilities (shopping and such) on the island, so shopping trips had to be made to one of the larger islands every two weeks or so.  But it was university property and plenty big enough for my research, especially if I included the convent property next door.  And my understanding was that the sisters were quite bird-happy and would welcome a project on their farm.  

 

So we headed out to Shaw Island with great hopes for a new research site.  After all, the distance between Orca and Shaw was a miniscule 2000 feet so. Surely, since 1935, they must have made their way to Shaw!  

 

But they hadn’t.  What we found was perfect bushtit habitat everywhere (brambles, old farms, etc) …..but not a spit.  Not a feather.  No bushtits at all.  A call to the local Audubon confirmed my fears.  I had the perfect new study site without any study animals.  Very disappointing.  

 

So we looked over the other islands as well, mostly as hikers and tourists, and found the bushtit densities weren’t particularly high and there was enough private land to make things difficult.  So I scrapped the idea and planned to head back to hot and sunny Arizona for yet another year (which turned into thirteen).  Oh well.  

 

Fast forward to 2014.  A good eighteen years later.  Arizona is no longer viable for me or for bushtits.  Not only are there unpredictable and potentially dangerous drug-runners in the Chiricahua Mountains, the droughts have decimated the bushtit population in these already desert mountains and so, if I want to study bushtits in any numbers, I really have to go elsewhere.  

 

And so I remember the San Juan Islands….beautiful and cool and possibly, eighteen years later, swarming with bushtits. Or so I can hope. The 1935 invasion was just the beginning and perhaps they have managed a bigger foothold by now.  In fact, it’s possible Shaw now has bushtits. What a wonderful thing that would be! I make a few quick calls to local birders who think here are bushtits on Shaw now, but they aren’t entirely certain what the population looks like.      

 

So, in 2014, Ellie and I settle into the “cottage” on Shaw Island, navigating a narrow one-lane road along the edge of the island and then a rather harrowing muddy dirt road to get to the cabin which sits right on the water.  This “cottage” is nothing I ever expected.  It’s just one room, but that one room has a full wall of floor to ceiling windows attached to a wide mossy deck over-looking the sound.  From here we can watch fishing boats, sea otters, whales, and all the other watery goings-ons in Puget Sound.  

 

The rest of the cottage is pretty bare-bones and smells strongly of mice.  It hasn’t been inhabited in awhile. After our first night there, that is verified.  The kitchen counter, although cleaned the night before, is covered with mouse turds.  So….mouse wars begin.  I don’t like killing the little guys.  They aren’t just house mice.  They are Peromyscus (wild white-footed mice) and actually belong here more than we do. As happenstance would have it, we accidently find the perfect solution.  At the bottom of the plastic trashcan our second night there is a trembling wide-eyed little rodent.  He’s been able to get in, but not out. Perfect.  At night we store the trash in the refrigerator and turn the plastic trashcan into a mouse trap:  a bit of tempting peanut butter at the bottom with a paper towel for cover.  The first night, we catch 3.  The second night 2, then one,  then…..none.  We are mouse-free.  Each of the little creatures is gently released far from our home near a dumpter that looks to me like mouse heaven.  

 

Ok.  Back to the bushtits and the solution to the mystery I am sure you (all three of you) are dying to hear about.  Are there bushtits on Shaw Island? 

 

Well……the first foray Ellie and I take out “into the field” is a success.  We find a fairly large flock of bushtits foraging on the edge of the field near the main House where the caretakers live.  Very exciting!  We decide to follow them for as long as we can.  That turns out to be easy.  They stay ---- for the entire day --- foraging in the brambles on the edge of the field.  Ellie and I take turns napping.  Six solid hours of nothing.  But at least we have bushtits.  

 

The next day is the same.  And I should point out that this seems odd.  Most bushtit flocks move large distances each day.  This flock seems perfectly happy to stay in one spot.  At one point they stray into the brambles in the middle of a large field nearby.  But that’s it……..

 

………until the next day.  Full of optimism (but not looking forward to another day of naps alternating with boring foraging bushtit observations) we head over to the brambles and, lo and behold (or rather not behold), there are no bushtits.  So we search.  And search. And search. We search the entire university property.  We get in the car and search the entire island by road (discovering that there’s a rather ritzy section at the other end -- Bill Gates lives there.)  And we find nothing.  No bushtits .  That goes on for a couple of days during which we are alternately mystified and supremely frustrated.  Where the hell are they??  

 

Finally on day three we find them (although without banded birds we can’t be certain they are the same birds) on the university property, but at the other end and near an old bunkhouse that is infrequently used by university classes.  The setting is beautiful.  Lovely old gnarled and flowering trees.  The gorgeous blue sea with the other islands on the horizon.  Seals.  Grassy lawn-like open areas.  Sun.  A convenient and clean outhouse (!!) in the woods.  

 

It’s a change from both our bushtit-less existence over the last few days and the long, boring days watching the flock live a sedentary existence in the brambles near our cottage.  

 

I don’t want to dwell on Shaw Island for too long because, honestly, it wasn’t too exciting.  We frequently lost the birds for days on end and then they would mysteriously reappear in an unexpected place.  Over the weeks that we were there (which seemed much longer) it began to dawn on me that we were probably watching only one flock with a very, very large home range: the entire island.  That would explain why they were so hard to find. 

 

The other odd thing about this flock (if it was the same one) was the ratio of males to females. There were far more males than one would expect in the usual bushtit flock.  And, when they finally began to nest, we found only two nests. 

 

So it dawned on me:  what we were likely looking at was a founding flock.  Shaw Island, just 17 years before, had no bushtits.  Somehow bushtits had made their way here and successfully bred.  But bushtits have one major flaw that makes it difficult for them to successfully and rapidly colonize an island.   Only the males are philopatric and stay with the natal flock.  Females, on the other hand, migrate out at the beginning of the spring to find a new flock to join and find a mate in.  But…….these females had nowhere to go.  There were no other flocks to migrate into.  They likely searched and searched to no avail, eventually succumbing to the elements as lonely spinsters.  Sad. And not a good way to increase a population.   

 

In the meantime, speaking of sad, I was succumbing myself to a kind of melancholy lethargy.  I began to mutter things like “Maybe I should just stop studying bushtits.” and “This is discouraging.  Let’s go home.”  I began to loose my enthusiasm.  But Ellie, wise Ellie, wouldn’t have anything of that.  “Why are we staying here, Mommy? she said one day.  “You know there are bushtits in Discovery Park in Seattle.  Why don’t we go there?”  

 

I had dug my heels into Shaw because of the lovely living conditions and the large university property but I had to finally see the reason in Ellie’s words.  We should at least look at Discovery Park even though it was in the middle of a city and really wasn’t a very appealing place to work.  

 

So we went.  And we found bushtits.  We found lots of bushtits.  We were tripping over them (not quite literally, but certainly figuratively).  In a few short days we found and watched six active nests.  Six happy nests with spitting and active bushtits.  Every block in the developed areas had at least one breeding pair.  It was bushtit heaven!  And my sprits rose --- as Ellie had predicted.  Bushtit, ho!   I had found my new study area.  Whew.   

So that's bit of the Washington story.  But.....but.......I'm in Portland!  So, Discovery Park wasn't my new study area, was it?  To learn more about that story, you'll have to read the book.....