ADVENTURES IN NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY

JULY 2003

When I first moved to where I now live twenty years ago, I heard my first wood thrush singing in the woods behind me. I didn't know what bird it was but suspected a thrush by its flute-like voice which I had read about. I searched about in the trees with my binoculars for the bird and after some time I finally found it. From the fair view I got I could identify it from the books as a wood thrush. The song of the wood thrush has been a subject of writers and poets for many years. It is an incredibly beautiful sound that is fairly loud so it can carry well throughout the woods and always causes me to pause and listen whenever I hear it.

Later, I watched a pair gathering grasses in my yard to build a nest and I found it in the vacant area next to my house. The nest had been built precariously on a broken branch leaning against a small tree and later high winds destroyed it. That was the only nest I had ever found of these birds until this year. The birds have become scarce, I rarely see them like I used to in my travels. I usually find one or two pairs a season not near the numbers before. I have read where the species has become one of special concern and it is not known if it is a cyclic population problem, problems in its wintering grounds in Central America, or problems here such as the cowbird.

When I found this nest there was three wood thrush eggs and four cowbird eggs. Brown-headed cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and the host birds then raise their young. The cowbird eggs hatch quicker and the young nestlings are larger and crowd out the host bird's young to keep them from being fed and they usually starve. The cowbird will even kick out the nestlings in its attempt to usurp the nest. The parent birds haven't had time to evolve new defenses against this threat since cowbirds are very new to them, it wasn't until man destroyed all the forests in the East that the cowbirds, a Great Plains species originally, could move into this area. Essentially the Eastern U.S. was made into an extension of the Western Plains and the cowbirds readily moved in. Just one cowbird egg will usually mean none of the host birds will make it, but four eggs would have made it impossible.

When I find a cowbird egg in a nest I usually remove it. But with four eggs I didn't want to do anything very radical because the wood thrushes might abandon the nest if they saw most of the eggs missing. So I took two eggs my first visit and watched that the birds accepted this. Then I took one more on another visit two days later leaving the birds with three wood thrush eggs and one cowbird. When the eggs hatched I was going to remove the last cowbird nestling but the egg never hatched, it was probably infertile. So, I now had a nest with three wood thrush young.

I moved my blind in over three days making sure each stage was accepted by the birds. On my first day of shooting, I went in early and set up my flashes and camera about fourteen feet away. When I was ready and in the blind, I was surprised at how quickly the birds returned to the nest. Although the nest was in a wild area of Proud Lake Recreational Area, wood thrushes have been known to nest near houses in the past and apparently accept people more than other birds might. I spent most of one day and half of the next getting good photographs of the birds. If it is possible, I always try to do two sets with a bird switching my main and fill flashes so I cover all lighting possibilities.

The wood thrush is a beautiful bird with its reddish-brown plumage and boldly patterned breast and large dark eyes to see in the dark forest. Often while I was in the blind the male would sing his wonderful song while the female brooded her young. Also singing in the area were two male hooded warblers, apparently I was located on the intersection of their two territories as they "dueled" with the songs throughout the day. I ended up finding two different hooded warbler nests but one was abandoned after a cowbird laid an egg in it and the other with three eggs was gotten by a predator.

I left the nest to go up North to the U.P. for ten days. When I came back to remove my blind from the area I saw a wood thrush feeding a fledged young near the nest area. I hoped this was my nesting pair and that the nest had been successful, I have no way of knowing. I am thankful I got the opportunity to photograph this wonderful bird.

Bye for now.

Allan

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Date of this page: July 09, 2003

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