Suddenly, southern Wisconsin has roughly twice the number of birds. This is not a conservation miracle; this is the biology of breeding birds. Simply, baby birds are all over right now.
At the same time, bird song reaches a lull right about now, thanks to busy work to be done feeding and caring for fledgling birds.
Three fledgling swallows on a branch, with mouths open and ready for their next meal. Photo by Keith Williams
The adornments of spring and early summer—bright plumage and liquid song—wane with the dog days of summer. Ironically, when birds seem most abundant during spring migration, when a mid-May day spent birding could yield over 100 species, they are indeed at their lowest population level of the year. Now, with recently fledged young, a whole new wave of birds has entered the world.
With this wave of birds comes a startling problem for birders: how to identify them! The easiest way of doing so is to find the parent bird, which will often be working to feed the young. In the absence of this helpful hint, identifying fledglings becomes a test in the subtler clues of bill size, wing bars, flight style, and overall plumage. Sometimes these clues conspire in the absence of a mother or father bird, as was witnessed recently on the Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas Photos and Discussion Facebook Page, the comments are thoughtful and funny and show how this bird challenged a group of expert birders.
A screenshot of a mystery fledgling that stumped many birders, taken from the Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas Photos and Discussion Facebook group.
Popular guesses for this bird included cedar waxwing, pine warbler, blue-winged warbler, and yellow warbler. The result? Inconclusive.
Just yesterday at Faville Grove we saw three fledgling birds on a dead tree. I initially thought they were kingbirds. Then an intern suggested swallows, and I thought they might be tree swallows. Looking into the hazy sky it was hard to see any white bar across the bottom of the tail feather to indicate an eastern kingbird. Their chirping sounds didn’t sound quite like kingbirds either. Of course, while leaving my truck to head out into the field, I debated whether to bring my binoculars. I did not bring my binoculars.
I decided they were swallows since they appeared to have a forked tail. But they seemed too big. And they flew like kingbirds. And I did not have my binoculars. We headed back as the day was ending, and I saw an adult kingbird flying with a caterpillar in its mouth, now I thought they were kingbirds again.
An eastern kingbird fledgling perches on a branch, wide-mouthed and hungry. Photo by Andy Reago and Chrissy McClaren
All of this speaks to the fun challenge of identifying birds at this time of year. It can take some mental gymnastics, and even common birds at the fledgling stage often appear nothing like their adult counterparts. You’ll often feel like you hardly even know these birds, and indeed you don’t, they have yet to achieve their full plumage and song, but catching a glimpse of these developing birds provides fun insight into the yearly cycle of birds and can help you become a master of field markings for even the most common birds.
Written by Drew Harry, Faville Grove Sanctuary land steward
