An American Robin hunts worms

 

An American Robin (Turdus migratorius) with a just-captured earthworm. 

Last week, Shauna and I traveled to the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area on a whirlwind trip. I was to give a talk (moths) to the Garden Club of Allegheny County on Thursday, so we headed over bright and early on Wednesday to photography waterfalls around the Ohiopyle area.

Upon arriving at our cabin late that day after a photo outing, there was an American Robin on the lawn. Whoop de doo, you might think - robins are one of the most abundant and widespread birds in North America. That's one of their allures, to me. I can go to the wildest northern Michigan forest, midwestern prairie remnants, local parks, urban cityscapes, my back yard, and there they are. The big thrushes are nothing if not adaptable.

But robins are much more than adaptable. The robust caroling song is beautiful and a near ever-present sound of nature. They're showy, too - so much so, that if robins were rare, everyone would go ape over them. Their stout nests are remarkable architectural achievements: an adobe cup that dries to the hardness of a China bowl, and its neatly reinforced with grasses and other vegetation. And the color of the eggs spawned the name of a color: robin's-egg blue.

Anyway, as we took a moment to watch the robin, it suddenly lunged and caught a worm. Cool! Said I, then noted that photographing an American Robin in the act of snagging a worm was still on my bucket list. As there were several robins hunting the lawns, Shauna suggested that I go try and check that item off the list, so I did.

A male American Robin looks and listens for invertebrate prey in the grass. When one freezes, lowers it head and cocks it slightly, action is about to ensue. The robin is using its sensitive ears to listen for worms and other prey, as well as watching with keen eyes.

Bingo! The robin pounces! It has its head way down in the grasses and is about to come up with a favored prey item. I'm not sure the bird could even see the victim and may have divined its location entirely by ear.

PHOTO NOTES: I made all of these images with my Canon R5 and 400 DO II lens. It was coupled to the Canon 1.4xII extender, giving me 560mm of reach. That was plenty. Robins are fairly tame to begin with, and after a while this bird became used to me, and I was typically within 30-30 feet of it. I was shooting wide-open at f/5.6 (without the extender, the lens would be an f/4 of course). As robins in the midst of attacking prey can move with astonishing speed, I used a shutter speed of 1/2500. And, as almost always is best with animals, I was at or near ground level for these shots, to be on my subject's level. And the camera was on electronic shutter mode at 20 frames a second, to capture all of the action.

Unlike the worm in the first image, this one is a monster "nightcrawler". Here, the robin has just seized it and is working to tug the worm from the burrow. While such a task is fast and easy with a tiny worm, it is tougher when a big worm is involved. When under attack, the worm can bunch the powerful muscles that form rings down its body and plug itself into the burrow. Furthermore, worms are beset with rows of external setae - short stiff hairs - that can also help in holding it in place.

The robin tugs with all of its might. The bird is actually off of the ground and leaping/pulling backward. There were a few near extractions like this, and the worm would manage to tug itself further back into the hole. Then the robin would yank harder and in fairly short order it had won the battle.

The worm separates from the ground with great force, as if someone had let go of the other end of a Slinky. Its body coils sinuously as the pressure is instantly released, and the robin had it down the hatch shortly thereafter.

It should be noted that all of the large earthworms in this part of the world, insofar as I know, are night native. They are native to Europe and Asia and were brought over by accident in shipping material such as soils associated with nursery plants. It didn't take long for them to spread far and wide and increase enormously in abundance.

It didn't take long for the clever and adaptable American Robin to learn about worms and make them a large part of its diet.

Fox Sparrows in the yard, and an upcoming sparrow program

 

A handsome rusty-red Fox Sparrow (Passerella iliaca) in the author's Worthington (Ohio) yard on April 4 of last year.

I am fortunate to get Fox Sparrows in the yard nearly every year, but until this winter they have always been migrants and short-term visitors.

Not this year. Two Fox Sparrows have been here since last October, and I see them daily - at least when I'm here to see them - up until the present. In recent weeks, one of them has begun singing and what a song it is. A loud slurry whistled aria, as if the bird had been drinking. But is still largely holding together the notes that comprise its beautiful melody. I walked out at dawn to feed everyone the other morning, and it was like stepping into the boreal forest. The Fox Sparrow was singing, as was a White-throated Sparrow, and a Dark-eyed Junco. At least a dozen of each of the latter two species have also been around all winter.

On March 29, I am giving a photo-rich talk about the Sparrows of Ohio at the Creating Living Landscapes Conference, sponsored by the Midwest Native Plant Society. It's at the Bergamo Center in Dayton, and the event features a fine slate of speakers on a diversity of topics. For full details and registration info, GO HERE. We would love to see you there!

Greater White-fronted Goose

 

As always, click the image to enlarge

Eleven Greater White-fronted Geese (Anser albifrons), along with a Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) forage on a grassy bank of a small lake. About 60 other "speckle-bellies", in hunter slang, where present, along with several hundred Canada Geese, four Ross's Geese (Anser rossii), and two Cackling Geese (Branta hutchinsii).

On February 23, Shauna and I ran down to a nearby pond in southwestern Franklin County (Ohio) to marvel over a flock of about 70 "Speckle-bellies". She had never seen this western species of goose, which was formerly a rare migrant in Ohio, but is becoming much more common. North American populations of this tundra breeder are increasing at an estimated 5% annually, and there are about 5 million Speckle-bellies globally.

A Greater White-fronted Goose drops to the ice for a nap, along with four of its compadres. The air temperature was quite brisk, in the low 20's F. Ice and cold are nothing to the hardy speckle-bellies and these are spring migrants, pushing north on the edge of ice-out.

Map courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birds of the World monographs. I am a longtime subscriber, and if you are a student of birds, you should be, too.

Greater White-fronted Geese breed in Arctic regions over much of the globe, and the orange areas represent the breeding range. The speckle-bellies in my images have a long way to go. While there is no way to know exactly where they're headed - Alaska? northern Hudson Bay?, Nunavut? - one thing is clear: they still have a long haul ahead. It is about 1,500 miles to the nearest local that they might nest.

Birds that breed in such northerly latitudes are no strangers to frosty temperatures and icy conditions.

A handsome bird indeed, a Greater White-fronted Goose holds up a foot, enabling us to admire its orange legs. They match its bill quite nicely. We also see why the "speckle-belly" nickname arose. The formal name Greater White-fronted Goose stems from the bold ivory ring around the base of the bill. As the name implies, there is a Lesser White-fronted Goose (Anser erythropus).  It is a Eurasian species of more limited and scattered distribution, and at the risk of stepping into the subjective waters of beauty and what constitutes it, an even showier bird than the Greater White-fronted Goose. It breeds as far east as eastern Siberia - you know, the land that Sarah Palin could see from her house - but there are only two North American records: Attu, Alaska in the Aleutian chain in 2004, and 2013 on St. Paul Island, Alaska, in the Bering Sea (three years after I was there, darn it).

As noted in the first paragraph, Greater White-fronted Geese have increased greatly, both as migrants through Ohio, and in the overall range. A number of factors might account for this, including wetland restoration and increased foraging habitat on wintering grounds, better protection and stronger game laws, and the adaptability of certain large goose species, of which this is one.