Tag Archives: Insects

The Oh-So Welcome Return of Songbirds and Butt Bouncer Warbler!

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The tail-wagging Palm Warbler that doesn’t behave like your typical warbler!

One of the earliest migrating songbirds that we see along our shrubby, woodland edges is the Palm Warbler. He stands a bit more upright, is slightly bigger, and has the unique habit of wagging its tail. Last November I made a video of a tail-wagging Palm Warbler in non-breeding plumage and forgot to share. Several days ago, I was fortunate to to catch a mini flock of four foraging along the ground and low on the bush, another non-warbler characteristic behavior. I write fortunate because when I checked back the following morning, they had already moved on. Palm Warblers breed further north than do most species of warblers, as far north as the boggy boreal forests of Canada and Maine.

Here you can compare both breeding and non-breeding feathers, from April of this year and from November 2025, respectively. Nicknames for the Palm Warbler include, Butterbutt, Tip-up Warbler, Wag-tail Warbler, and Butt Bouncer. As you can see in the last clip, insects are what they are foraging for in the undergrowth!

 

Thoughts About Leaf Blowers and How We Can Possibly Find a Solution Working Together :)

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Whether or not to ban gas-powered leaf blowers sure is creating a maelstrom of divisiveness in our communities. Everyone who has an opinion feels strongly, very strongly, that their viewpoint is the correct pov. Let’s think of the pros and cons and perhaps there is a solution. If I missed a pro or con, please feel free to write so we can include your point of view.

PROS of Gas Powered Leaf Blowers

Landscapers and homeowners appreciate the lower cost associated with gas-powered leaf blowers.

GPs are more powerful than electric, saving time and money.

Many landscapers and homeowners already own gas powered blowers.

CONS of Gas Powered Leaf Blowers

Gas powered leaf blowers are very loud particularly when multiple blowers are in use simultaneously.  The noise pollution is disruptive and unpleasant to neighbors.

GP blowers emit a strong odor of gas fumes, harmful to the environment and to the person operating the leaf blower.

Some observations – our home is located in a middle class neighborhood where leaf blowing does not occur regularly, if at all, whether gas or electric. I do however have clients in more affluent neighborhoods where the use of leaf blowers is much more prevalent. People are correct, the noise level is extremely loud. A crew of men, typically Latino, will disembark from company pick-up trucks, with gas powered blowers strapped to their backs and ear phones snugly wrapped over their ears. The crew of half dozen or so will spend a good part of an hour blowing the leaves off a driveway that won’t even be driven on again until the summer resident homeowner returns the following year. Not only does it seem like an utter waste of time, it concerns me that the employees are breathing the fumes. This is also the same crew that I see spraying pesticides around the base of the homeowner’s foundations, also not wearing protective covering. I am wondering if protective masks and clothing can be provided to the employees that are required to use gas-powered leaf blowers and pesticides.

Do homeowners need half a dozen men blowing leaves off driveways and the street in front of their homes? Perhaps with less demand for an immaculate leaf-be-gone landscape, one gentleman wearing a mask, as opposed to six maskless men, could do the work. If a homeowner is having considerable work done and a leaf blower is needed to assist in clean-up, that seems to me like a reasonable use. Or if a pathway is covered with wet leaves creating an unsafe situation for an elderly person, that too seems like a reasonable use.

In my own landscape design firm, I encourage clients and friends not to remove leaves and the expired stalks of flowering plants. To my way of thinking, leaves on lawns and in flower beds is a beautiful thing! Not only are the decaying leaves providing a protective layer and adding nutrients to the soil, leaves also provide habitat for all manner of insects. I think at this point in our shared awareness about the environment, we all understand that insect populations the world over have plummeted.  We homeowners and landscapers can help insect populations by leaving leaf litter in our gardens. The most delightful benefit of a garden that supports insects, is that the insects attract a host of beautiful songbirds that in turn conveniently eat the insects <3

For the benefit of insects, especially native bees, we also do not cut down the expired stalks of flowers until the end of April. In the late summer and early fall, native bees and other insects burrow into the stalks. When we do eventually cut down the stalks, we leave them in a pile for several weeks before discarding, hoping our little pollinator friends have wiggled out of their winter home.

Perhaps if we can change people’s mindsets about what constitutes a healthy landscape, the fashion of blowing leaves will become mush less problematic.

The song of a Carolina Wren chortling from a treetop has to be one of the sweetest songs you can imagine hearing in you garden. They love to rumple about in the leaf litter, foraging for insects. Insects are an important part of a songbird’s diet, especially during the breeding season when the females are producing eggs.

Carolina Wren nest with eggs tucked under our porch eaves – 

Later in the season, a Carolina Wren fledgling is perched on the back fence. She was made fat and healthy from a diet rich in your average garden variety insects – 

 

United Nations World Migratory Bird Days!

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In honor of World Migratory Bird Day, yesterday I visited the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences. The Center is located in Manomet, a seaside village of Plymouth. Special free programming included a presentation by the Center’s bird banding experts, children’s activities, and a bird-a-thon. I was especially interested in learning how the Center bands songbirds. Banding takes place annually from April through November. Some days the Center bands as few as 10, on other days, upwards of 200. Manomet has records on migrating and resident birds dating back over 50 years and it was fascinating to learn about their banding protocols and population trends.

Juvenile Carolina Wren – The Carolina Wren population is growing in Massachusetts

while the Blue Jay population is in steep decline.

The theme of Wold Migratory Bird Days 2024 is insects and the importance of insects as a critical source of protein for migrating birds.

Insects sightings at Manomet on included Autumn Meadowhawk damselflies, American Lady Butterfly, skipper of unknown species, a variety of bees, and several Monarchs. Unlike Cape Ann, the Seaside Goldenrod is still blooming on Cape Cod.

Monarch Butterfly and Seaside Goldenrod

The public is welcome from dawn to dusk to walk the trails, enjoy the view from the bluff and bird watch.

Address:
125 Manomet Point Road
Plymouth, MA 02360
(508) 224-6521

From the Center’s Website:

Overview of the Bird Banding Lab

At the Trevor Lloyd-Evans Banding Lab, we use science and education to create opportunities that connect people to nature. Migratory and resident birds have been banded at our Manomet’s Plymouth, Mass. location since 1966.  Manomet’s Founding Director Kathleen (Betty) Anderson banded the first recorded bird – a Black-capped Chickadee.

For more than 50 years, Manomet has maintained a spring and fall migration bird banding program. Bird banding is an effective method of research that helps answer important questions on issues from conservation to climate change. Manomet’s banding lab, one of the first bird observatories established in North America, focuses on areas including:

  • Migration: When and where birds arrive can tell us about habitat and food availability. This information can be used to inform habitat management and land use strategies.
  • Population: With the data we collect in the lab, we can produce estimates on changes in population and notate trends over time.
  • Life history: Banding contributes valuable information on longevity, habitat, diet, and other physiological trends across species.
  • Productivity: Banding helps us detect shifts in age or sex ratios that would otherwise go undetected.

Manomet staff has recorded over 1,000 plant, animal, and fungus species on site, showing the value of our coastal forest and shoreline as a rich laboratory for research.

Why band birds?

Migratory bird banding operations represent an underutilized source of data about bird migration. Long-term data sets in ecology, like ours, may lead to discoveries often missed in shorter-term studies, and are critical for establishing baselines and tracking changes in the natural world. Because birds are widely surveyed by professional and amateur observers alike, and their natural histories are often well-understood, wild bird populations can be useful sentinels of environmental change and ecosystem condition.

Check here for weekly summaries of current and past banding seasons.

The banding team operates 50 mist nets on the property surrounding Manomet headquarters in southeastern Massachusetts along Cape Cod Bay. Nets are kept open during daylight hours, Monday through Friday, in the spring and fall. Banders walk the net lanes, safely removing trapped birds and returning them to the lab where their species, age, sex, weight, and fat content are measured and recorded. We have banded over 250,000 birds and handled over 400,000 since banding began on the property in 1966. We band around 2,500 new birds each year.

As Manomet’s longest-standing program, the banding lab has helped train hundreds of prospective researchers, educators, and conservation advocates since its inception. We educate about 1,000 visiting school children, volunteers, and college students every year. We strive to engage people of all ages with nature and to measurably increase people’s understanding of environmental change.

 

What is World Migratory Bird Day?

In 1993, the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center created International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD). This educational campaign focused on the Western Hemisphere celebrated its 25th year in 2018. Since 2007, IMBD has been coordinated by Environment for the Americas (EFTA), a non-profit organization that strives to connect people to bird conservation.

In 2018, EFTA joined the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) and the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) to create a single, global bird conservation education campaign, World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD). Continuing our tradition with IMBD, WMBD celebrates and brings attention to one of the most important and spectacular events in the Americas – bird migration.

This new alliance furthers migratory bird conservation around the globe by creating a worldwide campaign organized around the planet’s major migratory bird corridors, the African-Eurasian flyway, the East Asian-Australasian flyway, and the Americas flyway. By promoting the same event name, annual conservation theme, and messaging, we combine our voices into a global chorus to boost the urgent need for migratory bird conservation.

EFTA will continue to focus its efforts on the flyways in the Americas to highlight the need to conserve migratory birds and protect their habitats, and will continue to coordinate events, programs, and activities in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean at protected areas, refuges, parks, museums, schools, zoos, and more. As many as 700 events and programs are hosted annually to introduce the public to migratory birds and ways to conserve them.

AN EAR-FULL OF CEDAR WAXWINGS! ALONG WITH MERLINS AND HAWKS ON THE HUNT

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During the last weeks of summer, I was blessed with the great good fortune to come across a flock of Cedar Waxwings. Everyday I followed their morning antics as they socialized, foraged, preened, and was even “buzzed” several times when making too quick a movement or crunched on a twig too loudly for their liking. They were actually remarkably tolerant of my presence but as soon as another person or two appeared on the path, they quickly departed. I think that is often the case with wildlife; one human is tolerable, but two of us is two too many. 

The Cedar Waxwings were seen foraging on wildflower seeds and the insects attracted, making them harder to spot as compared to when seen foraging at berries on trees branches. A flock of Cedar Waxwings is called a “museum” or an “ear-full.” The nickname ear-full is apt as they were readily found each morning by their wonderfully soft social trilling.  When you learn to recognize their vocalizations, you will find they are much easier to locate.

These sweet songbirds are strikingly beautiful. Dressed in a black mask that wraps around the eyes, with blue, yellow, and Mourning Dove buffy gray-brown feathers, a cardinal-like crest atop the head, and brilliant red wing tips, Cedar Waxwings are equally as beautiful from the front and rear views.

Cedar Waxwings really do have wax wings; the red wing tips are a waxy secretion. At first biologist thought the red tips functioned to protect the wings from wear and tear, but there really is no evidence of that. Instead, the red secondary tips appear to be status signals that function in mate selection. The older the Waxwing, the greater the number of waxy tips. Birds with zero to five are immature birds, while those with more than nine are thought to be older.

Waxwings tend to associate with other waxwings within these two age groups. Pairs of older birds nest earlier and raise more fledglings than do pairs of younger birds. The characteristic plumage is important in choosing a mate within the social order of the flock.

By mid-September there were still seeds and insects aplenty in the wildflower patch that I was filming at when the beautiful Waxwings abruptly departed for the safety of neighboring treetops. Why do I write “safety?” I believe they skeedaddled because a dangerous new raptor appeared on the scene. More falcon-like than hawk, the mystifying bird sped like a torpedo through the wildflower patch and swooped into the adjacent birch tree where all the raptors like to perch. It was a Merlin! And the songbird’s mortal enemy. Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned Hawks, too, had been hunting the area, but the other hawks did not elicit the same terror as did the Merlin.

Merlin, Eastern Point

Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned Hawks

A small falcon, the Merlin’s short wings allow it to fly fast and hard. The Merlin is often referred to as the “thug” of the bird world for its ability to swoop in quickly and snatch a songbird out of the air. The day after the Merlin appeared, I never again found the Waxwings foraging in the wildlflowers, only in the tree tops.

Within the sociable ear-full, Waxwings take turns foraging. Some perch and preen, serving as sentries while flock-mates dine. Cedar Waxwings eat berries and they love a wide variety. The first half of their name is derived from one of their favorite fruits, the waxy berries of cedar trees. During the breeding season, Waxwings add insects to their diets. Hatchlings are fed insects, gradually switching to berries.

Juvenile Cedar Waxwing with adult Waxwings

If you would like to attract Cedar Waxwings  to your garden here is a handy list that I compiled of some of their most favorite fruits and berries –

Dogwood, Juniper, Chokecherry, Cedar, Honeysuckle, Holy, Crabapple, Hawthorn, Serviceberry, Mulberry, Raspberry, Grapes, and Strawberry. Cedar Waxwings are becoming increasingly more prevalent in backyards because people are planting more ornamental flowering and fruiting trees.

GROSS!

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Not really gross, but actually quite beneficial!

Song Sparrow eating caterpillars copyright Kim Smith

Through my camera’s lens, I thought this sweet little Song Sparrow was hopping around with a breakfast of leaves until downloading the photos. Rather, his mouth is stuffed with what appears to be the larvae of the Winter Moth, those annoying little green caterpillars that dangle from trees, which pupate into the dreaded adult Winter Moths, which are destroying trees and shrubs throughout the region. So, thank you Song Sparrow!

The Song Sparrow was most likely bringing the caterpillars to its nestlings. Although adult Song Sparrows prefer seeds, to a newly hatched bird a plump juicy green caterpillar is easy to digest and rich in nutrients. As a matter of fact, most songbirds rear their young on insects. The Song Sparrow photo illustrates yet another reason why it is so important not to spray trees with pesticides and herbicides. When a landscape is pesticide free, a natural balance returns. Insects are bird food!