Pacific Flyway

You don't have to go to the Serengeti to see a great migration. 

Winter days grow longer, temperatures click upward, stirring animals into spring migration. Birds by the millions migrate south to north along an ancestral route from Patagonia to Point Barrow on the northern tip of Alaska, the Pacific Flyway, an aerial superhighway.  Scroll down for more. But first...

 Hang a bird feeder, have lots of visitors.

A chime of wrens arrives for breakfast

9:15 am Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Laguna Beach, California

What is the Maximum Occupancy of this bird feeder?

Will the structure collapse under the increasing weight?

Count them as they land. Leave your count in the Comments section below.

Wait for the "explosion" at the end of the video.

Yes, that crackling sound is the combination of all those birds cracking seeds during the movie, like a full orchestra in a seed cracking symphony each one playing their part.  A... Nutcracker Suite! 

You’ve probably heard of the “knee jerk reflex” an instantaneous, involuntary movement in response to a specific stimulus. 

In the last milliseconds of this video you’ll see what I call “the startle reflex” in birds.  Hypothesis: the startle reflex has survival value. Birds that have this normal reflex live long enough to reproduce and thus the species has a greater probability of continuing their cycle of life.

 

Bird feeders also attract rodents, but a lid can be added to this tray feeder that can be slid on at night, keeping rodents out. 

Maybe we can encourage the supplier to provide a closable feeder option.

Until then, plywood cut with cable slots* and coated with waterproof verathane to keep out the rain.  This tray is 12.5 inches by 16 inches.  * (1.75 inch cable slots)  

December 9, 2021

Same feeding tray as in the video above but now trimmed with ivy branches

 to better blend in to the foliage.

Phoebe quadruplets Long Beach California, circa 2014

Excellent illustration of color used in attracting parental attention.

Now back to the Pacific Flyway.

But why? Why fly thousands of miles every spring?

The animals of the Serengeti follow the seasonal spurting growth of protein rich grasses. Similarly, birds of the Pacific Flyway migrate north as the days grow longer. More hours of sunlight trigger plants to grow toward their maximum, which bumps population numbers up and down the food chain.  More sun... more food. There is a species of seaweed that grows two feet a day.