Slow Birding

12/17/22, 6:27 PM Gmail - slow birding
Svetozar Minkov <syminkov@gmail.com>
slow birding
Ralph Lerner <rlerner@uchicago.edu> Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 3:44 PM
To: Ralph Lerner <rlerner@uchicago.edu>
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IN THE GARDEN
After a Frantic Year, It’s Time for ‘Slow Birding’

A new book borrows from the slow food movement to propose a more thoughtful, less competitive form of bird-watching.
· · ·
The blue jay’s taste for acorns inspires a slow-birder exercise: Go look for acorns beneath an oak. Are there empty caps?
Blue jays usually remove the caps before transporting the nuts to a caching site for later consumption.Credit...Anthony
Bartley/Fading Royalty
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=6e4551fb51&view=lg&permmsgid=msg-f:1752499204831071748 1/13
By Margaret Roach
Dec. 14, 2022
6 min read
The feeders are filled and hung; the scene is set. Are we ready to let our incessant daily to-do list take flight and settle in
to watch the birds?
I’m not talking about the occasional glance out the window, but a long, contemplative look.
A new book, “Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard,” proposes doing just that —
during feeder season and throughout the year. The author, Joan E. Strassmann, is an animal behaviorist and professor of
biology at Washington University in St. Louis.
Slow birding, a term she adapted from the slow food movement, is not checklist-driven bird-watching, which may feel
almost competitive, as if mandating that more is better, and rarer is best. For a slow birder — and Dr. Strassmann
considers herself one — the payoff is not a longer life list, but connecting with and gaining insight into our inner circle of
everyday birds.
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“When someone asks what new or exciting birds I have seen on my morning walk, I smile and answer with delight as I
name the commonest birds,” she writes.
Image
Have you ever heard the high, thin whistle of a flock of cedar waxwings arriving as if from nowhere, just as the
serviceberries (Amelanchier) are ripening? Somehow, the waxwings, among the most frugivorous of birds, know the crop
is ready. Credit...Anthony Bartley/Fading Royalty
The list she urges us to make is of what she calls our “home birds”: those in the backyard, or the neighborhood or park
where we take our daily walks. The hope, she writes, is that we “might appreciate their actions and begin to understand
the biological underpinnings of bird behavior.”
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Besides being the most familiar, these species are also the most studied. In “Slow Birding,” Dr. Strassmann distills what
the slowest birders of all — research scientists who devote years to unraveling a mystery about a single species — have
learned.
Her own research career has focused on organisms that are not exactly crowd-pleasers: social wasps and social
amoebae. “But many decades ago, I realized that birds were the way to teach concepts in animal behavior,” she said. “I
always wanted my students to experience the joy of discovery.”
In the name of deeper discovery, Dr. Strassmann combed the scientific literature and profiled 16 household-name
species, including the Northern cardinal and the blue jay. She offers suggestions on how to streamline scientific methods
so we can study the birds ourselves, combining the mind-set of a biologist and the beginner’s mind of a meditator.
Her invocation: “These winged dinosaurs that have given up stored fat, hollowed their bones, and made many other
compromises for flight — these organisms connect us with here and there, with then and now, as they chatter outside our
windows or soar past our lives.”
Birds, she writes, are “our closest connection to wildness.” But what exactly are they doing out there?
Image
To stay light for flight, birds are never far from starvation. A laboratory study of dark-eyed juncos found that they lose 7
percent of their body weight while they’re at rest overnight — the equivalent of a 160-pound person losing a little more
than 11 pounds.Credit...Anthony Bartley/Fading Royalty
Go Birding on an Empty Stomach

One tactic among many that Dr. Strassmann offers for being a better observer seems more empathic than purely
scientific.
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“I like to watch birds before breakfast, when I’m hungry,” she said. “I feel it connects me, because birds are always
hungry.”
These lean, mean flying machines are never far from starvation. A laboratory study of dark-eyed juncos that she includes
in the book found that the birds lose 7 percent of their body weight while they’re at rest overnight. That’s the equivalent of
a 160-pound person losing a little more than 11 pounds during a single night’s sleep.
The backyard feeder can be our own informal laboratory. We may witness evidence of what is known as “vigilance
behavior”: when certain birds face upward, watching for predators, while the others eat. Who does that, and for how long?
Signs of dominance are evident in this group setting, too. Who displaces whom on the feeder, or beneath it? Do particular
species dominate, and do males or females of a particular species control the food-strewn turf? (A field guide, the Merlin
app or Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website can help with identification and distinguishing the sexes.) Take
notes.
Next, zero in on individuals. Try focal animal observation, a method named by a Princeton University researcher studying
baboons in Kenya in the 1970s. Choose one feeder bird and watch it for a predetermined time span, writing down its
every action. For instance, does it eat the seed right there or carry it away? Then observe and document the activities of
another member of that species, and then another — each for the same time period, perhaps five minutes. Compare your
findings.
And sketch. “I know people feel embarrassed to start drawing,” said Dr. Strassmann, who took lessons from a neighbor
who was a retired art teacher. “But I think that if you try to just sketch the birds sometimes, you’ll find that you can look at
them more carefully than you thought.”
Image
The Northern flicker, our second-largest woodpecker, has a diet heavy on ants, an abundant and surprisingly calorie-rich
food.Credit...Anthony Bartley/Fading Royalty
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The Bird That Gets the Worm

We’ve all seen the little dance of an American robin foraging on the lawn. It runs a few steps before stopping abruptly,
cocking its head and waiting, and then drives its bill into a particular spot to grab an earthworm. How did it pinpoint the
worm’s location — from vibrations, sight, scent or sound? The robin homes in on sound, a study by two Canadian
scientists confirmed.
As familiar as that worm-hunting behavior is during breeding season, earthworms aren’t the robin’s year-round staple; it
also eats lots of fruit. It does eat worms — but maybe more important, regurgitated worms and insects make especially
good baby formula.
Anyone who has been challenged by a pair of protective robins when approaching a robin’s nest may be surprised to
learn that most contain eggs or chicks not fathered by the on-duty male. The slow birder keeping track of the couple will
probably see them share feeding and other parental responsibilities, but that apparent devotion is no indication of fidelity.
“This is perhaps the most famous case of everyone being wrong about birds,” Dr. Strassmann writes.
Most songbirds? Not particularly faithful, it turns out.
Image
A fierce lesson from the food chain: seeing a Cooper’s hawk swoop in and take out a songbird at the
feeder.Credit...Anthony Bartley/Fading Royalty
A Taste for Ants, Acorns — or Other Birds?

For a better example of constancy, consider our second-largest woodpecker (after the pileated).
“Northern flickers are faithful,” said Dr. Strassmann of the handsome bird with the big voice. She describes its long call as
“an unmistakable high-pitched staccato of about seven pulses per second, something like kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick,
kick.”
Like robins, flickers are often observed on the ground, hunting for a meal — except that instead of worms, they pursue
ants, an abundant and surprisingly calorie-rich food that makes up a majority of their diet.
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Another loudmouth, the blue jay, has a particular taste for acorns, which inspired one of Dr. Strassmann’s slow-birder
exercises: Go look for acorns beneath an oak in your garden or park. Are there empty caps? Blue jays usually remove the
caps before transporting the nuts to a caching site for later consumption.
In moving those acorns, jays, certain mammals and probably the extinct passenger pigeon helped oaks regain their
northern range after the glaciers of the last ice age displaced them.
Whether those moves add up to long distances over stretches of history or just the surprise oak seedling in your flower
bed, Dr. Strassmann’s blue jay chapter title is as cheeky as the bird itself: “Mighty Oaks from Little Blue Jays Grow.”
A fiercer lesson from the food chain? Seeing a Cooper’s hawk swoop in and take out a songbird at the feeder (or finding
the feathery remains of that encounter on the ground below).
Not so long ago, Cooper’s hawks were known as chicken hawks and hunted to near extinction because they preyed on
farmers’ flocks. We also nearly did them in with DDT, which kept them from absorbing the calcium in their food, often
resulting in eggshells that were too thin to support their young.
But they have rebounded. And along the way, they have created their very own definition of the term feeder bird.
“This is the hawk of our times,” Dr. Strassmann writes, “the one that has made our neighborhoods its home.”
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Image
About half of all white-throated sparrows have tan eyebrows; the rest have white ones. Those with white head stripes are
more dominant, while birds with tan ones are better nurturers.Credit...Anthony Bartley/Fading Royalty
The Diversity of White-Throated Sparrows

Common does not mean boring — or even that a bird is fully understood. Science keeps learning, too.
Take the white-throated sparrows. Along with juncos, they define winter under our feeders, Dr. Strassmann said. About
half have tan eyebrows; the rest have white ones, most clearly visible in spring and summer. This is not an indication of
gender, as John James Audubon indicated in one of his artworks, or of age, a later misconception.
Each is a distinct form within the species — two genetic morphs because of a chromosomal inversion — and possesses
different behavioral characteristics. Individuals with white head stripes are more dominant; those with tan ones, better
nurturers.
It gets stranger: White-browed individuals can successfully mate only with tan-browed ones of the opposite sex, and vice
versa. So it’s as if there are four genders out there — two versions of each.
Mysteries abound.
Ever heard the high, thin whistle of a flock of cedar waxwings arriving as if from nowhere, precisely as the serviceberries
(Amelanchier) are ripening?
“Cedar waxwings are like thoughts that arise unbidden in meditation,” Dr. Strassmann writes.
But how does the waxwing, among the most frugivorous of birds, know the crop is ready?
As the Zen master instructed his students: “Attention! Attention!” That’s good advice for the slow birder, too.
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Apparently the waxwings need no such reminder.
Margaret Roach is the creator of the website and podcast A Way to Garden, and a book of the same name.

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12/17/22, 6:27 PM Gmail - slow birding

Svetozar Minkov <syminkov@gmail.com>

Continue reading the main story

After a Frantic Year, It’s Time for ‘Slow Birding’

Dec. 14, 2022

Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

Go Birding on an Empty Stomach

Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

The Bird That Gets the Worm

Most songbirds? Not particularly faithful, it turns out.

A Taste for Ants, Acorns — or Other Birds?

Continue reading the main story

The Diversity of White-Throated Sparrows

Continue reading the main story

Apparently the waxwings need no such reminder.

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