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Finding Food When it Snows
In the dead of winter, birds are resourceful!
© Bryce Mullet
Fresh-fallen snow is beautiful, but it poses a challenge to birds. The ground where they found food is now covered by several inches of snow. Birds such as juncos and other sparrows flit under bushes where snow doesn’t cover the ground. Finches and chickadees pick at the seed heads of plants sticking out above the snow, while robins (like this American Robin) seek out dried fruits. Nuthatches and woodpeckers cling to trees as they search for insects within the bark.
BirdNote®
Finding Food When It Snows
Written by Bob Sundstrom
This is BirdNote.
The sun reflecting on fresh snow brightens up a gray winter scene. But this landscape presents a challenge for birds, because the ground where they found food before the snowfall is now covered up. How will they forage and get enough to eat?
Digging through several inches of snow is not an option for juncos or sparrows, or even larger birds like cardinals.
[Dark-eyed Junco call]
But birds are resourceful — they can flit under bushes where snow doesn’t cover the ground and search the leaf litter for seeds and insects.
Finches and chickadees peck at seed heads of garden plants and weeds that stick out above the snow. And berry bushes like hawthorns will still have dried fruit attached, attracting waxwings and robins.
[American Robin call]
Nuthatches and woodpeckers cling to trees as they search for dormant insects and larvae hiding within the bark.
[White-breasted Nuthatch]
Winter conditions mean higher mortality in birds. But they’re adapted to search widely for food sources, even when snow blankets their world.
[Tufted Titmouse call]
And we can help birds by keeping these food sources in mind when gardening and by maintaining our greenspaces in the snowy months.
For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.
Support for BirdNote is provided by Jim and Birte Falconer from Seattle, Washington, and generous listeners around the world.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Dark-eyed Junco ML104829901 recorded by J. Holmes, White-breasted Nuthatch ML77256 recorded by W. Hershberger, and Tufted Titmouse ML 110375 recorded by W. Hershberger.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2022 BirdNote February 2022 Narrator: Michael Stein
ID# foraging-03-2022-02-27 foraging-03
References: https://www.birdwatchersdigest.com/bwdsite/learn/top10/top-10-ways-to-h…
https://www.thespruce.com/what-winter-birds-eat-386556
Bob Sundstrom
Writer