Today in Portland

You may think that while I am on the east coast I don't know what my birds are doing in Portland.  But I actually do.....sort of.  Thanks (many, many thanks!) to two wonderful individuals who each happen to have a suet feeder in areas where I have banded birds (Reed College and Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge), I get intermittent and tantalizing reports of which birds are still around and who they are hanging out with.  And that keeps me going through the long, cold, snowy Maine winter.  

Just today I got a text about some of my Reed birds. Two of these birds are very interesting and have had at least a two year "friendship".......if you can call it that.....GYYX (Gikes) and LLRX (LollRex).  Both are males and for the last two years (and this coming year as well, I suspect) have been seen consistently together at the feeders all winter along with other banded and unbanded birds.   Last year they were always foraging together in a flock of about 20 right before dark even into April. 

[ Cute fact:  bushtits flock members huddle together at night to stay warm and then switch to sleeping in their nests when they are completed.]    

Today I will tell you some of LLRX's history which is a bit checkered.  He is, it seems, not the nicest of birds.  (And he wasn't in 2019 either.)

I caught and banded LLRX along with a female, PXPY (PixPee), early in the 2018 season and in the center of "the Canyon" on Reed campus.  I was certain they had a nest in the vicinity because every time I walked by, I heard them. And I was positive I would find it.  But the brush was thick and there was limited time with the number of nests we had to monitor already and so I soon abandoned the search and chalked it up to a failed nest (it happens) and/or birds that had gone AWOL (it also happens).

Later in the season, however, I happily found them again.  Both LLRX and PXPY were hanging out and bringing nesting material to a small nest [more on nests and how and why they vary in size later] in a pinyon pine near the vegetable garden at the western end of the canyon.  All seemed very domestic and boring at first.  But I soon found that when PXPY wasn't attending to the nest, she was being chased and "courted" by both an unbanded male and LLRX.  In fact, the unbanded male seemed far more attentive to her than LLRX, who would take off, leaving PXPY with the interloper(?) for long periods. 

Once incubation began, LLRX seemed like the doting father....taking turns incubating with PXPY.  At first.  The unbanded male was still around, but never entered the nest although several times I held my breath as he approached and then fluttered way. As incubation progressed, however, LLRX spent less and less time in his fatherly duties.  And then, one day soon after the nestlings had hatched, he disappeared entirely. 

By then, the unbanded male had also flown the coop (sic) and poor PXPY was left to raise the nestlings on her own.  She did so quite valiantly --- exhausting herself as the kids grew louder, bigger, and more insistent.  By the time they were close to fledging, she looked positively bedraggled.  LLRX was nowhere to be seen.  He had vanished.  I assumed he had died.  

But he hadn't.  That winter, he was happily foraging at the suet feeders --- with GYYX who had raised a successful brood himself that year.  PXPY, on the other hand, was never seen again.  I suspect she simply didn't have the reserves left to survive the winter after her labors.  Poor thing.  

But LLRX?   In 2019, he was at it again.....but that, more complicated, story remains to be told in another post!