Author Archives: Rosann Kovalcik

Photo Courtesy of Toni Whitelock

One of my favorite moments of winter is when I am outside, greeted by the song of a Tufted Titmouse.

“Peter, peter, peter” is the description that is typically used to describe their clear song, which is quite loud for the size of the bird. Their alarm and communication call sounds like a buzzy version of their cousin, the Black-capped Chickadee. Travelling in pairs, they can commonly be found in the eastern United States, favoring deciduous and mixed woods, gardens and parks. In winter, they are part of mixed foraging flocks consisting of Chickadees, Downy Woodpeckers, Nuthatches and perhaps Kinglets and Carolina Wrens.

Tufted Titmice are overall gray on their upperparts and white on their breast and belly, with a black forehead and black eyes that give them an endearing facial expression. Their flanks are a prominent rusty-orange, more bright in the males than the females.

When watching Titmice forage for food, note how acrobatic they are at the end of branches. They will easily turn upside down to investigate a curled leaf for over-wintering insects. Oak trees are a favorite, possibly because they hold their leaves through the winter and therefore, offer a food source not found on other trees.

Photo Courtesy of Werner Haschke

We are fortunate that these perky little birds often visit our bird feeders, adding an element of joy to our watching. Waiting at the edge of trees or shrubbery, they investigate their potential choices. Watch for their quick, bouncy flight on the way to their chosen food, usually a sunflower or peanut. They grab the seed in their beak and carry it back to the branch. Holding the seed between their feet, they excavate the shell to get to the seed meat inside. Offering hulled seed saves this work and allows them to get to the work of chiseling the food into bite sized morsels.

Photo Courtesy of Werner Haschke

Unlike many other perching birds, Titmice will forage in leaf litter, searching for protein-rich insects. I have some fond memories of seeing them at The Ford House foraging in this way, their perky crests giving away their identity above the leaf litter. Hint – leave your leaves as they harbor an important food source for these birds as well as others.

Titmice are capable of using muscles to raise and lower the crest, most likely as a result of their attitude at the moment. When the bird is singing the crest is flat, and when excited, the crest can be raised in a very pronounced manner. Watch for crest attitude as you observe them in your yard or out in the field.

Photo Courtesy: Bill Creteau

Tufted Titmice are known to cache food, explaining their frequent visits to feeders in the fall. During times of extreme weather conditions, the food that they hoarded is recovered from cracks in bark and tree cavities, an excellent reason to leave standing dead trees or at the very least, leaving notable cavities. Hoarding takes place within 130 feet of the feeding station the Titmouse is visiting and most seeds are shelled before they are stored.

Cavities also play an important role in the breeding cycle of Tufted Titmice. Using natural cavities or those created by woodpeckers as well as nest boxes that we provide, Titmice will then create a cup-shaped nest on the bottom of the cavity. These nests are constructed of leaves, grasses and moss as well as bark strips. Knowing this, perhaps spring clean up in your yard can be less intense, with purposeful materials left for these birds to use.

Photo Courtesy of John Graffius

Another very interesting addition to their nest is mammal hair, the last layer that is closest to the eggs. Nests have been documented to include the hair of squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, opossum’s, mice, woodchuck, horses and cows and even human hair. Offering hair in a suet cage used specifically for this purpose would be an interesting addition to the joy of watching these birds in your yard. The construction of the nest takes from 6 to eleven days.

Only one brood of young is created in a year, with three to nine eggs being laid. Incubation of the eggs takes two weeks and the young are fed by the parents for another two weeks before they fledge.

Tufted Titmice can be found in the eastern half of the United States, with all of the lower peninsula of Michigan being fortunate enough to host this charming year-round resident.

Enjoy your birds!

-Rosann Kovalcik

Owner, Wild Birds Unlimited, Grosse Pointe Woods

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Photo Courtesy: Bill Creteau

Sandhill Cranes are a common summer resident in Michigan, also using the state as a migratory stopover habitat. Jackson County has one of the highest densities of nesting populations for Sandhill Cranes in North America. These cranes use a variety of habitats for nesting purposes including shallow marshes, openings in shrub swamps, bogs and wetlands. In the early 1900’s, the population of Sandhill Cranes in Michigan had dropped to just a few dozen pairs as a result of wetlands being drained and hunting pressures. Now, we have Crane Fest, a Michigan Audubon Signature Event, as well as a number of other festivals, to celebrate this bird’s abundance.

Sandhill Cranes stand between 41 and 46 inches tall with a wingspan of 73 to 77 inches – six feet plus! They only weigh between seven and 11 pounds, as avian bones and feathers are quite lightweight. Sandhill Cranes are generally gray in color, with some rust occasionally showing in their plumage. This is a result of preening their feathers with iron rich mud. Their forehead and crown of their head are covered with red skin instead of feathers, and their eyes are a bold orange. Contrasting a little with the overall gray, the face, cheek, and throat are white or pale gray.

Photo Courtesy: Bill Creteau

The oldest living Sandhill Crane on record was at least 36 years and seven months old, having been banded in Wyoming in 1973 and later recovered in New Mexico in 2010.

Sandhill Cranes mate for life. Partners are chosen based upon their dancing displays, where they stretch their wings, pump their heads, bow and leap into the air with their feet extended forward. This display is done year-round as part of pair bonding. One of the most primal sounds of nature is a pair of Sandhill Cranes giving their duet call. Facing each other with their beaks raised to the sky, their calls can be heard up to 2.5 miles away. The female gives two calls for each call of the male! Click here for a short video of these amazing birds calling and dancing.

Photo Courtesy: Bill Creteau

Photo Courtesy: Andrew Simon

Their nests are made on the ground, formed of sticks, moss, reeds and grasses, built by both the male and female. Usually two eggs are laid although one colt typically survives. Both parents share the responsibility of brooding the eggs. Although the young are capable of leaving the nest at eight hours of age, the parents brood them at night for three weeks to help maintain their body heat. The young are unable to fly until they are 65 – 75 days of age.

They family unit remains intact throughout the winter, returning together back to Michigan in spring.  It is about this time that the parents encourage their young to join other juveniles, allowing the adults to begin another nesting cycle.  The juvenile Sandhill Cranes spend between two and seven years together before they choose a mate and begin breeding.

Photo Courtesy: Bill Creteau

Most Michigan Sandills spend winter in Florida and the Gulf States.  In many areas of the United States, Sandhill Cranes form groups of thousands, foraging and roosting together for safety.  One of the most famous wintering roost  sites is Bosque del Apache in New Mexico, the wintering grounds for tens of thousands of these birds.

Sandhill Cranes feed on seeds and cultivated grains as well as tubers , berries, insects, snails, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals.

During migration, Sandhill Cranes are known to use wind thermals. Using them for lift, the cranes will rise in a circular fashion and once at the top of the thermal, glide until they need to catch the next thermal for lift.

Look for Sandhill Cranes flying overhead in groups during fall and spring migration. They fly with legs and necks outstretched and have a snappy upward wing beat. Perhaps you will hear them call – a sound you will never forget.

Photo Courtesy: Bill Creteau

Enjoy your birds!

-Rosann Kovalcik

Owner, Wild Birds Unlimited,

Grosse Pointe Woods, MI

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Northern Flicker in a snag, By Jan Palland

I love it in the spring when I hear the sound, “wicka, wicka, wicka”. I look to the treetops, especially exposed snags, hoping to find the pair of Northern Flickers engaging in courtship behavior, as tipped off by their calls. With beaks pointed to the sky, they move their heads side to side in unison while calling, tails fanned out. The Flicker Flamenco Dance is one of my favorite local treats to watch.

Northern Flickers are a woodpecker, and one of the few that can be found feeding on the ground. Their specialty is ants! There was a study done of the stomach contents of 700 Northern Flickers which showed that 98% of them had eaten only ants, with one count at 3,000 and another at 5,000 ants.

Northern Flicker with extended tongue, By Jan Palland

Perhaps one of the most interesting features of Northern Flickers, as with all woodpeckers, is their ability to extend their tongue far past the end of their bill. In fact, Flicker tongues extend two inches beyond their bill. The tongues of birds are comprised of long flexible bones with a soft tip, collectively called the hyoid apparatus. At its base, the Flicker’s tongue splits into two branches called horns which curl under the jaw and wrap around the base of the skull, extending over the top of the skull and meeting near the nostrils at the base of the bill. The tip of the tongue is highly sensitive, allowing Flickers to feel the ants they are catching. As well, they have very sticky saliva which allows them to catch many ants at once with the saliva being extra alkaline to negate the ants’ acidic defense to being attacked!

Two Northern Flickers on a snag, By Jan Palland

Northern Flicker males and females differ very little in their appearance. The male has black malars, marks that start where the beak meets the face and travel down at an attractive angle on the cheek. The black color in the plumage of Northern Flickers comes from pigment (melanin) that adds strength and durability to their feathers. This is quite necessary when you think of how much time a bird like this is entering and exiting from a cavity to tend to its young. Most of their tail is black, an adaptation for strength where it is needed a great deal.

Another unique adaptation of the Flicker is the fact that two of their toes point forward and two point backward, this zygodactyl arrangement provides extra grip on the bark of a tree, especially since the fourth toe can be spread more to the side when needed. Their tail feathers are also of special design, with a reinforced shaft and pointed tips, creating a sturdy third part of the tripod as they move on the sides of trees. Northern Flickers have a couple of ribs that are abnormally large which allows for extra chest muscle attachment, making the physical demands of being a woodpecker easier.

Northern Flicker at nest cavity, By Jan Palland

Flickers create a cavity that they chisel into a tree for nesting purposes. Northern Flickers are built to withstand the hammering blows needed to create the cavities because of a bone that projects from the top of the upper bill and acts as a stop, as well as having extra cartilage between the skull and the bill for shock absorption. Cavity nesting birds are usually more successful than birds that use open nests, with a higher survival rate for their young because they are protected from poor weather conditions and predators. Woodpecker eggs are white, not needing to be camouflaged inside of the cavity.

Woodpeckers are indeterminate egg layers, which means that they do not lay a specific number of eggs. This allows them to replace eggs that may have been lost to poor weather conditions or predators. One egg is laid per day, with the parents taking one of two roles – standing guard nearby or engaging in mock incubation which lasts usually under 30 minutes. The guarding and mock incubation continue until all eggs are laid, at which time real incubation starts. Another interesting fact about woodpeckers is that the male incubates the eggs overnight, the opposite of most bird species. Both the male and female develop a brood patch on the upper belly and lower breast, where feathers fall out and bare skin is exposed to effectuate the transfer of the heat from the adult to the eggs and young. The amount of oxygen in the nest cavity is a reason for shorter incubation in the Northern Flicker. The end result is that the eggs hatch sooner with the baby birds being more immature than most other birds. Yet within 24 hours, baby Flickers are able to begin crawling up the cavity walls toward the entrance in order to beg their parents for food. The Northern Flicker adults have a crop, a specialized expandable pouch, where they can cache larger quantities of food to feed their young, allowing for less trips back and forth to the nesting cavity.

Northern Flicker foraging for ants, By Jan Palland

How cool is it that Flicker cavities that are no longer being used by the woodpeckers are used by some duck species for nesting including Wood Ducks, Mergansers and Bufflehead.

All woodpeckers have a flight pattern that makes them easy to recognize. Instead of flapping continuously like most small birds, woodpeckers flap-bound which means that they flap which causes their body to rise and then they tuck their wings and glide, losing altitude as they do. In flight, the Northern Flicker is a little steadier than other woodpeckers. However, the white rump is a helpful diagnostic field mark when the Flicker is in flight.

Flickers are a treat with their unusual plumage. I hope you see many during this Fall migration

– Enjoy your Birds!

Rosann Kovalcik, Owner

Wild Birds Unlimited, Grosse Pointe Woods

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