Breeding Bird Atlas Tips

Howard County Bird Club

by Dave Ziolkowski

EFFICIENTLY FIND CONFIRMATIONS

There is a process I recommend folks use to efficiently find confirmations. Using this, about 3/4 of the birds you follow in late May/early June will yield confirmations. Come late June/July, nearly every bird will. It’s a simple process — just pick the first bird you see and follow it intently for 5 minutes. If that one doesn’t produce a confirmation after 5 minutes, move on to the next bird you see. Incredulity is the typical response from folks who hear this; after all, if it’s so simple, why isn’t everyone doing it? And the simple answer is that it does require a degree of patience to follow a single bird for that long … 5 minutes can feel like an eternity when there are other loud, conspicuous birds about to compete for attention.

START WITH KNOWN QUANTITIES

The best way to practice this is with known quantities — because without this, folks usually assume there aren’t any nests around. So if you’re interested (and I hope you are), I’ll describe a small area in Rockburn Branch Park where in May 2020 there were four active nests (Mockingbird, Gnatcatcher, Baltimore and Orchard Oriole). I found these nests during a quick, 1/2 hour visit so it’s guaranteed there’s activity around them.

ROCKBURN BRANCH PARK

The overview map shows the locations. You’ll recognize where this is in the park because the playground is in the lower right, the pavilion is at the top, and the disc golf lane #5 is on the left. The pink arrow is where I was standing when I started. The white numbers are the nest locations. The other attached photos identify the trees the nests are in (from the vantage point of standing at the pink arrow). Your sequence of events will occur differently from mine but, just as an example of how the process played out on my visit, here’s the sequence of events I had experienced:

Click to enlarge

FIRST NEST

00:00 – (standing at the pink arrow) saw a female Orchard Oriole fly directly across the field into the tree labeled #1. Within 2 minutes she flew out in a direct flight back to the woods. I tried following her but lost her. So then I went to the west wood edge and stared back at the tree labeled #1. She returned and I confirmed she was adding material to the cup of her nest located in the top center of the tree.

SECOND NEST

00:04 – (while walking away from #1) saw a female cowbird in the top of tree labeled #2. Followed her and within 2 minutes she dropped down to a Baltimore Oriole nest in a low limb of that tree

THIRD NEST

00:11 – (while at #2) got on a gnatcatcher. It flew to #3 and began removing lining from a recently used Mockingbird nest. It flew directly out towards the tree labeled #4 but I lost it against the background. Frisbee golfers then played through and I had to wait a good 5 minutes for them to finish.

FOURTH NEST

00:20 – watched the mockingbird nest again but the gnatcatcher did not return. Heard a gnatcatcher call nearby, started towards it and then saw it take a long, direct flight into tree #4. Followed it through the tree to the nest to confirm that it was adding lining to its nest cup.

RECAP

00:26 – lastly, on my way out, saw a female Baltimore Oriole come to the nest in tree #2 and add to the cup.

Three of these nests will likely move into the laying stage within a few days, at which point activity will drop. That’s because the females will only visit those nests then once in the morning to lay an egg. After 3 or 4 days of that, the females will begin incubating and activity will remain low. But at least then the females will take a recess from incubation every couple of hours, so there would be a chance to catch them as they forage feverishly for about 10 minutes before returning to their nest. Come mid-June, once the nestlings hatch, activity will pick up tremendously and, should those nests stay viable, any bird flying in and around that area will likely be carrying food for nestlings.