For Release January 14, 2003

AGRI-VIEWS
by Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent

One of the questions that I seem to be getting asked a lot lately is, "Where are the birds?" Some people want to know about the birds at their backyard bird feeder. Others, are more interested in the Bald Eagles, and some are wanting to know about game birds such as quail, pheasant and prairie-chickens. I’ll take the first couple of questions this week and talk about game birds in a future column.

To better understand birds you need to think like a bird. The most important thing for any creature is survival and survival comes down to food or energy. They want to maximize food intake with minimal energy expenditure. So, for birds that migrate, they are going to move no further than is necessary to find food.

The Bald Eagles that winter in Kansas move in from the north. They are moving, in part with migrating waterfowl, but they are also moving to stay ahead of ice. In a year like this, where it has been so warm, many of the eagles are still to the north of us. Those that are here, are having no problem finding open water so they are still very spread out. With colder weather and snow moving in from the north this week, we could see numbers jump up. And if parts of Milford Lake start to ice up, it will begin to concentrate the eagles in the areas of open water. Christmas bird counts at both the upper and lower ends of Milford Lake resulted in over 50 eagles in each area, so there are eagles here.

As for the birds you usually see around your back yard bird feeders, they are still in the area also. There has been quite a bit reported in the media about the impact of drought on the birds. It is important to remember that all wildlife go through natural population cycles based on food, weather and predators.

The number of birds may not be down as much as many back yard bird feeders think. Recent Christmas bird counts have been turning up very good numbers including unusually high numbers of species. Birds will normally go to natural food sources first. In spite of the drought, there has been a lot of natural food available to birds. The fall and winter have been very open, so far, and quite warm. The birds have had no problem locating the natural food sources and the warmer weather has reduced the amount of food they need to survive. If the pending winter storm arrives this week, backyard bird feeders could see a big spike in bird activity at their feeders.

It is improtant to make sure that water is being provided to the birds, as well as food. When it is above freezing the birds can quickly find quite a bit of water, but once we hit several days of subfreezing weather, open water can be at a premium. A good bird bath with a fairly inexpensive bird bath heater can attract a lot of birds to your yard.

There have been some questions about whether West Nile Virus is causing the drop off in bird numbers. It may be, but at this point we really can’t tell. A quick analysis of Blue Jays and American Crows on the Junction City Christmas bird count (since 1958) shows a lot of variation from year to year with no obvious trend. Additional analyses are being done for bird counts all across Kansas and the United States.

While it may seem that birds are scarce right now, many of us feel that this is just a function of the year. Keep the feeders filled, the bird bath full and with the first snowy day you will have lots of visitors!

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