Intervale Bird Excursion

Field Journal #5
11:20am-12:10pm Intervale Trails/Winooski River
Partly Cloudy, 37 degrees
Riverside woods habitat

For this bird walk at the Intervale I was expecting to see lots of bird species and have a lot of cool sightings to report. Unfortunately many of my sightings were very common. I parked my bike at one of the Intervale Trailheads and began walking to the river via trail. Immediately there were lots of chickadees flying around me and getting spooked from the bushes. There were also some songs that I did not recognize before I got to the shore. I found a log to sit on for a minute by the river and I waited for any movement. The river happened to be extremely quiet so I just decided to keep walking. I was expecting to see kingfishers because I had seen them there before.

As I continued along the trail I heard many songs and saw more birds. I observed a woodpecker which I assumed to be downy, because of its small silhouette, directly above me in a tree but I failed to get a good picture. I also heard the distinctive descending tone of a Northern cardinal and followed the sound to see the bird on a branch far away. These pictures also turned out very poor. As I continued on I kept hearing the same sounds and as I walked the trail I saw a flash of red a few yards ahead of me and realized the cardinal had followed me. I also heard geese above and later spotted them on a sand bar in the river. Once by the shore a pair of mallard ducks floated by and promptly flew away when I tried to get closer. On the way out robins were darting in and out of the brush alongside the dirt road.

American Robins and Geese are the farthest migrators I was able to see. Both species can sometimes be found year round in Vermont. Their wintering zones are both not too much farther south. I would estimate that in total the species had traveled 400 miles to get back to their summer zone. Many of the species that stay in VT year round such as the chickadee and woodpeckers are very active during the winter. They have small bodies which don't require much energy, they have very good insulation and they are very good at finding food. These adaptations give them a leg up on larger species that need to follow their food.

הועלה ב-מרץ 30, 2023 03:14 לפנה"צ על ידי