While I assume most of you dedicated listeners heard last week’s bird report live on your Eton emergency crank radios from 22 pledge drives ago, I suspect some of you may not have heard it. Luckily, it’s on the website somewhere, as always. The intervening week has not brought much in the way of new and interesting birds to discuss – it’s almost as if not many people were able to go out birding for some reason. No matter, as one of our most exciting of annual ornitho-phenomena is underway, one that allows rays of hope to penetrate the darkest of late winter hearts. Because, as the days lengthen, neither blizzard nor sleet nor bitter cold keeps the birds from their appointed, hormone-charged singing.
As I like to put it, birds essentially go through puberty each year – if you listen closely, you might even hear their voices crack. After a winter of dormancy, the increase in daylight acts on their pineal gland, which produces melatonin. The same thing happens in us, but melatonin regulates our circadian rhythms. In birds, melatonin causes the reproductive organs and the song control structures in the brain to re-develop after having shrunk in the fall. I’ve actually heard, and this is really tragic, that to get an advantage over competitors, some male birds, or bird bros, as they call themselves - have been caught secretly taking extra melatonin for “male enhancement”. I blame bird social media.
In any case, the increase in bird song has been underway since January for some species. In my neighborhood, House Finches have been the lustiest and earliest of late winter singers. Their rollicking, joyful song has been a welcome respite from the relative silence of winter mornings. They are among the earliest of resident birds to start breeding – some may be on eggs later this month, believe it or not – so the early song development makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is American Goldfinches. I am hearing more song from them over the last week, but they mostly won’t start breeding until late June. Why male goldfinches need a four-month song warmup is a mystery – just divas, I guess.
Eastern Bluebirds have also been feeling it this last week. Before the storm, my family and I fled way off-Cape to a family house in a woodsy neighborhood near the New Hampshire border. The day after the storm, in spite of another thick, new blanket of snow in this never-ending winter, male bluebirds were belting out songs – well, belting is a strong word for bluebird song - atop nest boxes in the yard in between visits to the neighbor’s suet. Back home, I heard two male bluebirds counter-singing in my neighborhood yesterday morning.
Cardinals, Carolina Wrens, and juncos have also been singing more over the last week or two. And Mourning Doves – they will also nest in March if conditions allow. And while most of us associate warbler song with May, I’m pretty sure I even caught some song from an overwintering Yellow-rumped Warbler this week – up to three visit my suet each day.
Day length has already increased more than two hours since January 1, and will increase another hour and 24 minutes just over the course of this month. So expect, and enjoy, more and lustier bird songs each day. But if a male bird shows up at your bathroom window saying “hey man, you got any melatonin in that medicine cabinet?”, just close the window and walk away.
