I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

It's spring, the Red-winged Blackbirds are all pumped up and making music, and so are we.

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: In my most recent book, Flights Against the Sunset (published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008), there was a whole chapter ("Nightland") that was an extended essay on sleep deprivation. None of our friends were surprised about that. For Kim and me, sleep is usually pretty far down the list of priorities. There are always too many other interesting things to be doing.

Right now we're a little more crazed than usual. This weekend is the big annual banquet / celebration of the Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO), and we've been swamped with trying to prepare for it. The observatory has a great staff and a lot of wonderful volunteers, without whom nothing would ever happen (come to think of it, I'm a volunteer). But still, Kim has been going like crazy all week, like a hummingbird on overdrive, dealing with a zillion details relating to the weekend. I never move as fast as she does, but I've been preoccupied with prep for the weekend as well.

Most of the action is taking place in Port Clinton, on Ohio's North Coast. It kicks off tonight (Friday night) with a show by our band, 6-7-8-OH, playing classic rock from 8 to 11 in a benefit concert for the observatory. Tomorrow morning (Saturday) I'm teaching a workshop on field identification of ducks, geese, and swans, a two-hour intensive course (and no, I'm not finished preparing for it yet). Saturday afternoon there's a tour of local businesses in Port Clinton, focusing on the many who have offered support to BSBO. Then in the evening we have the annual banquet, with awards, silent auction, etc., and a featured presentation by Norm Smith from Massachusetts Audubon, showing pictures and talking about his amazing research on Snowy Owls. Then Sunday morning we have field trips followed by a celebratory brunch.

And then maybe we sleep, or at least lie around on the floor with our tongues hanging out.

Ah, Spring! It's such an exciting time of year, the birds are all jazzed up, and so are we! But if you've called or written to us recently and haven't heard back, this is my attempt to explain why!

Happening Right Now: Crossbill Invasion

From Birding Central, Kenn writes: In the northeastern quadrant of the U.S. and adjacent southern Canada, this is shaping up to be a huge winter for northern invaders. I’ve written already about Pine Siskins invading southward, and that push is continuing, with flocks reported all over the east. Northern Shrikes have appeared in unusual numbers, and so have Snowy Owls, with many around southeastern Canada and the Midwest. Flocks of Evening Grosbeaks have put in brief appearances in several places. Now, just within the last few days, flocks of White-winged Crossbills have set the hotlines buzzing all over Ohio.

Of all the "winter finches," White-winged Crossbills are the most nomadic. They specialize on cones of spruces, hemlocks, and tamaracks, using their trademark crossed bill tips to pry open the cones and get to the seeds. The map here shows their overall range in North America -- but they are never present throughout this range at once. They concentrate where there are bumper crops of cones, nesting and raising their young where the food is abundant at practically any time of year. When the cone crop fizzles and the food supply declines, flocks of crossbills fly fast and far in search of the next good feeding area. The purple area on the map shows the limits of their year-round range; within those limits, the same birds might nest in Quebec one year, Alaska the next, Ontario a few months later, sweeping back and forth across the continent to find the cones.

The dashed blue line on the map shows the (very approximate) southern limit of their winter wandering. They certainly don’t come south to this line every year, or even once every five years. The classic setup for an invasion is to have a huge crop of spruce cones in eastern Canada, so that the crossbills nest and raise lots of young, followed by a crash in the cone crop in fall. When that happens, White-winged Crossbills may suddenly appear all over Ohio and surrounding areas -- as they have in the last few days.

A birder who knows the callnotes might detect these birds anywhere, the flocks passing overhead in rapid flight. To get a sit-down look at White-winged Crossbills, birders are seeking out places where northern evergreens have been planted. Parks and cemeteries with lots of hemlocks have been productive here. The crossbills appeared in the Cleveland area last Saturday, in Toledo on Monday, in Columbus today. There are probably hundreds more flying around that no birder has seen yet.