By Stan Tekiela
Author, naturalist and wildlife photographer
The spring migration is a busy time of year in the natural world. According to Cornell University Birdcast (birdcast.org), nearly three million migrating birds pass over my part of the northland in a given night. Most of these migrating birds occur from 4 to 4:30 a.m. and travel around 40 mph at an altitude of 700 feet. According to their data, the migration starts around 9 p.m. the night before and peaks just before sunrise. We see lots of migration throughout the month of May.
I was checking this data on my phone while I was photographing birds in my yard. A yellow-rumped warbler landed at my suet feeder. Its tiny wings were fluttering to hold in place while he grabbed a beakful of nutritious suet. Normally warblers do not visit backyard feeding stations, but during the spring migration, and especially when the weather is cold and wet, these warblers are desperate for anything to eat. Insects make up the majority of their “normal diet,” but with the cold wet weather, there are very few insects around, so these birds turn to alternative food sources. This is when people notice an “unusual” bird at their feeders.
White-throated sparrows are another springtime visitor to backyard feeding stations. These striking ground dwelling sparrows, with their black- and white-striped heads and bright white throat patch, are migrating in small flocks and are often mixed in with other sparrow species. The white-throated sparrows feed mainly on the ground, so they are usually seen scratching around under a feeding station. I have dozens around my feeding station. The white-throated sparrow spends the winter in far southern states and joins the millions of birds as they migrate northwards, heading to Canada. I was able to capture some decent images before they continued their migration northwards.
Another interesting visitor to my feeders was an adult red-headed woodpecker. While capturing images of the spring migrants, I noticed a red-headed woodpecker landed on my peanut feeder. This is an interesting bird to visit my feeders because I normally do not see these birds around. In the mid-1800’s the red-headed woodpecker was one of the most common woodpeckers in America. John James Audubon reported that orchard owners would pay a bounty to anyone who would shoot the red-headed woodpecker because the bird would feed on their fruits. Audubon reported that over one hundred red-headed woodpeckers were shot from just one cherry tree.
Back in the day, the red-headed woodpecker would rely on chestnut trees to produce large crops of chestnuts. The great chestnut blight, a fungus from Asia, killed off nearly all of America’s chestnut trees in the early 1900’s, leaving the red-headed woodpecker looking for a new food source. Data from the Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC) shows a 55-75% decline in red-headed woodpecker population from 1966-2020.
The red-headed woodpecker migrates but not like the typical neo-tropical birds like a warbler. In spring, they move around a lot, traveling hundreds of miles in search of fresh territory or colonies of other red-headed woodpeckers, so it’s not unheard of that they would visit feeders in the spring for a couple of days. As I mentioned before, spring is a busy time of year in the natural world. If you take a few minutes to stop and observe, you will see it for yourself. Until next time…
Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and capture images of wildlife. He can be followed on instagram.com and facebook.com. He can be contacted at his website naturesmart.com.
