I’ve been intrigued by birds most of my life. Well, actually any critter that I can find around this great Times News region’s nature areas gets my interest.
However, birds certainly top my list.
Local birds vary so much in size, shape, activity and color. We can find small birds, like a ruby-throated hummingbird or a ruby-crowned kinglet, to birds as large as great blue herons or the majestic bald eagle in our local area.
But each and every one has evolved with certain adaptations that allowed them to survive, and in so doing continue the species.
I hope many of you enjoy watching birds or even feeding them. If you do, I challenge you to take a close look at some of your favorite birds, maybe at your feeders, and look at the special things they do with the “tools” they have.
For instance, I have a few suet holders filled in the cooler months that attract many different birds. One of the feeders is attached to the aluminum spindles on our deck railing. The spindles don’t offer any rough surface, but somehow the red-bellied woodpeckers and downy woodpeckers can grasp onto them to get to the fat-rich suet.
In this week’s column I’ll use some photos to explain how some of these birds have specialized and how cool their adaptations really are.
Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: Winter denning will begin now or soon for some animals. Bears and woodchucks feed voraciously to build up fat reserves for the winter. This is called: A. fast food intakeous; B. transpiration; C. hyperphagia; D. estivation.
Last Week’s Trivia Answer: When you feed the small birds at your feeder in winter, hawks will learn where their meal is as well. The Cooper’s hawk is the most common raptor at your winter feeders.
Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com
The ruby-throated hummingbird, the only hummer breeding east of the Mississippi River, obviously has a long thin bill as one of its major adaptations. It is used to get deep inside tubular flowers to access the nectar there.
The really exceptional adaptation of our hummer is the length and function of its tongue. The tongue is more than 1½ inches long, and when it brings back nectar it curls in to make a little channel to better get the nectar into its throat. BARRY REED/SPECIAL TO THE TIMES NEWS
Many birds have a either a transparent or translucent third eyelid that slides downward across the eye. In woodpeckers, this nictitating membrane serves to protect the eyes when it is hammering in a tree trunk with chips flying. Note the eye of the young male pileated woodpecker (one with the red cap). Ospreys, for example, have this membrane for their dives into the water to catch fish.
Woodpeckers, like the pileated or red-bellied, have very strong bills and a small brain that has little space around it so it really doesn’t bang against the skull when the bird hammers. Our brain has a fair amount of intracranial fluid and more space for the brain to move against the bone, often resulting in a concussion from a fall or football tackle.
One key adaptation birds have is a special flexor tendon from the back of the thigh to the ankle. This tendon “locks” a bird’s claws/talons closed when they are at rest, or even when sleeping. I found this mourning dove taking a little afternoon snooze safely latched to the branch on which it is perched.
Owls, like this barred owl, have a multitude of amazing adaptations. I’ll address many of them in a later column. However, their retina holds many more rods (photoreceptors) than cones, allowing them to gather five to 10 times more light than humans. With all the rods, and few cones, they sacrifice most of their color vision, though. White-tailed deer also have great night vision but limited color vision.
ABOVE: Ospreys that dive feet first into the water to catch fish also have special adaptations. They are the only raptor species with oily feathers as well as wings that are also long and rather narrow so they can better take off from the water’s surface with their prey.
LEFT: Of course they would be poor fish catchers if they didn’t have these long and razor-sharp talons. The outermost talon also rotates back to give them two sets of opposing claws to better grasp slippery fish.
I found this American woodcock on an East Penn Township road. Woodcocks probe the soft soil, usually in moist areas, for earthworms and grubs. They have a very long bill, with the top slightly longer and specially tipped for sensing and then grasping food.
Brown creepers, fairly common but seldom seen, creep up a tree trunk with the help of stiff tail feathers not found in all birds. Those feathers help prop them in place as they lift loose pieces of bark while searching for hidden insects or spiders.
Ducks, geese and swans, like these tundra swans on a partially frozen Beltzville Lake, have specialized feet. These aquatic birds have arteries carrying warm blood lying just next to the veins, helping to warm the returning blood to the heart. They also have very little soft tissue in their webbed feet; basically tendons, bones and blood vessels all helping to stave off frostbite. (Picture yourself in bare feet standing on ice for hours!)
Vultures, like this turkey vulture, have featherless heads. Once thought only an adaptation to keep from getting infections from eating messy carrion, researchers in the past few years believe their heads are vital in helping control extremes in their body temperature.