Observing birds in the winter
At daybreak, there are hundreds of robins above the sidewalks. Robins coming to town, leaving town, staying in town, and all of them are eating hackberry fruit—gobbling, gorging on hackberries (Celtis occidentalis). This is a bumper year, and birds know. Robin throats are busy with cheers and chirrs and yeeps and cucks, and there are cedar waxwings, too, whistling way up where the sun touches the tops of trees. I doubt birds can sound happier.
Every winter morning starts with a happy hour. Not just for me — happy to be out of bed and onto the sidewalk — but for the birds. After a long, cold and hungry night, they are ready for a breakfast buffet.
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Here in my Nashville neighborhood, breakfast for robins is heavy on the hackberry but also Eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana), American holly (Ilex opaca), winterberry (Ilex verticillata), a few spicebushes (Lindera benzoin) and sumac (Rhus spp. and hybrids), and today I found some withered pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) on the interstate bridge. There is mistletoe (Arceuthobium spp.) in the American elms (Ulmus americana), Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) in the trash alley, coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus) in a neighbor’s yard and the black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) I planted in mine.
Robins and cedar waxwings don’t eat seeds, nor do Eastern bluebirds, hermit thrushes and other birds that need fruit and insects even in winter. They get what they need from native plant drupes and berries, and from all sorts of small creatures hosted in stem, leaf, bud, bark or gall. Winter hummingbirds pluck spiders from dead frostweed (Verbesina virginica). Golden-crowned kinglets glean prey from pine needles. Robins head-butt raked leaves to find snack after snack of overwintering insects, worms and other little invertebrates.
A daily practice of watching the birds
Watching birds gives me joy, but helping birds makes me happy. What’s the difference? Here’s the quote from Annie Dillard that convinced me: “Dedicate (donate, give all) your life to something larger than yourself and pleasure — to the largest thing you can… Happiness lies this way, and it beats pleasure hollow.”
My own “largest thing” is native habitat: to learn about it and to make more where I can. Too many sidewalks take me past silent, manicured turf and the usual exotic “foundation” shrubs that aren’t foundational to our local food web. I’ve learned that even the smallest effort can make big changes, and that what’s good for birds is good for all of us: the right food, clean water, enough space, a place to raise young. If birds ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.
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At home, our hackberry tree and three bird baths give robins a mini happy hour every morning. Birds gobble fruit, then grab a drink and a wash. Overhead, they carol — cheerily, cheery-up! — but on the ground, they squawk and call and sometimes fight. It is fascinating to see two robins face off at a bath: sidestepping, sizing up, then darting with open beaks like double daggers. And then a blue jay swoops from nowhere, and all the robins disappear, poof!
Provide a water source for birds in the winter
The baths are just plastic saucers in the driveway: another small effort that pays off big. As the sun comes up, I wait for a lull in traffic noise, then raise the kettle high to let warm water fall and splash. Birds can’t resist the sound of water. If the saucers freeze, I bring a refill, then watch steam rise as birds descend. What joy to see dozens of cedar waxwings appear at once, like magic, and crowd the rims of the saucers — a solid circle of birds on each — while they drink and drink, heads rising and dipping in sudden silence: no more high, sighing whistles until they flit back up to the trees, to the fruit, to the sunshine, happy.
Joanna, author of “This Is How a Robin Drinks: Essays on Urban Nature,” writes about everyday wonders in everyday habitat loss on Instagram @jo_brichetto and at SidewalkNature.com.
