What to See This Week

Cold weather keeps the Bird Watching Garden busy. This week features tons of particularly round birds, puffing out their feathers to deal with the subzero windchill. The male eastern towhee is striking against the snow! Every day this winter, towhees call from the Visitors Center parking lot area.

Once the peanuts are out the blue jays come quick. Up to seven blue jays could be seen in the serviceberry in the Bird Watching Garden waiting their turn to come down and grab a peanut. They are picky, though, as they often will pick up several before making their choice.

Starlings are undeniably beautiful birds with their iridescent feathers. It is breathtaking coming across a murmuration of starlings, huge groups of birds that make swooping, fluid movements together. Murmurations can be made up of hundreds to thousands of birds. Unfortunately, starlings are an invasive species originally from Europe, parts of Asia, and northern Africa. About 100 starlings were intentionally released in Central Park in 1890 but North America is now home to over 200 million.

Male northern cardinals always steal the show when they come to the Bird Watching Garden! At the time this photo was taken, three others were dotting the dark green junipers with their bright red plumage. When it comes to attracting cardinals, black oil sunflower seed is a great option. Just make sure they fit on your feeders as most cardinals prefer hopper style or platform feeders, they are a bit larger than some of the other visitors.

Sometimes critters don’t care if they fit or not! Just watch the garden long enough on any given day and you are likely to find the squirrels doing all sorts of gymnastics in order to reach the food.

Ginkgo trees can be quickly identified in the winter thanks to their distinctive spur shoots. These knobby twigs are slow growing and leave just a little space between each leaf giving the leaves on these shoots a clustered appearance during the growing season. However, in the winter, the spur shoots give a great identification hint.

In prairie areas or even garden beds, you may run into wild senna. Wild senna has persistent pea-like seed pods that make it great for winter identification. 

While most water around The Arboretum is frozen, a large group of dozens of geese found the small unfrozen section of Dawes Lake to be a perfect place to congregate! With the windchill at below zero when this photo was taken, it is hard to imagine them being happy in that freezing water, but geese have a range of adaptations that make it more tolerable including their dense feathers that insulate them, a waterproof oil that is distributed on their feathers, and a countercurrent heat exchange between veins and arteries in their legs that minimizes heat loss.