Diario de helen235

Observed on 3/6/20 around 11 AM at East Area woods. Conditions were about 40 degrees F with a breeze. Sunny with light cloud cover.

Birds have a high metabolism, so they generate a substantial amount of heat. They also have a lot of down feathers that provide insulation in the winter. In addition to the insulation that their down provides, the uropygial gland that secrets an oil that birds coat their feathers with for water protection. On their legs they have scales that minimize heat loss.

Behaviorally, they have a few adaptations to keep warm. Birds will do something called fluffing where birds fluff up their feathers to create air pockets for extra insulation. Birds will also tuck their bill into their shoulder to breathe in warm air. They will also stand on one leg or crouch over both legs to keep them warm. Birds will also sun on a sunny day. They will turn their backs to the sun and angle their feathers to soak up the warmth from the sun. Like humans, birds will also shiver if they need to generate heat in extreme conditions. Small birds will often gather at night to sleep together to share body heat, called roosting. Birds will also enter torpor during winter nights, lowering their body temperature by as much as 50 degrees to conserve energy.

While I was walking I was mostly in an open area with few trees so I did not see too many snags, but I may have seen one with a few holes in it.

Around 2 pm. Clear, blue sky day, about 60 degrees. Area has a few spaced out trees, mostly open with prairie grass. There were a few of these birds flying low to the ground in the prairie grass. I think it is a song sparrow but I'm not positive.

I heard black-capped chickadee calls with different number of "dee"s at the end. The calls were sort of coming from different areas so there were multiple but I could only see one (the picture I got was too bright to see the bird in it). When I walked below the tree the chickadee was in I noticed that the "dee"s increased by one or so, and then it would fly to a farther branch or different tree all together. The, I believe song sparrows, in the the prairie grass would sort of fly/jump through the grass low to the ground. when one would go by the one in the picture would crane its head around a bit. They would also call back and forth.

The plumage of the birds I saw very much resembled the coloring of what they would rest in. The bird pictured was hard to pick out among the grass until I saw it fly and then land. Even when I was taking videos/pictures I struggled to spot the bird through my camera lens. I saw a few birds with dark slate color on the back of the bird. When it was flying I could see the birds white underbelly and dark back relatively clearly. However when it rested on a tree branch the color on the back of the bird was very close to the color of the tree bark and the bird almost melted away from sight. This makes sense as these birds are very small and probably rely on cammoflage for protection from predators.

The bird with the darker color on its back was primarily higher up in the trees. In this setting the bird was incredibly hard to see as it blended in with the bark color nicely. If the bird that was primarily in the prairie grass was in the trees it would stick out against the even dark color. However in the prairie grass, the varied brown colors let it melt away into the prairie grass habitat. For context the grass was adjacent to the cluster of trees. Geographically the two habitats were very close together.

I also observed a kildeer fly through the spaced out trees. It sort of weaved in and out of the of the trees almost like a figure eight on a tilt.