The Birds and Bees, and Love in the Trees

 

A Pearly-eyed Thrasher holding out a Ginger Thomas petal 

 

Even the birds offer gifts of love, while native bees embrace their favorite flowers. 

A female carpenter bee embraces a Ginger Thomas flower 

  

For people, flowers are widely viewed as symbols of romance, whereas birds and the bees are more often associated with learning about the mechanics of human reproduction. Which is quite odd because neither birds nor bees have all that much in common with humans when it comes to sexual reproduction.

 

It’s true that, like people, certain types of birds do form pair bonds with their mates that are enduring and look pretty romantic. 

 

A Common Ground Dove couple smooching

 

 

Some birds may also engage in frequent and enthusiastic reproductive activities. However the actual mechanics are not the same as for humans.  

 

American Kestrels mate enthusiastically 

 

And they more often demonstrate their devotion with gifts of food rather than flowers. 

 

A male kestrel offers his mate a mouse 

 

 

Meanwhile, for the large, black female carpenter bees mating is a once in a lifetime thing. They will seek out the smaller brown males for a brief liaison, but do not engage in any long-term bonding. 

 

Instead, these bees are intimately involved in the mechanics of plants’ sexual reproduction, carrying packages of male pollen to female receptors in flowers, facilitating the development of seeds, and new plants. 

 

The intimacy of this co-dependence is often touching to see. 

 

Female carpenter bees will wrap themselves in a tight embrace around the pollen-laden stamens of the passionfruit flowers. In exchange for pollination services, the flowers offer food for the bees, and for their offspring.

A Passionfruit flower attracts a female carpenter bee 

 

The smaller Canker Berry flowers also receive enthusiastic hugs from the female carpenter bees.  

A female carpenter bee hugs a canker berry flower

 

 

Some birds have special pollination relationships with particular flowers as well. The shape and colors of the heliconia flowers are specially adapted to attract hummingbirds. And don’t they look gorgeous together. 

 

A Green-throated Carib hummingbird with a heliconia flower

 

I’m not exactly sure what lessons we should be learning from watching the birds and the bees, but it certainly is entertaining to look and wonder.  

    

 

 

 

Building Community by Looking for Birds

St. John birdwatchers (l-r) Nancy Senger, Oskar Beasley-Lassen (holding Nancy’s cane), Victoria Beasley and Gail Karlsson (Photo Nancy Borowick)

The annual December bird count on St. John is one of my favorite activities. It is sponsored by the Virgin Islands Audubon Society, and represents our local contribution to a widespread ‘citizen science’ bird census that was started by the National Audubon Society in 1900. The reports we file on our bird sightings are put together with others from across the Western Hemisphere and the results are used to support a variety of research and conservation activities.   

 

The bird count on St. John brings together a loose group of bird lovers, some of whom snoop around in hidden ponds, or scan offshore islands by boat. Others stay closer to home and report on bird sightings in various neighborhoods around the island. The information helps us get a sense of how well the different birds are doing. (I was first invited to join a bird count walk 25 years ago by my neighbor Beverly Biziewski, who recently passed away, and will be greatly missed.) 

 

Laurel Brannick, who was a National Park Ranger on St. John for 30 years, has been leading the count team, and tries to get people organized to cover as much territory as possible, including  some of the offshore cays. There were 44 counters this time, compared to 33 last year. Some people walked out alone or looked from home, while others paired up, or went around in a small group. 

 

The count team reported 66 different types of birds. The species with the highest number was the Gray Kingbird again (244 total, compared to 236 the year before). Several of us showed up at the dock in Coral Bay at daybreak near where many of the Gray Kingbirds roost for the night. When the sun came up, we counted the birds as they flew up and went off to search for breakfast.  

 

Gray Kingbirds fly out from the tops of trees to catch insects

 

Gray Kingbirds can be seen all around St. John. Also Bananaquits, which had the second highest number counted (167), though this was relatively low compared to the past couple of years, probably due to the rainy weather. The pesky, fruit-stealing Pearly-eyed Thrashers (122) are also widespread. Whether you realize it or not, these birds often share your space and provide a background of natural sounds you can hear during the day. 

 

Some common birds perch on treetops, or the power lines outside your house, including Scaly-naped Pigeons (who, hoo, hoo, hooooo), White-winged Doves (who cooks for you), and Zenaida Doves (who are you you you). The forest-dwelling Bridled Quail-Doves (who-whooo) are much more reclusive. 

 

Brown-throated Parakeets (also known as St. Thomas Conures) came to St. John with the 2017 hurricanes and have now spread out around the island. Though there aren’t all that many, they call attention to themselves by chattering very loudly wherever they go.

 

Some St. Thomas Conures (Brown-throated Parakeets) have moved over to St. John

 

Hummingbirds are precious companions found around many homes, but they are pretty quiet except for the whirr of their wings as they hover. The Green-throated Caribs are more numerous now (48) after recovering from the effects of the hurricanes of 2017. However the Antillean Crested hummingbirds are still relatively scarce (only 8 reported, the same as last year). 

 

Certain birds, like the native White-cheeked Pintail Ducks (116), are quite numerous but only visible if you go out and look into the ponds and wetlands. 

 

White-cheeked Pintail ducks raise their families in island ponds

 

There were only 23 Great Egrets counted on St. John, but they are generally much more noticeable because they frequently come out and hunt for lizards along the roadsides. Mangrove Cuckoos mostly remain hidden in the wetlands and are still scarcer than before the hurricanes. They can sometimes be heard in the wetlands making their distinctive drawn-out song (dat dat dat dat dat dat dat), which is somewhat similar to the vocalizations of the also secretive Clapper Rails (kek, kek, kek, kek, kek, kek), though not nearly as loud. 

 

Clapper Rails are hard to see, but make very loud klacking sounds when they are disturbed. 

 

At the beaches, you can see Brown Pelicans out fishing (87 counted) along with the larger, soaring Magnificent Frigatebirds (32). It is particularly fun to be in the water and have a Brown Booby fly by low over the surface looking for a fish for dinner. 

 

Migrating warblers that come for the winter are very difficult to spot unless you know what to look for and are willing to dedicate some time to sitting patiently in a wooded area. This time there were new records set for American Redstarts (23) and Ovenbirds (5), plus reports of a few Prairie Warblers, Black-and-white Warblers, Northern Waterthrushes, and a Palm Warbler. 

 

There were more wintering American Redstart warblers reported than usual. 

 

There were no lingering Laughing Gulls this time. For the past couple of years there were a few that stayed late into the winter, but that was unusual. They are mostly around St. John in the summer, when they come to breed on the offshore cays and cause a noisy ruckus as they go fishing along the popular beaches. 

 

Sadly, there were also no American Flamingos seen on St. John this time. There was one recorded in the last bird count, and about 16 others appeared in south shore ponds later in the winter, most likely having come over from the British Virgin Islands. We are hoping that one day a group of them will come back to St. John and decide to stay.

 

We did have a couple of sightings of rare migrant birds. A Whimbrel (a large shore bird with a curved bill) was spotted out past Coral Bay - a first for the Christmas bird count. And two Indigo Buntings (small finches) showed up at Francis Bay. The males are bright blue during mating season in the spring up north, but are mostly brown in the winter, with just a few tell-tale blue feathers.    

During the winter, Indigo Buntings are more brown than blue. 

 

In order to record a Scarlet Ibis for the count, I had to make a special scouting effort around the Fish Bay wetlands. A few weeks earlier my neighbor had said he saw two of them fly up at the same time, and I was hoping to spot a pair. Other neighbors with a view over the pond showed me photos from last summer when there were clearly two red ones there, and another paler one that looked like a juvenile. Maybe a mating pair and a baby? Too bad I was away over the summer and couldn’t document it. 

 

When I did spot one Scarlet Ibis to include in the count, it was not with a mate, but instead walking around with a Snowy Egret. I couldn’t help assuming they were the same two birds that have been keeping company consistently for the past few winters. Where are the other Scarlet Ibises? 

 

A resident Scarlet Ibis and migrating Snowy Egret seem to be reunited again for the winter

 

In my neighborhood, discussion about the Scarlet Ibis drama has definitely brought people together. And so has participating in the annual bird count. 

 

When we look closely at the birds and other wildlife around us, we are more likely to want to also look out for them, to wonder about how they experience the places we inhabit, and to deepen our connections with life force we all share. We might even feel a bit more grounded in the world as we approach the challenges of the new year coming.

 

One member of the St. John count team, Beverly Melius, is also a poet and sent me this poem to share: 

 

if birds are we are

 

what is it about counting birds? Perhaps

it’s about turning busyness to patience

unwording ourselves, becoming birdlike

growing wings, lifting from heaviness

taking flight into the unknown or maybe 

it’s about hope that we can sidestep our 

vanishing because they say we are in the

throes of the 6^th Extinction, maybe it all 

comes down to a lucky number but what 

about the two rainbows weaving among 

those feral storm clouds, maybe it's about 

peace descending with the first sighting 

of the day or that stillness when suddenly 

something new flies into your vision or nine 

joyful Pelicans swooping in the surf, or the

moment a fleeting sliver of sunlight sends six

Pintails sparking with iridescence as they 

skim across the pond inches above the water

or maybe it’s the soft drizzle of rain on 

bare skin while bewitched by Grebes

and Grassquits, quite possibly though it’s

about huddling in a thicket taking cover 

from the downpour and being mesmerized 

by a Great Blue gripping the tip of a snag

twisting her long neck to see what the 

Christmas winds are kicking up, turning back

then hunkering down into herself

waiting and watching together 

                                     beverly melius  

                                      Christmas Bird Count 12-16-23 

Celebrating Tamarind Trees This Season

  

The tamarind tree by our house on St. John has grown remarkably tall and bushy recently. It is also ­­­wonderfully full of life even around the winter solstice.

 

The hummingbirds that come to my sugar water feeder in the morning will go over and rest in the shade of the tamarind’s feathery leaves. 

 

      

A Green-throated Carib hummingbird takes a break from its search for nectar. 

 

The strange black Smooth-billed Anis explore the top branches, and sometimes snack on the wasp nests lower down. They have communal nests and usually move around in a pack of five.

Smooth-billed Anis are related to Cuckoos but have much thicker bills.

 

My Swedish ancestors endured long days of darkness surrounding the winter solstice, but also found solace in the evergreen firs and spruce trees filling the northern forests. Bringing cut trees inside and hanging lights and decorations on them has remained a beloved holiday tradition for many families. 

 

Here in the Virgin Islands we can enjoy an outside tree with live decorations.

 

The tamarind tree has tiny delicate flowers for such a big tree. 

 

I recently learned about a different Scandinavian tradition, which appears to date  back to the Viking age, or even earlier. It involves planting a special tree in the middle of the yard on a family farm - a Vårdträd, or guardian tree - which was viewed as sacred. Some of them can still be seen by farms across the countryside. Caring for these trees is a way of showing respect for the ancestors who have lived on the land, as well as the nature spirits thought to dwell within the trees.  

 

With roots deep underground and branches reaching into the sky, trees have held social and mystical significance in many cultures, including in the Virgin Islands. Large trees, especially, can be seen as representing deep connections between the land, human societies, ancestors and the spirit world, even as they support today’s people and wildlife. 

 

 

A Hammock Skipper butterfly examines the tamarind flowers. 

We didn’t plant the tamarind tree in our yard ourselves. It was fairly small when we started building the house almost 20 years ago, and probably grew from a seed dropped by a bird or animal. 

But we have nurtured it. Early on, my husband spared the young tamarind tree when he was out with his machete trying to clear out the somewhat similar-looking false tamarinds or tan-tans (Leucaena leucocephala). The tan-tans were originally introduced in the mid-1800s to feed cows on St. John. They will grow quickly on disturbed land, producing foliage for fodder and large quantities of seeds, but no tasty fruit. 

Tamarinds (Tamarindus indica) are native to Africa, are widely naturalized in Asia, and have been transported around the world. They were probably brought here around the mid-1600s, because people enjoyed cooking with their tart (sometimes sweet) fruit. They are not as widespread as the tan-tans, but can get much larger and live longer. 

Unfortunately, as the trees get taller, it gets harder to pick the fruits. Sometimes only the birds can reach them. 

 

A Pearly-eyed Thrasher has its pick of the high tamarind fruit. 

 

The tamarind tree has definitely become a cherished feature in our yard. And fortunately it’s not right in the center, so it doesn’t block the walkway - or my view into the wetlands pond below the house.

 

Have You Found Birds Nesting­ on Your Deck?

Two bullfinch babies quietly opened their mouths hoping for food

 

When we came back to our house late last month, I saw that there was a nest in the corner rafters of our screened-in deck downstairs. We had left a door open at one end while we were gone so it wouldn’t be blown out if a bad storm came by. We soon discovered that a couple of Lesser Antillean Bullfinches had used the cozy deck area during our absence. 

 

When I first noticed the nest, I assumed it was empty. I didn’t see any birds around, and it was right above where we usually sit to eat dinner, so I was planning to remove it. 

 

However, when I stood up on a chair and peeked inside, I thought I saw something moving down in the bottom. I looked more closely, and saw a small, gray, slightly twitching pile, and an unopened eye on what seemed to be a newly hatched chick. Oh dear.

 

When there is consistent warm weather and an abundance of food, most resident birds can breed throughout the year. In the past we have come back in the fall and seen remnants of nests around the house, but mostly by late October the birds were finished, and the nests had fallen down. They never really seemed very sturdy anyway.

 

You can see both the parents gathering material to build nests and working on it clumsily, apparently without a lot of construction expertise. Still they do manage to reproduce successfully and are abundant on many of the smaller eastern Caribbean islands. 

 

The females are light colored, with a mix of tan and beige feathers. 

A female bullfinch gathered nesting material from a pygmy date palm tree

 

The males are black with red patches on their throats, above their eyes, and under their tails. They are quite aggressive, at least about boxing out the Bananaquits at the sugar feeder when I fill it. Yet it turns out they are good partners and providers when it comes to parenting.  

 

Male bullfinches also bring sticks for the nest.

 

We mostly stayed off the deck after I looked into the nest. From inside I saw both parents through the screen. They seemed to be consulting, and then decided that it was okay to fly across the deck to the nest. We were hot and dark inside, though, so I did sometimes open the door from the kitchen to get some more air and light. 

 

One day about a week later I looked out and noticed something moving in the nest. Of course my first thought was to get my camera. Sitting far back inside the house, I used my telephoto lens to check things out from a distance. Now the nestlings had gotten bigger, and I saw two mouths sticking out of the nest, not making any noise yet, but obviously hoping one of the parents would come with food. The babies’ mouths have yellow lines around the outside, and are bright red inside, so the parents have clear targets for dropping the food.   

 

I figured that one of the parents would show up soon, so I sat there very quietly, holding my camera. I actually had to wait for almost an hour. A wildlife stakeout operation in my own kitchen. Then suddenly the dad appeared with some food in his beak, and when I raised the camera to take a photo, he turned and gave me a hard look. 

 

The bullfinch father came by to feed the babies

 

After that look, I kept all the doors to the deck closed. I didn’t want the parents to get scared off and abandon the nest. I couldn’t see very much from inside, so I wasn’t sure what was happening. At one point the nest seemed to be falling apart, and I wondered if the parents were still coming.  

 

Then about two weeks after we got back, I saw some movement outside the nest. I opened the door to the deck, and just then a baby bird dropped onto the chair below the nest, and then flopped onto the floor. 

 

When the baby bird dropped out of the nest it couldn’t fly

 

I was worried about its safety, but the dad quickly appeared and gradually led the baby along the deck and out the door into the low bushes next to the house. I was very relieved. 

 

There was no further activity around the nest after that. I hopedt that the other baby had already fledged while I wasn’t around. I was also happy to be able to open the doors so we could use the deck and cool down the house a bit.  

 

I could still hear them calling to each other outside though. Like many other young birds, the bullfinch babies will beg for food from the parent for quite a while, even after they have learned to fly.  

A hungry bullfinch chick appealed to its mother for food 

 

It would be interesting to hear about any birds that have chosen to nest on your decks.

      

 

Yellow-rumped Warblers Could Be On Their Way To The Caribbean

 

Yellow-rumped Warbler

I am wondering if they will make it as far as the Virgin Islands this season. 

 

Last year I saw quite a few of them migrating through New York in late October, and then soon afterwards I thought I saw one flitting around the sugar bowl on St. John. But then I realized it was one of the resident Bananaquits, which are about the same size. 

 

You don’t often see Bananaquits showing their flashy yellow backsides, because their wings close over their butts when they sit down. But wow, when one flies up with its back towards you, there it is, so don’t get confused by them. 

    

Bananaquit

 

During the summer, the Yellow-rumped Warblers breed in Canada and down into New England. Then in the fall they start to migrate further south. They tend to leave their summer places later than other warblers, often in October, and then they go back north again as early as March or April. 

 

Yellow-rumped Warblers breed in northern coniferous forests.  

 

Members of the subspecies of the Yellow-rumped Warblers on the east coast of the US are called Myrtles, and those are the ones that show up in the Caribbean. But some of them just stay along the east coast for the winter, not even going very far south. 

 

In the Virgin Islands, they are ‘irruptive’ - usually rare but then some years showing up in a big bunch.  

 

It seems a bit of a mystery why some of them stay in the states, while others come down to the Caribbean, and then occasionally keep traveling this far. Winter migration is mostly about food, not warm weather, so it might be because some years there is not enough food in certain areas, or perhaps there are too many birds clustered somewhere along the pathway and so the later arrivals just keep on going. 

 

Like most warblers, they primarily eat lots of insects. Not sugar, so they will not come to the sugar bowl. During the spring and summer, they forage on the ground, and in trees, and also grab bugs out of the air. 

 

Yellow-rumped Warbler pulling a worm out of the ground

 

But Yellow-rumped Warblers are more versatile than many other warblers. They can digest berries too, and that allows them to spend the winter in cooler areas that have winter berries, even after the insects get scarce. 

 

Yellow-rumped Warbler eating berries

 

A few years ago I did actually see a large flock of Yellow-rumped Warblers on St. John, in the mangrove wetlands near Annaberg. They were creeping around on a stand of dead trees and seemed to be picking through the spider webs, eating trapped insects and maybe the spiders too. 

 

Yellow-rumped Warbler finding insects in spider webs in the mangroves

 

Often called ‘butter butts’ by birders, these are among the most common and widespread warblers in North America. Their numbers have not been decreasing, unlike some other types of migratory birds. 

 

However, there was an incident in Chicago recently where many of them died, along with other warblers, when they collided with a building. Most warblers migrate at night, and can become disoriented by brightly-lit buildings. They sometimes also get confused when they are looking for food during the day and fly into glass windows that reflect trees, which knocks them out. That is why people in many areas along the migratory bird routes are currently pushing for legislation requiring buildings to adopt bird-protective measures. 

 

It is possible that only a few Yellow-rumped Warblers will get down here this winter, but I’ll be keeping a lookout for them. And let me know if you see any.

Are Those Fiddler Crabs Waving at Me?

 

A male fiddler crab has one large claw that he waves around.

I mostly see these tiny crustaceans along the edges of the salt ponds. There might be hundreds of them in a small area, and some of them are enthusiastically waving their claws in the air.

They are so cute that I want to get close enough to check them out.  But when I approach, suddenly they are all gone. Even when I move very slowly and quietly. Fortunately, when I am out on bird walks at Francis Bay, I can sometimes catch pictures of them with my telephoto lens before they disappear into tiny holes in the mud.

The crabs each have a hole in the mud close to the edge of the water where they can drop down and hide. Predators like herons, egrets and clapper rails feed along the edge of the pond and will snap up these little crabs like popcorn if they don’t hide quickly enough. So most of the time the fiddler crabs stay close to their burrows.  

The burrows are up to about a foot deep and besides providing the crabs with shelter, they also help the mangroves trees around the pond by watering and aerating their roots.

This fiddler crab found a cozy spot in a relatively dry, pond-side area.

One time I saw a group of fiddler crabs out in the deeper water hanging onto a branch. I was happy to have them out of their burrows and sitting in plain view for a change, but it didn’t seem very safe. Maybe they were forced out of their burrows by a heavy rain and were clustered together on the branch for protection.

These fiddler crabs were hanging out just above the surface of the water. 

It is only a male fiddler crab that has the one oversized claw, and when he is waving back and forth it is usually in hopes that a female crab will come into his burrow. Sometimes the males will also use their claws to keep rivals away from their territory, or even fight each other.

The females have two small claws, but when I was looking through my photos, I couldn’t find a clear image of a female fiddler crab, only a few blurry ones. Maybe the females are more reclusive, lounging down in their burrows.

When a female is ready to mate, though, she comes out of her burrow and walks around the neighborhood. At that point she is very vulnerable to predators. As she quickly scuttles around, she is looking for a male with a good-sized claw. When she finds an acceptable one, she will follow him into his burrow to mate. 

Interestingly, some male fiddler crabs are born with their large claw on the right, and others have the big one on the left. I have seen both kinds. It’s not clear whether the females have a preference. 

 

A few males might lose their big claws somehow. Maybe from fighting, or escaping a predator, and in that case the smaller claw (on the other side) can grow larger to take its place. 

The other prominent feature of these crabs is their eyes. Many crabs have their eyes on stalks that stick up on top of their heads. But these fiddler crabs are very small, and their bodies are often obscured by the big claws, so mostly all you see is eyes and claws.

Those high stalks allow them to get a long-distance perspective. That’s why they know to hide when I am approaching but not yet close. They don’t have great visual focus at a distance, though, so they probably can’t actually tell the difference between me and an egret. 

Their compound eye structures also give them a panoramic view, so they can see what’s behind them without moving their eyes or turning their heads, and can see what’s around them both on land and under the water. Scientists have become interested in studying the structure of fiddler crab eyes as they design complex artificial vision devices and robotic applications. 

Fiddler crabs are exposed and vulnerable when they are out on the mud flats.

When I tried to figure out what species of fiddler crabs I was seeing at Francis Bay, I found some pictures on the Internet that made me think their scientific name might be Minuca burgersi, which is one of the common types in the Virgin Islands. I was mostly focusing on their reddish color. 

For confirmation, I asked some local nature experts, including Caroline Rogers, a former research biologist with the USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center. She contacted Paul Jobsis at UVI, who forwarded my photos to several others, including a UVI professor, Guilherme Corte, who in turn connected me with Helio Checon, an ecologist in Brazil. Checon informed me that the claws (and the teeth on them) are key to identifying different fiddler crabs - more so than coloring. Though most of the crabs in my photos do seem to be Minuca burgersi, the claws on the ones in the first photo look heavier, and Checon suggested those are a different species.   

Despite their big claws and sophisticated eyes, quite a few fiddler crabs get picked off by birds foraging along the edges of the ponds. Fortunately, however, there are still many of them around. Be sure to give them a wave from a distance when you see them.