This past week my Birdie friends on Facebook have been posting their photos of beautiful birds that have returned to Mississippi after a winter vacationing in Mexico and South America. Some of these birds have traveled almost 2,000 miles! These are the birds that sport beautiful colors in their feathers that we don’t see all year round – Indigo Buntings, Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds, Tanagers, Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks, American Goldfinches, and Baltimore Orioles. Some even get to see Warblers visit their yards.
Dennis and I have been excited to see their return to our yards also. How wonderful that they remember to stop by and refuel at our feeders after their long journey. These long flights can take a toll on birds and some birds fly south, but never return due to natural causes such as weather and predator birds. There are also unnatural hazards that cause loss of life, such as feral cats, colliding into automobiles and glass windows, and even oil spills. So the return of these beautiful birds is pretty close to a miracle.
If you have ever flown in an airplane it gives you a little understanding of what it would be like to be a migrating bird. You look out of the window and see the earth below. Some birds fly by day and they are able to see the fields and forests below. They can see our homes beneath and the trees of our yards filled with berries, flowers and insects look like an inviting forest to them.
Most fly by night and if you have ever had a night flight you can remember the surrounding darkness and the starry skies. The radar that they possess in order to make it through the eerie night! This also makes me wonder how they can locate us each year because everything always looks so tiny on the ground from the view of an airplane.
Do birds remember our little attempts to invite them to our yards? Do they remember our feeders, birdbaths and flowers that we have planted to draw them? Do they share their information and memories from one generation to the next?
Sally Roth in her book The Backyard Bird Feeder’s Bible suggests that we write these “red letter” return dates of migrating birds in a bird diary to see if the dates vary from year to year. She writes that this helps us to anticipate the arrival of these birds each year. She also suggests recording the departure dates if possible. She has followed her birds coming and going for years and she reports that the dates generally only vary a day or two of each other annually.
The recording of these dates also helps us prepare foods for the arriving birdies. Many of my friends now put out grape jelly and oranges for the Baltimore Oriole, Wrens and Hummingbirds to enjoy. One friend recently told me that she decided to invest in some fairly expensive mealworms for her nesting Eastern Bluebirds. She has enjoyed watching them enjoy these treats as they sit on their little bluebird nests.
One thing that I didn’t realize until I started researching is that some birds take short trips south of where they normally live. Due to bird banding scientists have found that birds in Canada may fly to New York, birds in New York fly south to Virginia and Kentucky birds may fly to Mississippi. Migration habits of birds are still being studied and a lot is still a mystery to us bird lovers. Scientists are involving lay people more and more in the study of birds. E-counts and our observations of the coming and going of birds aid in bird counts and their research.
We have much to be thankful for and to enjoy during these spring days as we continue to “Look at the birds of the air…” Matthew 6:26.
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