White Feathers by Bernd Heinrich

Author:Bernd Heinrich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books

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On May 11, the barred owl’s song, who cooks for you, repeated again and again, a turkey tom was gobbling nearby in the still-dark woods, and ovenbirds were singing in the maple groves long before the first swallows appeared. Three were finally circling at 5:35 a.m. as the sun was starting to come up over the hills, and after ten minutes the pair landed and the other swallow left. My note taking took on a furious pace as I tried to keep up with events on this day when the birds’ interest in nest building, and feathers, was clear. It started as the male flew to the nest-box, perched on it, and sang. The female came down to it also, ducked her head in several times, entered, came back out, and flew close over the recently tilled garden, for the first time showing interest in nesting material. After that thus far unusual flight, she perched on the solar panel, where he was singing, and he hovered over her briefly, in what looked like copulation, but with no contact. She then flew into the garden, to land on the bare soil. Three times she did this, but on the fourth landing she finally picked up a stray stem of grass. Her first! She flew up with it, but not to the nest-box. Instead, she returned to the male far up in the locust tree, where he was singing. And there she dropped it but afterward flew repeatedly to the same open ground in the garden. Sometimes she merely flew up again, and sometimes she picked something up and then dropped it before coming back to the male swallow in the locust tree. However, by 9 a.m. she was regularly bringing grass into the box and quickly reemerging to get another blade. He stayed perched and sang the whole time.

Knowing from previous years that the male was the main provider of feathers, it seemed odd that he hadn’t budged yet to find any. Maybe she would not yet accept them? To find out, I dropped a long white duck feather onto the ground where she had been gathering grass. She instantly swooped over it but did not pick it up. I then tossed it into the air. This time she picked it up off the ground after it landed, flew several times around the clearing while holding it in her bill, and then tried entering the nest-box with it; but it was much longer than the entrance hole’s width, and she was holding the feather cross-wise in her bill. She tried again and again to enter but eventually dropped the feather. Several minutes later she retrieved it and flew around with it, only to drop it three times. But she caught it only twice, so on the third drop it drifted into the weeds. A half-hour later she picked up off the ground an even longer but more flexible feather, circled high over the clearing with it, dropped it, and made five drops and catches in a row.

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