I’ve been looking after the chickens at the student Green House for the last few days. The birds live behind the Green House “eco-dorm” and provide eggs, education, amusement, and, in the end, flesh. Their caretakers have dispersed, so a motley group of those “left behind” are coming in to feed, water, and check on the birds.

Dawn breaks on chickens pecking in the frost...in a PVC enclosure (wandering dogs love to eat chicken).

This gal is good-looking...

...and she's feisty. About one microsecond after this blurry photo was taken, she launched a lightning jab at the lens -- ping! She looked disappointed that the lens filter didn't crack, then she moved on to a vigorous attack of my boots.

The nest boxes in their shed have half a dozen eggs each morning -- including, today, a blue one.

I can’t help but think of Asian jungles whenever I’m around these birds — and what a long strange trip it’s been.

The Audubon Society runs an annual “Christmas” Bird Count across the Americas. This count was started in 1900 by Frank Chapman at the American Museum and has continued ever since. Each individual “count circle” is fifteen miles in diameter and volunteers fan out within this circle to record all the birds they can find. The data is then compiled across the whole continent to give a large-scale picture of the health of bird populations.

This morning, I took one pie segment of the Franklin/Coffee County circle. (LouAnn Partington organized the whole event, I was just one of many “counters.”) The weather made this outing a treat: mid-50s and sunny. In New York, I remember doing one of these counts on cross-country skis in biting cold.

In all, I found over fifty species. Some highlights included finding a Loggerhead Shrike, a species that is in serious decline. Shrikes are birds of mixed grassland and shrubs, and they have been hit hard by the intensification of modern agriculture which removes their habitat and potentially exposes them to agrochemicals. They are fierce little birds, preying on small mammals and large insects. They impale some of their dead prey on thorns and barbed wire as a signal of their hunting prowess: mini trophies.

Loggerhead Shrike, one of the few remaining in the county.

Population trend for Loggerhead Shrike. Data taken from US Christmas Bird Count database. The Breeding Bird Survey (a summertime census) reports a minus three percent per year decline for the last thirty years.

Some other personal highlights were hearing Sandhill cranes make their bugling sounds, getting blasted by a blue jay with an imitation of a red-tailed hawk keeer as I walked under the jay’s perch, watching a belted kingfisher fly through the mist along the Elk River, and seeing Henbit the goat’s namesake plant, Henbit the little pasture weed.

Lamium amplexicaule, Henbit

I got a call today from the Sewanee Children’s Center: a dead hawk was lying in the playground. On my way home, I stopped by and did an impromptu “show and tell” for the kids. Nothing is more interesting at 5pm than dead animals, it seems. Because Sewanee is a small town, I know which households some of the kids came from. Interestingly, those from homes with nature-loving/trail-hiking/garden-keeping parents were very keen to hold the bird (wash your hands afterward kiddo…) and feel its soft feathers and sharp toes. Those from iHomes shrunk back: ah, the horrors of nature.

The bird was a Cooper’s Hawk in its immature plumage. The bird was full grown, but had not yet molted into the adult breeding plumage. It may have hit a window and fallen to the playground below.

Cooper’s Hawks hunt other birds by chasing them down at high speeds in the forest canopy. To pull off this feat in the clutter of twigs and branches, the hawk has fairly short rounded wings and a long rudder-like tail. Its legs are also quite long — all the better to fish hiding birds out of tree holes.

The look-alike Sharp-shinned Hawk can be hard to tell apart from Cooper’s Hawks. I’m calling this one a Cooper’s because of the broad white band at the end of its tail, the relatively fine streaks on the belly that taper off to mostly white, the somewhat rounded end to the tail, and the fact that it is larger than some (but not all, females can be quite big) “Sharpies.”

This bird is now in my freezer and will become a student’s Ornithology project next semester. I’d much rather the bird was alive, roosting in an oak tonight. But, because death has yet again paid an untimely visit, we may as well use its remains to learn more about the world.

This lone, female Ruddy Duck has been paddling around Lake Cheston for the last two weeks. Unlike mallards and other “dabbling” ducks that feed by poking around on the surface of the water, ruddy ducks dive down and feed on aquatic invertebrates under the surface. Their dive starts with a short leap, then the birds take a vigorous plunge, propelling themselves through the water with strokes of their feet (they have some of the largest feet of any waterbird). They stay down for about half a minute at a time as they probe the bottom of the lake. Midge larvae are their favorite food.

Ruddy ducks are “stiff tailed” ducks. The photos above show the bird with these spiky feathers cocked, but they are more often held down, flat against the water surface.

The male, who has a blue beak and “ruddy” plumage, makes one of the best sounds of all American birds, utterly charming in its goofiness. The accompanying display is just as compelling.

This species breeds mostly in the “prairie pothole” region of the upper midwest and Canada, then winters along the coasts and on southern lakes. This is the first one I’ve seen in Sewanee, although they can be fairly common on the larger lakes around Winchester and Stevenson.