These birds stole my heart!

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I have always liked Eastern kingbirds and didn’t really understand why their scientific Latin name, Tyrannus tyrannus (e.g., tyrant), is so uncomplimentary. For me, they are among the loveliest and sweetest avians, and I love seeing and watching them.

     

Reading about the Eastern kingbirds informed me that their name is considered quite apt because they are known to harass birds that intrude into or pass over their nesting area. They drive away much bigger birds such as crows, hawks and herons.

When one of those nest predators comes near, the kingbird will do all it can to chase the predator away. During its sallies toward the intruder, the kingbird will raise its crown feathers, revealing some that are colored yellow, orange or red (similarly to a ruby-crowned kinglet). The bird will also open its beak wide showing a red gape and then dive-bomb the intruder which it sees as a threat.

The display of the kingbird’s “royal” crown is seldom seen. Last year, I hadn’t even realized that a kingbird I photographed trying to drive away a hawk was showing its yellow crown just a little bit (photo above). This year, I saw no confrontations between nesting kingbirds and any predators, so I got no “royal” views.

This past spring I did feel quite lucky, however, to have been alerted by a fellow birder to a kingbird nest that was out in the open next to a pond. I never came close to it as I didn’t want to alarm the birds. Having a longer lens on my camera (even though it was malfunctioning and a bit dicey to use) was definitely a boon — unlike most birders of my acquaintance, I don’t have binoculars, but I was still able to get fairly good looks.

Ms. Kingbird chose to situate her nest in a spot typically favored by her species, near the end of a horizontal tree branch. She had used twigs for the structure and we birders concluded that the light-colored fluffy material inside was sheep wool gathered from a flock that had grazed nearby.

 

Mother kingbird spent a lot of time incubating the eggs in her nest. Every time I visited, her mate was nearby keeping an eye on me and any other possible intruders. However, he must not have felt threatened during those visits as he never revealed that trademark bit of anatomy that led to these birds’ man-given name.

 

I learned that kingbirds are astute nesters. The female can recognize an egg that is not her own  — for example, from a brown-headed cowbird — and she will eject the egg that she did not lay!

It turned out this kingbird had laid two eggs. Just after hatching, we still couldn’t see the babies. They stayed far down in the nest, and mom ducked her head inside to feed them. Finally, they got a bit bigger, and we could see little heads pop up when the parents arrived with food.

In the spring and summer, the kingbirds eat insects and are fun to watch as they swoop over vegetation to snatch up meals. It is rare to see them drinking water as they rely on their meals to provide any moisture they need. (They travel south to the Amazon region for the winter, spend their time in flocks during that season and then mainly eat fruit.)

I was lucky to arrive one day just after the two babies had fledged. They stayed on branches right by the nest. One bird had gone up a bit higher while the more active sibling remained below near the nest.

The two fledglings gaped wide to encourage their parents to give food.

For one of them, it was quite a wait to get a meal. If the parent feeds an insect with a stinger, this will often be removed and the insect killed before delivery.

The parent will watch as the young one gulps down the meal, especially if it is a rather large portion.

     

In between feedings, the fledgling on the higher branch sat still most of the time while I watched. Its sibling down lower was highly active. Preening was done thoroughly.

   

 

This was followed by flexing of wing muscles in preparation for first flight.

 

The exercise was vigorous — and then success  —  a tiny leap to a branch just above!

The fledgling looked quite pleased with its achievement.

Kingbird parents continue feeding their young for about seven weeks. This lengthy parental care period means that they generally only have one brood each nesting season.

If Eastern kingbirds return next year to this same area, we may see the same pair. This species tends to produce more males than females (I found no explanation as to why) and females may therefore mate with more than one male. However, males and females tend to remain faithful pairs for raising broods (i.e., they are socially monogamous).

As is the case for other bird species, there is now a decline in the number of Eastern kingbirds. Contributory factors include habitat loss (human development and changing agricultural practices), pesticide use destroying their food sources, and ingested pesticides leading to egg and nestling mortality when the poisons accumulate in parental bodies.

Despite currently declining financial assistance in protecting habitats for wildlife, I really hope that next year I’ll again have the opportunity to see the lovely kingbirds again.

More otter fun — for the mammals and me!

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Part 3: Communication and play

The otter family that I observed this past January captivated me and I photographed them often. Here are a few more scenes from their life that I hope you enjoy seeing.

The otter that caught the very big bass kept that fish to itself even when the other two stayed close. The pair never tried to grab the prey. Finally, I concluded that the lucky hunter must be the parent and the other two the offspring.

After some time, the non-dining pair left the prize behind and the successful hunter took some pauses in consuming the large meal.

After the young mammals disappeared into the water, I assumed that they might have swum back to the beaver lodge, where they had been residing the past days. Otters shelter either in burrows that beavers have made or in natural hollows created under tree roots.

The beaver lodge in this pond appeared ideal for their purposes; they played on it, rested on it and appeared to be going into a burrow underneath as well.

River otters communicate in two ways — through olfactory and auditory signals. Their scent marking is done in two ways.

Their hind feet have plantar pad scent glands which are used to mark various areas.  Biologists believe that the otters transmit messages about identity, reproductive and social status by leaving glandular scents as well as anal secretion deposits on scent mounds that can be used for years.

River otters have a reputation for being playful and this group lived up to that. They dove after one another and wrestled on the ice. Sometimes all three were engaged and sometimes it was a pair exercise.

One day, after I had visited several times, their curiosity seemed to get the better of them.

Previously they had only observed me from a distance while going about their daily life. This time, they spent some time at a stump and then after a time, all turned and stared at me.

Finally, two of them began swimming under the ice in my direction, occasionally breaking through to see how close they had come to me.

One decided to chill out by a nearby stump in the water, perhaps waiting to see if I would get in the pond with them. When I just stayed still and watched, they finally regrouped and began fishing again closer to a weedy section of the pond.

The last couple times I visited the pond, I didn’t see the trio. Perhaps they had fished enough in this area and decided to go to another spot for a while so as not to deplete the available stores of fish — even though our temperatures have suddenly increased, there is no guarantee that we won’t have icy days ahead in later February or early March, so their natural pantries may be running a bit low.

I’ll miss seeing them — and hope they do return The river otters are one of the few animal species I get to see who can look like they’re smiling! 😊 😊

 

Continued otter fun – for the mammals and me!

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Part 2: surviving and dining in winter

One otter or two above? My otter friends produced an unusual portrait for me one day while they were running around an icy pond. 😊 It looked as if they had brought an extremely long family member with them!

Continued observation showed, of course, that the resident otters (Lontra canadensis) were all of normal stature. During much of the time that I was able to watch them, the temperatures were very low for North Carolina. In our central area of the state, temperatures in January 2025 were the 18th coldest ever recorded, averaging 36.6°F (2.6°C°F). Some days had significantly low temperatures, such as 17°F (-8.3°C) on 23 January.

That weather meant that the local ponds were partly or mostly frozen and had very icy waters indeed. In this and my next blog, I’ll share with you what I observed and learned about how river otters function in such cold conditions.

Their unique metabolism has several features that collectively enable them to survive in extreme cold.

  • Their very thick, water-repellent fur covers a dense undercoat that traps air. This fur is 10 times denser than that of the bobcat or red fox, with 585 hairs per square mm.
  • The trapped air acts as a buffer against the cold.
  • A thin blubber layer underneath their skin provides a second thermal barrier. (It also gives them extra energy when there is limited food availability.)
  • Shivering increases their internal body temperature.
  • Their high basal metabolism increases when they are actively swimming and diving, which also generates heat and helps them maintain a steady body temperature.
  • Their high metabolic rate enables them to pass food through their digestive system in about 60 minutes.

I was sometimes amazed at how quickly they caught one fish after another and now understand how they could process so much food in a short time. Their 36 teeth, including 4 long canines, obviously help them process the food they capture.

The otters also have corporal features that make their food hunting efficient:

  • Their ears and eyes are high on their heads, enabling them to swim more easily at the water’s surface.
  • They can swim both forwards and backwards, as well as tread water while surveying their surroundings.
  • They are near-sighted, which may improve their underwater vision.
  • Their whiskers are very sensitive, enabling them to more easily capture prey on dark nights or in murky waters.
  • Their ears close under water.
  • Their feet have five webbed toes as well as non-retractable claws.
  • Their traction on slippery surfaces is increased through heel pads on their hind feet.

The otter family that I observed on several occasions was very adept at catching fish. The NC Wildlife Organization notes that they sometimes collaborate in hunting by herding fish.

The pond otters whom I was watching had certain spots that they kept open in the ice, often diving down and coming up with another fish each time. In this video (click here) you can see one enjoying a meal.

Since I know very little about freshwater fish, I posted a couple photos on a fish identification page to find out just what the otters were eating. Group members debated a bit but then came up with these IDs.

Otters with bluegill sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus)

Otter with a large largemouth bass (Micropterus nigricans)

Biologists say that otters prefer to go after slow-moving fish, including catfish, carp, bass, suckers, and sunfish. Some of the fishing enthusiasts shared about what they had seen otters eat. (Then two men made negative comments and insulted the group moderator, so I removed the photos and left the group so as not to foment more dissension among that group’s adherents.) Here are some of their comments:

  • Otters are such cool animals! Have seen a couple groups while fishing/hunting this year in NC!
  • They’ll eat most any fish. Where I live they have cleaned out nearly all the fish in the ponds near the river. My old pond was teeming with fish when I owned it and now it holds a fraction of the fish it once did.
  • Ours eat a lot of eels. Ophelia/Smith Point, Virginia.
  • Here in New Hampshire I saw them eating what appeared to be fallfish last year.
  • I used to see otters pull rainbow trout out of the river when I lived in Idaho.
  • I hate otter and kill em every chance I get within season…I have had them drag 40 pound catfish out of my ponds and eat them…

It always saddens me when people develop a hatred for an animal (with the possible exceptions of ticks, mosquitoes and chiggers). In any case, I love the otters and will share with you how I saw them play in the next blog.

 

Two “otterly” fun months — otters at three ponds

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The past two months brought me some really rewarding wildlife sightings. While birding, I learned new things about a couple avian species (see The Wild Side). But my main wildlife entertainment came from discovering and watching otters at three ponds. (A reminder: if you click on a photo, it enlarges; to get back to the blog, back space.)

My first sighting came on 29 November 2024 at a pond near a large housing development. I’d been looking to see if the beavers were at their lodge when I suddenly spotted some movement low in the water. To my amazement, four beautiful otters came swimming by, heading in the direction of the beaver lodge (photo above). They kept themselves fairly hidden behind vegetation and then went to sit and play on the lodge behind some brush and small trees growing on the beavers’ home.

My next sighting was very unexpected, at a pond that had lost a lot of wildlife because the vineyard owner who purchased the surrounding farmland had cut down almost all the trees, shrubs and vegetation for miles around.

Because some migrating waterfowl still occasionally show up at the formerly lively pond, I visited there hoping to spot at least a few ducks. I was surprised to see a round head and sinuous body emerging from the water.

To my delight, I got to watch not just one but two otters swimming about and successfully nabbing fishy meals. One seemed to be less wary of people watching; the other would only stay in sight for a short time and then head to the pond bank underneath a lone standing tree as long as people were around.

I’m not sure what kind of fish they were catching, but they seemed to be enjoying good meals.

My next sighting was at the Sandy Creek Park in a nearby town. An otter suddenly popped up and began swimming low in the water among the vegetation. Then it swam across the pond to a beaver lodge and there caught some animal for a meal.

The mammal was quite far away and my camera lens wasn’t strong enough to get good views. In the end, I figured that it had caught a crayfish or something similar.

My best views of otters came when I returned to the pond where I had first spotted the quartet. Despite repeated visits, I didn’t see four of them anymore but only a trio.

It might be that the fourth one was a male who went off on his own. When winter comes and food is less accessible, otter groups tend to disperse so that each family member has access to food and food stores are not depleted.

River otters tend to roam over a specific territory, staying in one spot for one to four weeks. In the summertime, they may travel within an area of 20 square miles, but in winter they expand their territory upwards to about 60 square miles to maximize their success in finding food.

Fish are a dietary staple, especially in winter, but they also eat crayfish, crabs, turtles, amphibians, reptiles, insects, and even occasionally birds or small mammals. Besides the otter at Sandy Creek Park, I only saw them eating fish, but it was amazing how many fish they could catch and eat in quick succession.

In fact, their ability to almost always come up with a fish after going under water or dunking their head into the pond must account for the fact that the resident great blue heron tended to stick close to them. The heron would watch intently where they were fishing and when they moved to another area of the pond, the large bird would follow.

At one point, the heron stayed so close to a fishing otter that I wondered if the large bird was going to attempt to snatch a fish away, but that didn’t happen!

The hungry avian finally did catch fish, too.

In my next blog, I’ll show you some of the otters’ successful winter fishing forays, let you know how they manage to keep swimming in icy waters and outside temperatures of 15-30°F, and let you see how the otters were playing.

 

 

Interesting encounters

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Hello readers!

Once again, time has sped by as I contemplated new blogs and set aside photos to include in them. Time gets away from me, though, as I deal with health concerns and ongoing car and household issues. And then to stay on an even keel, I have my daily encounters with nature — either out on a walk (much of the time) or observing the birds and other creatures on my home turf. So my new year’s resolution is to post shorter blogs not requiring so much background research and hoping you find them interesting anyway!

So today, let me tell you about two wildlife encounters I’ve had in the past few weeks. The first was a session with a pair of pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) at a local park. I first saw the male pileated with his bright red “chin stripe” as he worked at the base of a tree.

He had managed to work his way deeply into the trunk with his repeated hammering. But unfortunately, it seemed that he was just not having success finding any larvae or bugs to consume. He continued on for a while, pausing now and again to look around.

He finally decided that his labors at this spot were not that productive and flew up to the top of a nearby tree to continue his quest elsewhere. In the meantime, quite a way down the park path, I heard more loud hammering but coming from up above me. There was Ms Pileated, at work excavating a hole in her own search for sustenance.

Note that she does not have a red chin stripe but she is also a stunning bird. The pileated is now North America’s largest remaining woodpecker species and the third largest woodpeckers worldwide. She was starting her work by chipping off the outer bark from the tree trunk.

         

Then she began rooting around in the outer layer underneath the bark to see if any food was available there. This was followed by more excavation and chipping away at the outermost inner bark layer.

 

As she made progress, she began inserting her long tongue inside, feeling around for bugs and carpenter ants (their main prey).

Her persistence finally paid off when she found a large beetle larva — one of their other preferred meals. It was nice to see her hard work produce results!

My next encounter also involved getting something into one’s mouth — in this case my own. I had been out for some time photographing otters and finally needed to leave quickly. I jumped in my car, grabbed a protein bar and broke off a piece as I got ready to start the engine. I felt something fall on my leg and without looking down, thought I was grabbing a piece of the bar and popped it into my mouth. Lo and behold — it did not feel like nuts, fruit and chocolate, but rather a bit hairy and I removed it from my tongue quickly. What did I discover?

That was a real surprise, believe me! I had never had an insect in my mouth before that I could remember, and I felt badly that it was such a beneficial one! Fortunately, I had not bitten down and the honey bee was whole and uninjured, although perhaps suffering shock from its unexpected journey. I know that I was shocked (and appalled).

I took it out of the car and wanted to put it in the grass but it was not moving from my glove, likely suffering from some trauma. However, eventually I did get it off and it began crawling around in the vegetation.

I couldn’t wait long enough to see if it would fly off but it seemed to be moving around well, so I assumed it would recover from the unexpected (and unwanted on both our parts) encounter. And I will no longer put something in my mouth before checking to see that it really is (vegetarian!) food!

Hope your year got off to a good start and will be healthy and happy!   😃