Tuesday, June 12, 2001

How to identify nesting visitors

Most shorebird chicks are precocial, born with down and the ability to leave the nest as soon as necessary. Chicks of songbirds that nest in our yards are called altricial, meaning they are born naked, blind and dependent on parents for food and care for from seven to nineteen days, depending on the species.
   A call from Patsy Roach said that she and her husband, Jim, had observed a bird coming through the lattice work around their patio. It disappeared immediately, she said, into a small, old, potted ficus tree. She had observed it carefully and described it minutely, but it did not ring any bells.
   "It had black blinders on face and chin," she said. What she saw was not what I might have seen, except a "slight crest."
   She sounded so fascinated and delighted, and her home was close to where my errands were, so I had to go see.
   At her house, we pulled back the curtains to get a good look. I clutched my binoculars with one hand until I realized one reason I could not see was because we were too close for my binoculars to focus. The patio was beautiful with blooming flowers, some of them exotic. Her grown son lives with them and the flowers are his diversion, Roach told me. We moved to the patio. A bird eye watched, with alarm, from behind dense leaves at the back of the ficus. I thought the eye was attached to a heavy, light beak. The little feathered part visible was nothing color... light brownish, orange.
   We walked outside the patio, on the driveway, but the nest was not visible from there. Roach told of the other bird that had been there earlier. It was dark with heavy black on its wings. A woman who has worked for the Roaches for 20 years, Iretta Moore, came to assist us. Duty was calling me. I told them to keep watching and let me know what happened.
   What birds nest in yards here? Northern mockingbirds, house sparrows, northern cardinals, European starlings, occasionally great-crested or scissor-tailed flycatchers, loggerhead shrikes or long-billed thrashers. What else? Hummingbirds, probably black-chins. Golden-fronted woodpeckers nest in cavities in trees. Great-tailed starlings nest in colonies in clumps of trees.

Audubon Club... The Audubon Outdoor Club of Corpus Christi will meet for the last time this summer tonight at 6 p.m. for a covered-dish picnic at Fred Jones Sanctuary. Visitors are welcome. Bring food, beverage, picnic chairs. Take Hwy. 181 over Harbor Bridge. Exit at Moore Ave. (FM 893) turn left and go 6.5 miles to intersection with FM 1074. Turn left on County Road 3265 (Koonce Loop), go 0.5 mile to entrance on left.

   Yellow-billed cuckoos sometimes nest in citrus trees. Mourning doves nest, and Inca doves, also white-winged doves. Purple martins nest in houses, and barn swallows build mud nests in the eaves of our buildings. We have had Carolina wrens which nested.
   A few days later, I called Patsy to see if they had baby birds. Not yet, she said. Then she called back the same day to say that her son, Jimmy, had felt it necessary to water in the nest corner. Since he had to be there, he thought he should look in the nest. One, wide-open mouth was there. What kind of bird? We still aren't sure, but I have my opinion.
   What do you think? The answer will be in this column next week.
  
  

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Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi resident, has studied birds in Texas since 1960.

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