About two weeks ago I spent a few quiet hours in “Penn’s Woods” just listening and watching.
Even though it wasn’t the best time of the year, I did observe/hear over two dozen bird species. The variety of birds made it interesting.
Four of the species I saw, and not unexpectedly, were woodpeckers. I had a chance to watch a pileated woodpecker hammer away at a rotting stump where she probably found carpenter ants and grubs. The trunk wasn’t as solid as an oak, but she did make quick work of that stump.
Woodpeckers have specially adapted bills and special “shock absorbing” structures in their skulls to tolerate that constant banging and chipping away.
(And, by the way, there is no difference in using the terms beaks or bills. I traditionally used beaks when talking about hawks, robins or woodpeckers, and often referred to ducks as having bills. But beaks and bills are synonymous. I turned to a reliable source, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, to confirm what I always thought …)
A male cardinal was close by, and you probably noticed that they and grosbeak species have large, heavier seed crushing bills.
The kinglets and warblers that I saw that morning have actually slim and relatively short bills they use to pick insects/spiders from leaves or branches.
A brown creeper has a slightly downcurved bill to help it lift up loose pieces of bark as it creeps upward from low on a tree trunk to almost near the top.
There are so many shapes, sizes and forms of bills that I can’t describe them all. Most are made of keratin (like our finger nails) while some are bonier. They must be fairly lightweight because most birds do fly, and weight conservation is vital.
Bills range from the hooked bills of raptors, to spear-like beaks of herons and egrets, to spoon shaped ones for seining out food from a mucky pond or marsh bottom.
I’ll show a variety of common and some specialized bird’s bills in the remainder of this column.
It’s always a time to observe birds, so get out there to check out those bills/beaks.
Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: Barn swallows left our region in mid- to late August. Which swallow species could you still see now in our area? A. bank swallow; B. tree swallow; C. cliff swallow; D. rough-winged swallow.
Last week’s trivia answer: Yellow-rumped warblers are the hardiest of the warblers, and occasionally one can be found in this region in the winter months.
Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com
It appears to me that bill variety is most evident in the birds feeding in aquatic habitats. Here is a great egret showing its nearly 10-inch spear-like bill used for capturing fish, amphibians or crustaceans.
Black skimmers have bills adapted with a lower bill about 1½ inches longer than the top bill. It flies (skims) just above the surface of a bay with the longer bill just touching the surface to snatch up small minnows.
Sometimes remaining for a few days each spring and fall on our area lakes, the double-crested cormorant swims underwater to catch fish. Its hooked bill helps it hold the fish as it turns it around to swallow whole, head-first.
The American oystercatcher, becoming more uncommon, has a 10- or 11-inch-long heavy bill. It uses it to pry open bivalves (clams, oysters) or to pound them open.
The white ibis has a very curved bill, which it uses in the muck to “swish back and forth” to locate prey hiding there.
Sometimes misidentified as a flamingo, the roseate spoonbill leaves no doubt how it got its name. It uses its unusually adapted bill to probe in the silt and muck to find small crustacean food.
With a “beak” only a mother could love, the wood stork’s heavy, 9-inch bill is used to grab crabs, etc., in southern Florida waterways.
Last spring on a drive along a quiet East Penn Township road I found a recent roadkill, a woodcock. I photographed its head area to show the specially adapted upper bill, which is relatively soft and slightly longer than the lower bill. The bird uses it to probe in the damp, soft soil along streams or marshes for earthworms and grubs. BARRY REED/SPECIAL TO THE TIMES NEWS
Hummingbirds, like our local ruby-throated hummingbirds, have special long and thin bills to allow them to reach deeply into tubular flowers to get the sugary nectar needed to fuel them.
Birds of prey (hawks, falcons, vultures) and this juvenile bald eagle have very sharp, hooked upper bills to allow them to tear apart their prey.
All woodpeckers have amazingly strong and hard bills. Young pileated woodpeckers’ bills grow rapidly while they are still in the nesting cavity. That’s probably an advantage as the parents push the food into the juvenile birds’ mouths.
Grosbeak species, and cardinals like this one, have stout, large bills capable of even cracking open cherry pits. But that bill design does not keep them from eating insects as well.
While sitting quietly in our local woods, I thoroughly enjoy watching brown creepers meticulously work their way up a tree trunk using their thin, slightly curved bills to investigate almost every little bark crevice. Their thin bills enable them to pull out overwintering insects and spiders.