BirdNote Daily

This Northern Pygmy-Owl appears to have eyes in the back of its head. But why? One theory is that large false eyes may create the illusion that the owl is much bigger than its 6 and 3/4-inch size. A more current theory is that the false eyes help protect the pygmy-owl's true eyes. Small birds will mob this diurnal owl, even striking it, directing some attacks at its eyes. If the large false eyes can take the brunt of these attacks, little harm will come to the Pygmy-Owl's vulnerable true eyes.
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Everybody’s heard of a gaggle of geese and a covey of quail. But what’s a group of penguins called? And a “conspiracy” of ravens? Maybe the way we label birds says more about us than it does about them.
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As the colder months arrive, birds that remain in northern climates face the harsh realities of staying warm and finding food. Some birds approach the food problem by storing it in advance — a behavior called caching. Chickadees, nuthatches, jays, and some woodpeckers are known to cache large supplies of seeds in many places. But what enables birds such as this Black-capped Chickadee to find the seeds they’ve stored? They amplify spatial memory.
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The warm colors and bright accents of the Bohemian Waxwing might make you think it glows in the dark. For the better part of two thousand years, that’s what people believed. Pliny reported that their feathers “shine like flames” in the dark forests of central Europe. The Germans allegedly used captive birds to light their way at night. But at the end of the sixteenth century, the great Italian birdman Ulysses Aldrovandi dismissed the notion that waxwings emit light. Today, we are fortunate that these winter nomads brighten our days.
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In winter, many songbirds join flocks made up of multiple species that travel around looking for food, benefitting from safety in numbers. But a bird flock that doesn't move in the same direction soon scatters to the wind. It turns out that the Tufted Titmouse, a small gray songbird, is often the one leading the flock. Researchers studying the flight paths of flocks found that the paths taken by the titmice best reflected the direction of the group as a whole, compared to other species in the group. This was especially true when the flock moved quickly between sites, when staying organized is key.
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