The Birds of Winter

Repetition is the only form of permanence that nature can achieve.

~ George Santayana

With a foot or more of snow (finally) blanketing the roadsides and farm fields of Cornwall, it might not seem as though there is much going on with birds at the moment. But indeed, there is.

Snow buntings, who arrived here in late fall to forage in the snowbanks along our farm roads, are now en route to their breeding grounds in the far north. They depart dressed in their winter camouflage--the color of snowy fields dappled by dirt, manure, and topped cornstalks. Once they reach their summer home on the tundra, their feathers will look as black-and-white as the snow covered rocks. There, the birds will form pairs and find narrow crevices in which the female will build a cup nest made of grasses and driftwood, which she will then line with feathers to cushion her clutch of speckled eggs.

The American Tree Sparrow, who appeared at our feeders after a few hard frosts, also prepares to fly far north to breed. All by herself, the female will gather pieces of lichen, course grasses, strips of bark, tufts of moss, and build a nest in the open tundra on a mossy hillock, or in the grasses beneath a shrub. She, too, will line her cup nest with feathers, preferably ptarmigan, to cushion her clutch of blue-green speckled eggs. But we still have some days or weeks to enjoy this little sparrow's sweet disposition, red cap, and bi-colored beak, as captured by my nine-year-old daughter at our thistle feeder. She breeds a bit lower than the snow bunting, which makes her travels a bit shorter.

For the last three winters, pine grosbeaks have adorned the tops of the juniper and white pine behind our woods like Christmas ornaments. They are considered an irruptive species, traveling south from their boreal breeding grounds only during winters of seed- and cone-crop scarcity. While not particularly shy, they tend to flock, feed, and forage so high and deep among the pine boughs that we hear them more often than we see them. This might be the reason that we know so much less about their habits and behaviors than those of other species, and why, in the three years that I've observed the pine grosbeak in my own back yard, I have been unable to get a decent photograph. How lucky I was to find myself on the Middlebury College campus, with my binoculars and camera slung across my shoulders, just as this strawberry-red male and a flock of fire-crowned females and juveniles descended to a nearby ash tree to forage on its seeds.

As February departs, we, as birders, look to spring migration with an excitement that can border on mania. But having embraced birding in the so called "off-seasons," I've learned that there are no off-seasons. Not really. The birds that have already flown north will return, for as long as they find our habitat hospitable. Even as they make way for the wonder of spring migration, they recall the wonders of winter departed, and sing of the wonders of winters ahead.

A Field Guide for Spring: