Each spring and fall, Purple Finches are regular migrants through the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed. Northbound movements usually peak in April and early May. During the summer, these birds nest primarily in cool coniferous forests to our north. Then, in October and November each year, they make another local appearance on their way to wintering grounds in the southeastern United States. A significant population of Purple Finches remains to our north through the colder months, inhabiting spruce-pine and mixed forests from the Great Lakes east through New England and southeastern Canada. This population can be irruptive, moving south in conspicuous numbers to escape inclement weather, food shortages, and other environmental conditions. Every few years, these irruptive birds can be found visiting suburbs, parks, and feeding stations—sometimes lingering in areas not often visited by Purple Finches. Right now, Purple Finches in flocks larger than those that moved through earlier in the fall are being seen throughout the lower Susquehanna valley. Snow and blustery weather to our north may be prompting these birds to shift south for a visit. Here are some looks at members of a gathering of more than four dozen Purple Finches we’ve been watching in Lebanon County this month…
Purple Finches are easily distinguished from House Finches by their notched tails, darker streaking, and well-defined facial markings. Though most frequently found in proximity to conifers, they also visit native deciduous trees and shrubs to snack on berries, seeds, and buds. Purple Finches can be particularly fond of maple, birch, poplar, sumac, and viburnum.Adult male Purple Finches are unmistakable in their wine-colored plumage.Purple Finches join a Dark-eyed Junco, a White-throated Sparrow, and a Black-capped Chickadee at a feeding station.Purple Finches eating black oil sunflower seed.A male Purple Finch in successional forest edge habitat consumes seeds from a dried stand of goldenrod.Purple Finches with juncos and Northern Cardinals.Purple Finches filling up on supplemental foods.
If you provide supplemental foods for the birds visiting your garden sanctuary, we don’t need to tell you how expensive those provisions have become. It can be quite frustrating when the majority of these pricey supplies get gobbled up by the chunky squirrels that dominate your feeding station and leave hungry birds with nothing but the tiny little scraps.
Here at susquehannawildlife.net headquarters, we like to feed whole peanuts in the shell to the resident and migratory native birds. But placed out in the open on a stump or a tray, or even within a hopper feeder, peanuts are quickly carried away and cached for latter use by squirrels and jays. The chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, wrens, and woodpeckers that could really use the extra food to maintain their body fat through the winter get nothing but leftovers.
It’s not unusual for squirrels and jays to scarf up and carry away 90% or more of the expensive peanuts placed at your feeding station. The dozen or more other species of native birds that will partake of this offering get the leftovers or nothing at all.
We’ve discovered a solution that, for us, saves money and more efficiently feeds the native species of birds that stop by our oasis. We’ve been using inexpensive ($6-$8) wire mesh tube feeders intended for suet nuggets to serve whole peanuts in the shell to our guests. As long as they can’t knock the feeders to the ground, squirrels have failed to raid the contents. Like other birds, Blue Jays can still peck away to remove the peanuts from their shells and eat them on the spot, but they can no longer haul off a whole feeder load at a time. Each must carefully crack the shell and remove an individual peanut or portion thereof for immediate consumption. The empty shells remain mostly in the tubes and don’t make a mess. Pesky hoards of non-native European Starlings sometimes visit, but soon become frustrated because their bills aren’t adapted for cracking the hardened peanut husks; they grab any loose morsels they can get, then move along.
We assemble these suet nugget feeders without installing the included perches. We fill them with UNSALTED peanuts in the shell, then hang them from stiff wire hooks beneath the larger horizontal limbs on some of our trees. About every 5 to 10 days, we take them down to remove empty shells, clean the feeder, and add peanuts. A 2-pound bag that would disappear within hours if freely accessible to squirrels now fills 3 feeders or more and nourishes our native birds for a week or longer.
The list of native birds visiting our peanut feeders includes:
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Blue Jay
Carolina Chickadee
Black-capped Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Carolina Wren
The most recent addition to the list of birds feasting on peanuts from our wire mesh tube feeders was this Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that visited yesterday.
So don’t pay hard-earned cash to feed nothing but leftovers to your intended guests, give wire mesh tube feeders and whole peanuts in the shell a try. The colorful native birds will thank you with their presence.
A welcome visitor, a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker stopping by for dinner……and varying its diet by finding small insects among the bark of some of our larger trees.
Our cute lovable chickadees are resident birds, remaining in the same general area throughout the year, often throughout their lives. In the Mid-Atlantic States, there are two species. The tiny Carolina Chickadee is at the northern limit of its geographic range in the Piedmont Province of southcentral Pennsylvania. The slightly larger Black-capped Chickadee is a year-round resident mostly to the north of the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed. Within the Susquehanna basin, an intergrade zone of the two species occurs in the mountains and bottomlands of the southern portion of the Ridge and Valley Province just to the north of the Pennsylvania cities of Carlisle, Harrisburg, and Lebanon. The range of the Carolina Chickadee, as well as the hybrid zone, has gradually crept north during the last fifty years—as much as twenty or thirty miles—while the range of the pure-bred Black-capped Chickadee has simultaneously withdrawn almost entirely from the lower Susquehanna, particularly in the valleys.
Every few years, presumably when their numbers are too great for the sustenance available from the wild food crop in their home range, Black-capped Chickadees invade the more southerly range of both Carolina Chickadees and the hybrids in the intergrade zone. This appears to be one of those years. Black-capped Chickadees are working their way south and showing up at feeding stations stocked with sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, and/or peanuts—sometimes in flocks numbering five to ten birds or more.
Let’s take a closer look at the two species…
In the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed from the Great Valley (Cumberland/Lebanon Valley) south into Maryland, the Carolina Chickadee is the resident species of “tit”.The Black-capped Chickadee, usually a resident of highlands to the north of the lower Susquehanna valley, is slightly larger than the Carolina Chickadee. The most conspicuous difference is the extensive amount of white in the “black-cap’s” wings, both on the edges of the flight feathers and on the set of coverts at the “shoulder”. Black-capped Chickadees often appear longer tailed and bigger headed than Carolina Chickadees and the edge of the black bib is often more ragged. The buffy wash on the flanks is usually more noticeable on the Black-capped Chickadee than on a Carolina. Hybrids from the intergrade zone, having a varying blend of characteristics, are more difficult to identify.
Not only is now a good time to carefully check the chickadees you see, but it’s an opportune time to watch for other invaders from the north, specifically the “winter fiches” including Pine Siskins, Evening Grosbeaks, Purple Finches, Red Crossbills (Loxia curvirostra), and White-winged Crossbills (Loxia leucoptera). During recent weeks, each of these species has been reported by observers at hawk-counting stations on local ridgetops, an indication that they too are experiencing inadequate food resources in their home ranges.
So, as winter approaches, you’ll want to keep an eye on those feeders—and don’t forget to keep an ear on the pines and hemlocks. The rewards could be many!
White-winged Crossbills during an invasion of the lower Susquehanna region in February 2009. Previously unnoticed in the shade, the sounds of their bills crunching the cones led to the discovery of this female (left) and male (right) among a small flock of six crossbills found feeding on Eastern Hemlock seeds at ground level.
So you aren’t particularly interested in a stroll through the Pennsylvania woods during the gasoline and gunpowder gang’s second-biggest holiday of the year—the annual sacrifice-of-the-White-tailed-Deity ritual. I get it. Two weeks and nothing to do. Well, why not try a hike through the city instead? I’m not kidding. You might be surprised at what you see. Here are some photographs taken today during several strolls in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
First stop was City Island in the Susquehanna River—accessible from downtown Harrisburg or the river’s west shore by way of the Market Street Bridge.
From the middle of the Susquehanna River, City Island offers a spectacular view of the downtown Harrisburg skyline. In summer, it’s the capital city’s playground. During the colder months, it’s a great place to take a quiet walk and find unusual birds.This Bald Eagle was in mature trees along the river shoreline near the Harrisburg Senator’s baseball stadium.Ring-billed Gulls gather on the “cement beach” at the north end of City Island.One of a dozen or so American Herring Gulls seen from the island’s north end. This particular bird is a juvenile.A Ring-billed Gull and some petite Bonaparte’s Gulls. Really good birders will tell you to always check through flocks of these smaller gulls carefully. It turns out they’re onto something. Look closely at the gull to the right.A bright red bill and more of a crescent shape to the black spot behind the eye, that’s an adult Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) in winter plumage, a rare bird on the Susquehanna. Black-headed Gulls have colonized North America from Europe, breeding in Iceland, southernmost Greenland, and rarely Newfoundland.
Okay, City Island was worth the effort. Next stop is Wildwood Park, located along Industrial Road just north of the Pennsylvania Farm Show complex and the Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) campus. There are six miles of trails surrounding mile-long Wildwood Lake within this marvelous Dauphin County Parks Department property.
A flock of Killdeer at the south end of Wildwood Lake. From November through February, a walk along the south and west sides of the impoundment can be a photographer’s dream. The light is suitable in the morning, then just keeps getting better as the day wears on.Is this probable Carolina/Black-capped Chickadee hybrid a resident at Wildwood or just a visitor from a few miles to the north? Currently, pure Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) nest in the mountains well to the north of Harrisburg, and pure Carolina Chickadees nest south of the city. Harrisburg possibly remains within the intergrade/hybrid zone, an area where the ranges of the two species overlap, but probably not for long. During recent decades, this zone has been creeping north, at times by as much as a half mile or more each year. So if the capital city isn’t Carolina Chickadee territory yet, it soon will be.Another chickadee likely to be a hybrid, this one with some white in the greater wing coverts like a Black-capped, but with a call even more rapid than that of the typical Carolina, the species known for uttering the faster “chick-a-dee-dee-dee”. It sounded wired, like it had visited a Starbucks all morning.In the lower Susquehanna valley, Carolina Chickadees have already replaced hybrids and pure Black-capped Chickadees as nesting birds in the Piedmont hills south of Harrisburg and the Great Valley. This Carolina Chickadee was photographed recently in the Furnace Hills at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in northern Lancaster County. The transition there was probably complete by the end of the twentieth century. Note the characteristic overall grayish appearance of the wings and the neat lower border of the black bib on this bird,For comparison, a bird presumed to be a pure Black-capped Chickadee photographed earlier this month in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. This fall, “Black-caps”, like many other northern perching birds, are moving south to invade the lower elevations and milder climes of the Piedmont and Atlantic Coastal Plain Provinces. Note the extensive areas of white in the wings, the long tail, the buffy flanks, and the jagged edge of the black bib.Along Wildwood Lake’s west shore, an adult male Sharp-shinned Hawk was soon attracted to the commotion created by bantering chickadees and other songbirds.Yellow during the first year, the eyes of the Sharp-shinned Hawk get redder as the bird ages.Also along the west border of Wildwood Lake, temperatures were warm enough to inspire Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta) to seek a sun bath atop logs in the flooded portions of the abandoned Pennsylvania Canal.
And now, without further ado, it’s time for the waterfowl of Wildwood Lake—in order of their occurrence.
A pair of Wood Ducks (hen left, drake right) with American Black Ducks and Canada Geese.A pair of Northern Pintails.A pair of American Wigeons (Mareca americana).A hen (left) and drake (right) Gadwall.Mallards.A female Northern Shoveler.An American Black Duck.Canada Geese.You just knew there had to be a booby prize, a “Blue Suede” (a.k.a. Blue Swede), a domestic variety of Mallard.It’s a Green-winged Teal (Anas crecca) sampler. Clockwise from left: a juvenile male, a female, and an adult male.A drake and two hen Green-winged Teal. Isn’t that great light by late afternoon?
See, you don’t have to cloak yourself in bright orange ceremonial garments just to go for a hike. Go put on your walking shoes and a warm coat, grab your binoculars and/or camera, and have a look at wildlife in a city near you. You never know what you might find.
SOURCES
Taylor, Scott A., Thomas A. White, Wesley M. Hochachka, Valentina Ferretti, Robert L. Curry, and Irby Lovette. 2014. “Climate-Mediated Movement of an Avian Hybrid Zone”. Current Biology. 24:6 pp.671-676.
