Autumn Birds

by Ken Wilson

No two weeks are the same when it comes to our local bird life.
In this column, we’ll motivate you to notice more of what’s happening
instead of just trying to identify each species.

Dunlin

Many species switch their feeding behaviors in autumn. Robins
switch from earthworms to berries. The holly trees in Port Townsend’s
Uptown can have flocks numbering in the hundreds. Many ducks go into
full courtship mode with wonderful and humorous sounds and
behaviors. The forests seem mostly vacated because the songbirds have
ceased their singing from conspicuous perches; instead, they are to be
discovered by turning on your smartphone’s free Merlin app. It will
identify many individual birds that you would otherwise miss, either
because the vocalizations are soft, or the bird is hidden within the
foliage. (Merlin found more than 20 species in my P.T. backyard this
past week.) Backyard feeders are superb for observing bird behaviors.

Green-winged Teal

Through November, our waterbirds increase greatly in number and
diversity, with most of these remaining through the winter.
Nonetheless, there are considerable local movements of birds, so that
whatever you discover on one day will be different the following day.
But not always… some individual birds, for example, will return to
the same precise location each year. Others, such as Red Crossbills or
Pine Siskins, do not share this ‘site fidelity;’ they may be abundant
one year and wander elsewhere the next.