Educate Yourself About Daily Bird Activities
Daily bird activities
You will find that your visiting garden birds are most noticeable in the spring and summer time, when they are looking for nesting territories, finding a suitable mate, building their nests, and tending to their young. During regular month when they have their normal days, and are mostly tending to themselves and their own needs, they are mostly noticeable when they are just flying around, singing, feeding, displaying and or fighting.
The most important pastime except for their feeding during their off months, are preening and bathing to keep their feathers in top conditions, and of course resting. Most birds will start their day with preening their feathers, and do some singing, and not until there is full daylight available, they will start searching for food. This might be because the birds do not feel safe enough, and cannot see well enough in the early morning hours to stay alerted, and detect oncoming predators.
The first meal of the day for the birds are the most important one, because this food helps them replace the fat they lost during the long night to keep warm. If you watch your bird feeding stations carefully, you will also notice that not all the different birds will feed at the same time during the day. Birds like the blackbirds, and the robins are early risers, and are usually the last ones to leave at the end of dusk. But birds like the gulls and starlings will leave bird feeders early in the afternoon to hurry back to their roosting spots.
Some birds that will ordinarily not feed to early or to late like the sparrows, can be found doing so in well lit areas such as illuminated city streets and around security lighting by catching moths and other flying insects gathering around the lights. Birds also have times of stress, and that occurs twice a year during breeding season, when they are struggling to feed their young.
It also happens during the cold winter months when food become really scares and they have to work twice as hard to gather enough food to sustain their body temperature and survival. This can actually cause a small bird having to look for food the entire day to have enough energy left for freezing night temperatures.
Another very important daily activity for birds are taking care of their feathers, because it is crucial for birds survival to keep air trapped between its plumage to have adequate insulating and waterproofing qualities. If its feathers become damaged and there are not sufficient good insulating and waterproofing they will have a harder time flying and will use up more energy then necessary.
To try to describe what actually happens to the wings is that the barbs that hold the feather vanes together become “unzipped”, by just normal daily wear and tear, and they must be zipped back together which the bird will accomplish by using its bill. The preening part consist of the bird keeping its bill closed, and by a gentle stroking or nibbling of the feathers one at the time so the splits between the barbs are zipped back up. This procedure also helps to remove parasites such as lice and mites, unwanted dirt, and also arranges the bird’s feathers back into position again.
Birds have a special preen gland which is located at the base of the tail, and by squeezing it with its bill it collects preen oil which he then spreads over the feathers. This special oil is belied to kill all kinds of fungi and bacteria that the bird might be carrying. The most common way they have of reliving themselves from unwanted parasites is by bathing, and most of the birds will ruffle their feathers in a birdbath, pond or puddle.
Some birds will do the same in “dust baths”, and some will even bathe in the smoke from a chimney fire. The most peculiar way is something called “anting” where the bird either lets the ants crawl allover them or they can hold an ant in its bill and rub the ants into their feathers. It is not really known why some birds practice this ritual but it could be because the formic acid from the ant’s body which might kill parasites or it could be as simple as they just enjoy it.
