It's For The Birds

We had some snow here a couple of days ago and I noticed some bird tracks on the deck, outside the kitchen window.  Looking over the deck, I also saw several little birds scratching around in the dead leaves outside.  I used to put out various kinds of food for the birds in Winter and Spring, but haven't done so for ... well, it must be three or four years, now.  That's what surprised me - do the birds remember which gardens have bird feeders?

I know they say that elephants never forget, but maybe birds have long memories too.  I'm sure it's true that the same birds turn up at places along their route where people regularly have bird feeders, but I was surprised to have them turn up here after so long.  As soon as I did put bird food out yesterday, all the little birds (and thankfully not the huge crows) came a peckin'.

No, it's not Spring yet - don't hate us East Coast!  This is the green I'm yearning for right now, as the trees and grass are that dull brown/black of winter.  We don't get a huge variety of birds around here, but occasionally there's a blue jay or red crested woodpecker.  I'm still hoping to see a bald eagle balancing on the little square of bird food that I leave out there.  Could happen - there are some around here, but I'm not holding out much hope.

Here's a fascinating bird fact - there's a german word, Zugunruhe, which describes the restlessness found in birds before the migration south.  This is from a 2006 story in the New York Times -

Barbara Helm of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Andechs, Germany, and the late Eberhard Gwinner in PLoS Biology,  studied African stonechats. Stonechats are in the thrush family, and many breed in Europe and fly south in winter. The birds that the researchers studied were residents in Africa, and were thought not to have a genetic predisposition to migrate. What the researchers were looking for was evidence of zugunruhe in the resident stonechats, which they raised in the lab at the Max Planck Institute, under a variety of circumstances.

The scientists did not expect to find it in the resident birds. But they did. The stay-at-home stonechats exhibited the same sort of nocturnal restlessness as their migrating relatives. The conclusion: some level of zugunruhe may be common even in birds that don't migrate.

I believe there have also been experiments involving putting ink on the feet of birds in a cage and putting paper at the bottom of the cage.  In the morning, it seems to show that the birds spend a lot of the night in the southern quadrant of the cage, feeling - I presume - a little bit Zugunruhe.