Each summer around our house, we enjoy watching youngsters take a first crack at learning how to bird — how to be a bird, that is! There’s typically a phase where a juvenile bird pecks and pokes at everything in its reach — “Is this food? No… OK, is this food? No… What about this, is this food? No…”
This year, two young Black-headed Grosbeaks delighted us by spending time on our deck.
At times, one or both sat on the deck railing, looking around and incessantly emitting begging calls.
At other times, the youngsters rooted around the deck foraging on their own for fallen peanuts from the feeder.
Listen to the cute begging call of the Black-headed Grosbeak. On the spectrogram, notice the bendy, musical quality of the note — it’s easy to see how this later develops into the bendy, operatic song of an adult grosbeak.
Right now, our neighborhood is hosting a phenomenon we like to call “Chickadee Explosion!” — the time of year when many young chickadees are highly visible and audible as they chase their parents around the trees noisily begging for food. A group of young have been frequenting the redwood branches visible from our couch, and we’re loving the show!
For some species, by the time a juvenile is mobile, it looks virtually identical to its adult counterpart — the Chestnut-backed Chickadee is a good example of this. However, the presence of a fleshy area at the corner of a bird’s beak (where the upper and lower mandibles meet) can be a good indication the bird is still young. The technical term for this area is the “gape flange.”
The Chestnut-backed Chickadee’s begging call is a higher-pitched version of the “dee” portion of an adult’s standard “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” vocalization. We think it sounds a little like a squeaky toy!
Juvenile birds often seem less wary of human presence than adults. When we’ve been standing on the deck, the young chickadees have flown into the branches less than 2 feet from our faces!
And though it’s not a young bird, we still wanted to share these fun shots of an Osprey perched directly above us while we sat on the riverbank.
The Osprey dove for a fish and came up empty-taloned, just as this Brewer’s Blackbird rushed in to mob it.
Unphased, the Osprey returned to its perch above us for some time, then eventually headed upriver.
For more baby birds, check out our older post: New Kids on the Block – Juvenile Vocalizations
Love these baby birds and vocalizations! Speaking of Osprey, last weekend we saw an osprey with a big fish get divebombed by a Bald Eagle, who ended up having to swim to shore. Very dramatic!
Always love your blogs! Entertaining and educational 😊