Appreciating the Birds of Winter in Difficult Times
By Brian Kluepfel
By Brian Kluepfel On Feb. 7, 2020, we were on a plane to South America. A visit with in-laws, wonderful food and weather, a meeting with dear old friends in torrid Cartagena, and an obligatory appearance at the Colombia Bird Fair in Cali.
We saw an incredible array of birds on our trip, from Colombia’s nearly-countless colibri (hummingbird) collection to the awe-inspiring Andean condor. Blue-headed parrots. Multicolored tanagers. Green honeycreepers. A yellow-headed caracara from my mother-in-law’s porch, even.
Of course, three weeks later we were on a plane back to Westchester descending into a changed America, and world. The weekend after we returned, U.S. airports devolved into chaos and COVID-19 became a household term. On Feb. 28, a Friday, we took Metro-North into Manhattan for a concert. It was the last trip of any sort we’d take.
Flash-forward to February 2021, and the snow and pandemic keep us locked in place, in a virtual freeze-frame. Despite the fact that we can’t flit off to Colombia, or even Florida, we’ve taken the time to appreciate the winter birds of New York.
A notable visitor earlier this month was Central Park’s Snowy Owl. We’ve had them visit the area in the past, but this was an exceptional one – the first one seen in the park in 130 years! If it’s still there today, birders will certainly use their favorite play on words to upset the day’s dominant paradigm: Superb Owl Sunday. It would be if you saw a snowy, I’m sure.
(Owls have been on the urban birding brain lately, from the accidental Saw-Whet owl, “Rockefeller,” who tumbled out of his namesake’s Christmas tree, to Barry the Barred Owl, another recent Central Park discovery.)
Local walks in Ossining have gifted us with the usual wintry mix of cardinals, chickadees, wrens, hawks, crows, jays and even eagles. On a very blustery day, even by Winnie-the-Pooh’s standards, I went further south and braved the high winds of Rockwood Park, adjacent to Phelps Hospital, and was gifted an incredible sight: two indefatigable Carolina wrens, singing their hearts out, while above them on the wildly-swaying branches were two Eastern bluebirds, our state bird, of course, hanging on as we New Yorkers are this year, for dear life.
I’ll toss out a handful of seeds on my porch now and again, and revel in the arrival of duos, trios and larger bunches of house sparrows. These are the only birds that seem to notice my munificence – except the occasional starlings, which I wave off. But watching them peck through the seed mix – the sunflowers are too big for them, so they only eat the small seeds, leaving me to sweep up the rest – is a welcome diversion to my work-at-home day.
(Shameless plug here: you can stock your winter feeders with a variety of seed-stuff from Saw Mill River Audubon. Info is in the ad below.)
I watched a nice YouTube video by LesleytheBirdNerd on the survival mechanisms of northern winter birds. They shiver, they puff up their bodies to twice their size, they cache food in trees and even in their own gullets, they vary their diet, they lower their body temperatures at night and huddle for warmth. In short, they survive. Which is sometimes the best we can do during difficult times like these.
So, on Superb Owl Sunday and beyond, I wish you, and all the birds, survival.
Brian Kluepfel is the editor of Saw Mill River Audubon’s newsletter and an author for Birdwatching Magazine and the Lonely Planet and Fodor’s series of travel guidebooks. Find him at birdmanwalking.com.
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