Red-bellied Woodpeckers used to be called "Chad"

I have a robust collection of bird books and some that are over a century old. I was recently looking over Birds of America originally published in 1917 but I think my copy is from the 1930s. I was just doijng some casual browsing about woodpeckers and came across the section of other names for red-bellied woodpecker:

Image of a woodpecker on a tree limb.

Male red-bellied woodpecker.

Zebra Bird (looking at their backs, makes sense)
Zebra-back (ok)
Chad (Wait…what?)
Shamshack (OK, now you’re just making this up)
Ramshack (What next, Abendego?)

OK, the “zebra bird” and “zebra-back” are actually better names than red-bellied woodpecker. But I was curious about “chad.”

A chad coming in for a drink while a couple of robins wrestle in the bath.

According to the book, “Chad is also a common appellation in some of the middle western States.” And it goes on later to say, “…upon alighting often gives voice to the harsh, brassy, cry of chad, chad, from one of its local names has been acquired.” That actually makes sense. In my brain I hear red-bellies as saying, chew chew when they give their call, so chad isn’t too far of a stretch…but shamshack and ramshack? I did some mild googling and found another great name, jamjack! The article says that it is also derived from some of the calls that I might call chew chew. So, I guess I will forever be noting chads out my window shouting “shamshack!”

woodpecker being held in hand and you can see her sharp, pointy, spiked tongue.

Female red-bellied woodpecker tongue.

Incidentally, as I was doing all this deep diving on the red-bellied woodpecker tonight, I noted that All About Birds says, “Males have longer, wider-tipped tongues than females, possibly allowing a breeding pair to forage in slightly different places on their territory and maximize their use of available food.”

Yes, every woman is thinking about “foraging potential” when they read about a longer, wider-tipped tongue…

Hummingbirds in Late Summer


Hummingbird coming in for nectar as I put this post together.

It has been a crazy ruby-throated hummingbird summer for me. And I’m grateful. Even as I type this on a Thursday evening in August on my deck, a ruby-throated hummingbird is hovering close to my nectar feeder while trying to decide if I’m a threat.

Ruby-throated hummingbird nest digiscoped with my phone and spotting scope.

I was walking around Westwood Hills at the end of July and watched a hummingbird gleaning insects around a water feature. I watched her fly up to a thin branch right over the trail to what looked like a small notch on the tree. I got her in my binoculars, and sure enough she was on a nest. I uploaded a video on Instagram that gives a better perspective of where the nest was.

Two weeks later I came back and sure enough there were two chicks sticking their little heads out.

Baby hummingbirds! If you want to see some baby hummingbird tongue, check out the video on Instagram.

When I knew I was moving back to Minnesota, I checked an apartment complex that was on my old birding patch. I used to pass this place all the time while birding and thought the grounds right on a wetland with a water feature and Joe-Pye-weed looked ideal. When I mentioned it to my husband at the time, he didn’t like the zip code, “That’s St. Louis Park, I have to have a Minneapolis zip code.” We all have our quirks.

But when I was cruising the website while in Alaska looking for a new place to live, I noticed that they named all of their floor plans after birds. Welp. I guess this is fate? When I did the actual in-person inspection, the woman showing me around said, “I’m going to start by showing you the Starling.”

I said jokingly, “I’m not sure I can live in an invasive species.”

“Then I’ll show your the Loon,” she said.

How could I not fall in love with this place? I live in the Morning Dove floor plan—which cracks me up because it’s one of the larger units and the Osprey is a one bedroom. And if you’ve ever seen a mourning dove nest…it’s in no way shape or form a two bedroom.

But I also noticed on the tour that a lot of people had bird feeders—especially hummingbird feeders. Having worked in a bird store, I know how many people do not keep fresh nectar in their feeders and they kind of become a decroative thing that hummingbirds visit for a second and move one.

After I moved in, I put up a seed feeder and didn’t bother with nectar. In Minnesota, hummingbirds pass through the Twin Cities metro area in May and nest out of urban areas and show up like mad in August. May 2 I was on my deck. A female hummingbird flew to my deck, she hovered around the seed feeder, then hovered in front of my face, and then flew away.

“Oh hell,” I thought, “did my previous neighbor have a feeder and was she back from migration expecting the same from me?” The next day on my deck…the same thing happenedd. I’m not a fan of hummingbird feeders because you have to really keep them clean to get the hummers, I prefer flowers, but I also wasn’t in the right state of mind to maintain a proper hummingbird container garden.

But a bought a pair of hummingbird feeders so I could set up an easy rotation system of putting out a feeder and having a clean one at the ready to quickly refill and put out when the current one had the nectar go bad…about two and a half days based on sun angles.

Hummingbird perched on a branch just off of my deck.

She checked it out and sipped demurely.

Then one day with my home office window open I heard a familiar clicking sound. I went to my deck and instantly found the male ruby-throated hummingbird doing his "U” shaped dive back and forth in the tree in front of me. Wow, displaying and nesting right off my deck. I guess it pays birding-wise to have a zip code just outside of Minneapolis.

Now she and her offspring visit my feeder and periodically engage in some fun aerial jousting and I will keep my hummingbird feeder rotation going until the ruby-throats move on sometime in October.

In many ways I feel like I’ve had a “basic bitch” birding summer. I haven’t chased rarities, but just delighted in the common Minnesota birds I missed so much while I was in Alaska. And I’m grateful for the hot hummingbird action I’ve had at home and at Westwood.

Fall Migration Is On

I really missed fall migration while living in Alaska. Yes Alaska has fall migration, but it was all too brief. In Minnesota migration lasts months with shorebirds popping up as early as late July. But really it starts in August and depending on when lakes and rivers freeze it can least into early December.

While birding at Westwood Hills this week with my friend Kara, we watched dozens of common nighthawks fly over at about 5 pm, feeding and beginning the journey south. Yesterday, while working, I noticed a warbler flitting in the tree and got my binoculars on it. It was a young, hatched this summer Tennessee Warbler.

The view from the Rock Creek Trail inside Denali National Park and Preserve. I could walk out my front door and hike this regularly.

I knew I was in trouble in Alaska my first fall. The park starts to shut down mid September and if you live there, you practically have it to yourself. I decided I was going to hike a trail out my front door called the Rock Trail daily until the weather stopped me. I have seen many autumns, but none as spectacular as in Central Alaska. And after a few days of this plan, I realized I was bored on the hike and I couldn’t figure out why. What was wrong with me that I thought that view above was boring? And then I realized what was happening, I wasn’t hearing anything. No birds, no crickets, no katydids, nothing. Dead silence , and then I realized all the birds had left. There were a few cranes and swans flying over still. But the waves of warblers, waterfowl, sparrows, that I’d come to expect over many months in Minnesota they had all left already. Of course, I knew from reading books and articles that breeding seasons were fast and furious in the Arctic. I was living in the Sub Arctic…less than 330 miles south of the Arctic Circle. I realized that it was going to be months of silence…It was late September, I wouldn’t really hear birds again until late April…over six months away.

Boreal Chickadee

That’s not to say there were no birds. Boreal chickadees, magpies, and Canada jays were around. The first winter didn’t have much of a tree crop so I didn’t really see any crossbills or redpolls. I wasn’t allowed to have a bird feeder where I lived because park rules and grizzly bears so I could easily go days without seeing a bird.

On Saturdays in winter, I’d drive the sixteen miles to Healy to visit the grocery/hardware store/gun store/convenience store/liquor store known as Three Bears to watch the parking lot ravens as a form of desperation birding. Often, I’d buy a bag of walnuts to toss out to them.

My first Christmas Bird Count only had three species. The second one had more thanks to it being an irruptive year for finches and grosbeaks. Side note: the upside to a CBC in Alaska is that there is so little daylight, you count starts around 10 am and only lasts about four hours.

Wood thrush coming in for a bathe.

So looking at the calendar and realizing fall migration is on, I’m going to take it all in and enjoy it for as long as possible. Warblers are already moving through in Minnesota, and it won’t be long until we see even more nighthawks overhead, and wood thrushes (like on above) will be passing through our yards. We still three more months ahead at least and I intend to savor it.

What? I'm Out of Alaska? Yes

Did you catch me on Almanac tonight? Confused because you thought I was in Alaska? Life is weird and if someone told me on January 1, 2019, “Hey, you’re gonna get divorced, live through a pandemic, and then live in the remote Alaskan wilderness but be back in 2024,” I’d have thought they were nuts. But here we are. Denali was a great time but I now have a job with the Forest Service that puts me in Minnesota.

So what were the things I talked about tonight?

The heron rookery at Marshall Terrace Park. You can read some of the history of the rookery here.

Birds and Beers

My Bird Club

If you want to catch some Alaska stories, I’ll be part of the storytelling group at Cheap Theater at the Black Forest in on April 20 at 7 pm and I’ll be one of the speakers at the Indiana Dunes Bird Festival in May.

More will come here as I settle back into the land of strong internet and grocery stores in walking distance.

Whimbrels of the Sub Arctic in Denali

What, this blog still works? I know, I blew up my life, moved to Alaska and now all of my writing and creativity goes to a national park.

There are so many birds that I’ve seen and enjoyed over the years, but in many ways I didn’t truly appreciate them. There was a conversation between two men where one said that the outdoors is so much more enjoyable when you what things are. The other man got very defensive and said that he enjoyed the outdoors just as much as anybody and he didn’t need to know the birds, flowers, or trees.

I firmly disagree and the whimbrel is an example of that just being aware of something vs knowing it, is life changing. I know what whimbrels are, I’ve seen them in many places in the Lower 48 of North America. In the grand scheme of shorebirds, they are one of the easier to identify and quite charismatic looking.

This is a whimbrel that I got a photo of while filming a pilot for a birding reality tv show in LA. No, that’s not a joke.

PROOF, took this photo while the whimbrel was about 50 feet away. FYI reality tv shows aren’t scripted, but please note the paper the guy in the middle holding…

I’ve been trying to find photos that I’ve taken of whimbrels and figure out where I was when I took them. I feel like my first whimbrel was exciting but in those heady early days of my birding when I was getting lifers left and right and not quite paying attention to the first sighting because I was getting so many firsts at once. A few photos that I’ve found were from a reality tv show pilot that I filmed, right about the time my book 1001 Secrets Every Birder Should Know came out.

Whimbrels have a crazy beak, not as crazy as a curlew, but still pretty darned distinct. But where whimbrels really got my attention was as we started to study their migration patters and could put transmitters on them to really get an idea of their crazy flights to and from breeding grounds.

Whimbrels on wintering grounds eat quite a few fiddler crabs and it’s thought that the long decurved beak helps them get into their burrows.

In 2009, four whimbrels were tagged by researchers from the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary in Virginia on their southward migration. The following spring, one bird left Virginia and flew to Alaska, traveling 3,200 miles in about 6 days in what looked to be a non-stop flight. Before that, we didn’t know that whimbrels on the east coast of the United States would end up in Alaska. Here’s a pretty amazing migration map based on some of those trackers.

But in 2011 the study showed how these birds managed hurricanes but also the many threats that they face. One bird known as “Chinquapin” successfully flew into Hurricane Irene and survived. A bird known as “Machi” flew through Tropical Storm Maria and another knowns as “Goshen” flew through the east side of Hurricane Irene, both eventually landed on Caribbean island of Guadeloupe and were legally shot as part of a fall shorebird hunt. You can read more on the William and Mary website.

I’m told that whimbrels were seen regularly along the Park Road in Denali. I haven’t seen that, I have had a couple of flyovers on the Denali Highway, but haven’t really seen them around where I live now—especially not nesting. One of the things I love about working here is the rich knowledge of the biology staff. There’s lots of careful research and a push/pull of keeping wilderness wild and allowing visitor access. There’s a known decline of whimbrels nesting on the Park Road, but is that a matter of traffic…or loss in other areas like migratory and wintering habitat? Pressures of unregulated shooting? Storms that are impossible to navigate?

Braided river bed off of the Park Road, the only road that goes into Denali National Park and Preserve.

So when some friends told me they were out hiking in Denali about seven miles from my place and had what they thought was a whimbrel, I went out looking for it. Working and living in a park that is roughly the size of New Hampshire (roughly six million acres), its hard to get bored. There aren’t many trails in the park and you are allowed to hike off trail. Sometimes that’s a challenge for a five foot woman navigating willows about as tall as me where I could surprise a grizzly or moose but I always pack bear spray and talk to myself to prevent surprising anyone.

Denali National Park and Preserve is over six million acres in size, roughly the size of New Hampshire. There is only one road through the park and right now, it’s cut off at the halfway point because that part was built on a rock glacier, the ice melted and the road slid away. I took the dry, rocky bed about a mile and a half to Jenny Creek. It was mostly shallow but with my short legs, I was going to have deep areas of very cold water.

Jenny Creek where I could already hear a whimbrel yelling on the ridge on the other side of the creek.

I always calculate the risk and wonder if it’s worth it. I especially do that living in grizzly bear country. I saw the deeper part of the creek, observed the slow of the water and if I could safely navigate it, and noted the steep side of the ridge vs the gradual. Which had more willows to traverse. It looked like the shallow portion of the creek had fewer willows, but a much steeper climb. The deeper part of the creek had a gradual climb, but more willows. Not going to lie, I entertained just keeping with the easy trail fo the dry river bed and forget the whimbrel…then I heard it calling from the top of the ridge, a bird siren song I can’t resist and opted for the shallow end of the creek with the steep hill.

I opted to bring my hiking poles for this trek and so glad that I did since that made the steep grade of the ridge so much easier to climb. The hilarious part is that I later learned my phone took video from my pants pocket. I can hear myself heavily panting and verbalizing my inner monologue to prevent surprising a bear or moose: “Thank you, past Sharon, for bringing hiking poles, good call. pant pant pant. Yo moose, yo bear. pant pant pant. Just a short lady walking through the willows. pant pant pant. Not interested in hunting today. pant pant pant. No cubs for me today. pant pant pant. Come on, old girl, you got this. pant pant pant. Almost there. pant pant pant. Short lady in the willows. pant pant pant”

Whimbrel flying over breeding territory.

The whimbrel started calling more and I started mimicking its call back to the best of my ability which wasn’t great. But I could make it loud enough that I wasn’t going to startle moose and I was doing it poorly enough that whimbrel clearly knew I wasn’t a rival for territory.

My favorite shot of the whimbrel. It’s not Nat Geo material, but I love it because I get a sense of its breeding habitat.

I eventually made it to top without being mauled by a bear and it was a gorgeous view and a lone whimbrel watched me warily and occasionally called. I sat down and took a breather, ate my lunch, gave the whimbrel time to see that I wasn’t a threat and it went on to foraging. There didn’t appear to be a second bird or even chicks, but the bird clearly acted like it was on territory. They should have chicks at this point.

View from the top of the ridge. The dry river bed below is what I used to hike to the area.

I took some time to just soak up the weirdo life I have now. Birding in Interior Alaska is so different. It’s not like living in Minnesota where a short drive will net me 50 species and lots of opportunities for photos and videos. In the winter, it’s downright BLEAK and there are days when I will see or hear only one species of bird a day. If the roads are nice enough, I’ll drive the 16 miles to the Three Bears parking lot to look at ravens out of desperation for anything live bird related.

But even in summer, it’s still not the hoards of birds you think of May and June in the Lower 28. My walk up to the whimbrel spot got me 8 species of birds. Lovely birds like fox sparrow and Wilson’s warbler but it’s not the same as being on a coast. But I’ve learned to savor the time I have with birds in the summer and especially in the case of shorebirds, get to know them in a completely different way—some of them even perch in trees! The whimbrel has its wintering grounds version of itself and its breeding grounds self is different. On the wintering grounds, they eat lots of fiddler crabs, up here…they’ll eat berries. What? A shorebird eating berries? Madness.

And to a certain extent, living up here is doing the same to me. Alaska Sharon is different than Minnesota “Birdchick” Sharon, simply because life up here has so many challenges. In some ways it is exhausting: calculating daylight, chances of hitting moose in the dark, how passable roads are and do I really need a salad that badly in February…couldn’t I just keep eating the canned carrots and frozen broccoli? But in other ways it’s so crazy weird and beautiful like the time your neighbor asks if they can swap you five pounds of roadkill moose in exchange for your bottle of Prosecco (that was an excellent trade).

A snippet of whimbrel breeding habitat.

I opted for the walk back to take the less steep slope of the ridge and the deeper end of Jenny Creek. It was in the upper sixties and mostly sunny which in the land of non stop daylight, makes for warm hiking. The cold creek felt good on my feet and thighs. I made it back with glimpses of caribou but no moose and no bears—which is fine. My preferred encounters with those species is from a vehicle and the moose are so thick in my neighborhood in May and June, I’ve had enough.

If you’d like to read more about whimbrels, do check out All About Birds and if you really want to find out who much we don’t know, check Birds of the World (that requires a subscription but is so worth it.

Should I Stop Feeding Birds Because of HPAI?

Short answer: Yeah, probably.

Long answer: Am I going to judge you if you keep your bird feeders filled because it is the one damn thing that got you through the last two years? Nope.

If you stop offering seed will the birds starve? Not a healthy bird. They know how to find food from a variety of sources.

Will closing down your bird feeders stop the spread of the virus? It will slow the spread, but not stop it.

Red-winged blackbird congregate around a bird feeder.

Pandemics just don’t seem to stop do they? And now we have HPAI or Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (it’s highly contagious to other birds). There have been lots of reports of waterfowl with a highly contagious form of avian influenza migrating north and spreading it to other species this spring. Birds are already affected in Minnesota. The main wildlife rehab center in Minnesota has stopped taking in certain species of birds including ducks, geese, herons, and gulls. As of this writing, they have not advised people to stop feeding birds. The University of Minnesota’s Raptor Center has stopped all public tours and sees a 90 - 100% fatality rate in infected birds of prey brought to them. They have advised people to stop feeding birds. There have been reports of blue jays, crows, and ravens all testing positive for it. Most recently, a well known great horned owl nest at Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis failed with all the owlets and adults dying as a result of the virus.

This is just what we know about wild birds. As of this writing 7 flocks of poultry in Minnesota have tested positive for HPAI and all have been killed. Millions of poultry around the country have been culled due to HPAI infections.

Merlin eating a red-bellied woodpecker it just killed.

The virus is so contagious that an infected duck could fly over a yard, poop, and that poop landing in the yard could spread very easily to other birds. Ducks that are congregating on open for migration are spreading it to each other. Birds of prey like great horned owls that would see a sick duck will eat it and feed it to their young and all get the virus and die. Blue jays and crows could scavenge a duck carcass with HPAI and then they have it. Blue jays will also visit your bird feeder, potentially spreading it to other birds. We don’t know what effect HPAI will have songbirds—this is all happening very fast and we don’t have the resources to study it. And study takes time. We don’t know if HPAI will be as lethal to songbirds as it is to waterfowl, birds of prey, and domestic poultry.

Robin feeding on crabapples.

I’m getting ready to move to Alaska this week so my bird feeders were already scheduled to go empty. However, I have lots of native plants in the yard specifically to attract birds. There are certain areas the sparrows congregate to get seeds that fall from my native plant seed heads. Two days ago I was walking the neighborhood and two dozen robins and a few waxwings were all concentrated in a crabapple feeding around each other. Red-winged blackbirds and grackles are passing through in large flocks, making stops in wetlands around ducks and then visiting our yards with or without bird feeders. They may forage on the ground along side a pair of robins. This will all spread HPAI regardless of bird feeders. Even though my bird feeders are coming down this week, I still have set up situations where they will congregate. Heck, when it rains, any puddle is a huge bird magnet. I can’t control the puddles.

You should absolutely stop feeding birds if you or your neighbors have backyard chickens, ducks, or even pet birds inside. If I still had my cockatiel, I would even consider taking shoes off outside and keeping them outside and have a shoes that are for inside the house only.

You should absolutely stop feeding birds if you see a bird that is showing signs of illness in your yard or at your feeder. Signs include sitting puffed up and eyes half closed for long periods of time. A bird that allows you to approach too closely, or is having trouble walking or flying, or is shaking its head or has trouble maintaining any kind of balance is also showing signs of illness. When this happens you should cease feeding for at least week regardless if it's HPAI, house finch conjunctivitis, or salmonella. And your feeders should be cleaned with a mild solution of bleach and water.

In some ways this feels like the start of West Nile Virus. Back then I did pick up for The Raptor Center and so many birds of prey were affected, I wondered if we would have any red-tailed hawks left when it was over. I remember dead crows all over the place. Those species bounced back. Hopefully, if we stop feeding birds for a time that will slow down the spread to give birds with immunity a chance to catch up and put more chicks into bird populations.

On the upside HPAI currently isn’t contagious to humans.

My Latest Book: North American Birdwatching for Beginners

Last fall I got an offer to write a book. The money solved a financial problem for me and I agreed to it. I wasn’t sure that the world needed another beginner bird book, but it needed to be written, the process intrigued me, and I’d had a serious case of writer’s block during the pandemic and was finally crawling out of that hole.

I like deadlines, they give me focus. But like any writer, there comes a point when you realize you had some ideas for part of the book and no ideas for the other. And first drafts are for vomiting it all out on paper, no matter how messy it is and a good editor will help you fix that in subsequent drafts. So I wrote the Canada goose profile for a book and thought, “I’m sure the editor will make me fix this later, I’m tired and want to turn this in.”

They did not.

And I put this on Twitter.

When you write a book and it comes out, publishers want you to promote it. I’m in the process of starting a new job and moving to Alaska…all with a book coming out. So I put up a flip tweet about a flip comment I made about geese and it went VIRAL AF. Yay me for efficient marketing at a time when I have too much going on.

So the short of it is, I wrote a beginning birding book. If the above made you giggle and you think a non birder in your life would like to learn more about birds you can order North American Birdwatch for Beginners.

Because this book is coming out as I’m moving, I don’t have autographed copies now. Since shipping books to Alaska and shipping them to you might make them more expensive than they need to be, I may look into getting stickers that I can personalize to send out. I won’t have a good answer for this until mid-May.