How to double the fun of "20 minutes in the park"? Come and see the birds!

As the saying goes, when you are writing a proposal, group friend A is watching birds of prey in Beihai; when you are making a PPT, group friend B is looking for forest birds in Banna; when you are in a meeting, group friend C is photographing plovers in Dongtan... Hanging out in various bird-watching groups, I often doubt my life: Don’t these people have to go to work?

I don’t have to travel around during holidays. On weekdays, when I’m at home writing, there are always bird lovers sharing the bird conditions of the day, which really makes people want to go birding. However, I have long been accustomed to urban bird watching - I can take a light telescope or camera, or simply take nothing, and take a stroll before work or during lunch break, and watch birds for leisure, and you can see many interesting bird behaviors .

If you also suffer from not having the time and energy to go bird watching, or want to make your "20 minutes in the park" more fun, the following bird activity observations may provide you with inspiration.

Foraging

Wild birds spend a lot of time looking for food, so foraging is arguably the easiest bird behavior to observe. It is very interesting to observe what they eat and how they process their food.

When I first started bird watching, I often visited Ritan Park near my company during lunch break. In May of that year, I could see the same blackbird every day at noon. It had a few albino flight feathers on its wings, and its yellow pointed beak was often covered with mud. At first glance, it looked like a starling. Every day, it would come to the same big tree, rummage around on the ground, then pull out an earthworm, coil it up, hold it in its mouth, and fly away with a flap of its wings . It was the bird breeding season at that time. I wonder how many mouths it had to feed?

A blackbird pulls an earthworm out of the ground, photographed in Beijing's Ritan Park | Maya Blue

Blackbird eating earthworms, photographed in Beijing Ritan Park | Maya Blue

In the spring, you can see gray magpies eating caterpillars in the north. They will catch pine caterpillars on pine trees, and then rub them against the bark to remove the poisonous hairs. Gray magpies like to gather in groups, which is always lively.

Gray magpies gather｜Maya Blue

In autumn and winter, they eat sweet persimmons on persimmon trees. Birds often visit trees with fruits , such as banyan trees, Chinese tallow trees, and chinaberry trees. It is also a good idea to get to know the common trees around you while bird watching.

Blackbird eating persimmons, Zhu Village, Guangzhou | ChanIm

In Guangdong, you can also find birds that eat on some flowering plants , such as the Fork-tailed Sunbird and the Dark-green White-eye. They are both relatively small. The Fork-tailed Sunbird has a sharp call, the female is a low-key yellow-green color, and the male has a beautiful metallic luster.

Male Fork-tailed Sunbird standing on a ground lily, South China Botanical Garden, Guangzhou | ChanIm

The dark-green sunbird is not afraid of people and often moves in groups on trees, like cute little fur balls.

A dark green white-eye bird eats nectar from a red lotus flower, with pink pollen all over its face, South China Botanical Garden, Guangzhou | ChanIm

If you are near an artificial lake or wetland park, it will be even better. If you look around the trees and rocks by the lake, you may see a blue and orange figure, which is the common kingfisher . They will find a good position to watch the water, and then find the right time to dive in and catch fish.

After catching a fish, they will shake their heads and smack the fish to death on a tree trunk or rock, then slowly adjust the position of the fish in their mouth. When they eat a fish, they always hold the fish head toward their throat, following the direction of the fish scales. If they hold the fish head outward, this means they are giving the fish to a mate or feeding their young.

Common Kingfisher, South China Botanical Garden, Guangzhou | ChanIm

Kingfishers are relatively small, so you usually need to use a telescope to observe them. It is easier to see egrets, night herons, herons and other herons , which always stand by the water for a long time. Although they look peaceful, they are very fierce when hunting, and will use their sharp beaks to poke fish and frogs vigorously.

Pond heron sub-adult preying on marsh frog, Shenzhen Futian Mangrove Ecological Park | Maya Blue

Playing in the water

Birds can often be seen where there is water . There are not only egrets but also ducks, moorhens and little grebes near the water.

The moorhen belongs to the family of rails in the order Gruiformes. It swims with its head tilted, just like a domestic chicken. If it walks onto a plant such as a lotus leaf, its long toes can be seen. The little grebe, on the other hand, looks round. They are good at diving, often diving suddenly into the water and reappearing in the distance a moment later.

The moorhen (left) and the little grebe (right) are both common water birds in the park, Guangzhou Yunxi Botanical Garden | ChanIm

Bird watching is also possible in places with shallow water. In the park's artificial lakes and ditches, if the shore is not hardened, many birds will go to the shallow water to drink water , take a bath , and then go to the nearby trees to shake off their feathers and bask in the sun. The birds that have just finished taking a bath often stand up their feathers and puff them up into a ball, which is very cute.

Red-eared Bulbul taking a bath, South China Botanical Garden, Guangzhou | ChanIm

White Wagtails also spend a lot of time near the water. They like to stop and go, and when they stop, they swing their tails up and down. Their flight path is a unique wave shape , falling down for a while, then flapping their wings and flying up for a while, a bit like a bouncing ball, and they make a "ji ling, ji ​​ling" sound when flying.

White Wagtail, Guangzhou Yunxi Botanical Garden | ChanIm

When the lawn is watered , sometimes brave birds like magpies will bathe under the water column. This is probably the closest bird behavior to playing with water.

Courtship and nesting

In the right season, we can also see some special bird behaviors, such as courtship and nesting.

Many birds start courting and pairing up in winter. Male mallards and mandarin ducks put on colorful feathers and perform various actions around females to show off. Different species have different courtship behaviors, including flying high in the sky, nodding, wagging tails, bowing, or touching each other's beaks and necks affectionately. Will the female flap her wings and fly away, or respond enthusiastically? It's really suspenseful!

In spring, the male mandarin duck (front) is dressed in colorful breeding plumage, and the female in the back is more low-key. Beijing's Old Summer Palace | ChanIm

Sometimes, male birds will present nesting materials or food to females to prove their ability to provide for their families. Male grebes will dive to scoop up water plants and pass them to females. Male kingfishers will present freshly caught fish to females.

When spring comes, birds start to build nests. It is easy to see small birds carrying nesting materials in this season. I have seen sparrows and other small birds struggling to move hay and twigs that are longer than their bodies. Sometimes they just can’t lift them and drop them halfway.

I have also seen silk starlings picking up paper towels on the lawn. These littered items can easily cause harm to birds.

Silky Starlings picking up trash. Low-quality tourists are bad. Beijing Ritan Park | Maya Blue

The breeding behavior of birds is very interesting, but it requires some knowledge to observe. You can learn by reading popular science, attending lectures and local bird watching activities. In addition, when observing birds building nests and raising chicks, you should use binoculars and cameras and observe from a distance to avoid disturbing the birds . Birds in the breeding season are very vigilant and may abandon their nests if they encounter danger, resulting in the death of eggs or chicks.

PS: Many bird-watching enthusiasts believe that bird nest information should not be shared publicly on social media , especially for rare and beautiful birds, so as not to attract onlookers and cause disturbance. I personally would be more cautious and save the photos I took for the breeding season to be over before posting them.

Brooding

Many young birds will follow their parents for a while after leaving the nest. At this time, you can observe a very heartwarming scene: the adult bird feeds the young bird . The parent bird is busy looking for food, and the young bird follows the parent bird and makes begging movements. They lower their bodies, raise their heads and open their mouths, and sometimes spread their wings and tail feathers to shake.

The one who is busy feeding the chicks may not be the mother, but the father! More than 92% of living bird species are monogamous[1], which means that they maintain a single male and female pair during at least the breeding season, working together to build nests and raise chicks.

The young bird on the left is begging for food, but the parent bird is too busy to handle it. Zhu Village, Guangzhou | ChanIm

Ducklings, mandarin ducks, and grebes are also good to observe in spring. They are common in city parks, not afraid of people, and very cute. If you are lucky, you can also see a "kindergarten" composed of many ducklings. An American nature photographer once recorded a mother common merganser with 76 ducklings.

Many ducks have strong reproductive capacity, and they practice the concept of "don't put all your eggs in one basket" and lay a few eggs in the nests of their neighbors to spread the risk. Ducklings can move and find food on their own as soon as they are born. Occasionally, confused ducklings get lost and join the team led by other duck mothers. Duck mothers are not opposed to this, so sometimes such super families will appear.

A mandarin duck mother with a group of babies, Chaoyang Park, Beijing | ChanIm

There are many interesting bird behaviors. If you can observe them frequently in the same place, you will have the opportunity to get to know some of them. It feels like you have met a group of special neighbors . When I hear blackbirds imitating the calls of electric cars, I feel that they are also residents of the city. When I see northern redstarts every autumn, I can feel the real change of seasons.

I think that "bird watching" (chasing rare birds, increasing the number of bird species) is not the only fun or purpose of bird watching. Although it is fun to go out of your way to see the target bird species, if you don't have such conditions, it is better to enjoy the company of birds and try to understand their world . After all, that is also our world.

References

[1] Zheng Guangmei. Ornithology (2nd Edition) [J]. 2023.

[2] Jillian Mock. Here's Why This Mama Merganser Has More Than 50 Ducklings. Audubon Magazine.

https://www.audubon.org/news/heres-why-mama-merganser-has-more-50-ducklings. <2018-07-13.2024-11-26>

Author: Maya Blue

Editor: Mai Mai

Image source: ChanIm

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)

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