Birds and Bad Weather
Birds have to cope with bad weather too! When it’s just rain, it doesn’t bother them too much.
Piping Plovers are still nesting on Atlantic beaches and on the salt flats in the prairies. Birds who were unsuccessful with a first nest are probably trying again now. My article Endangered Piping Plovers tells you how we can help them succeed.
It's been raining on the East Coast for several weeks. True, we've had a couple of nice days to break the monotony, but most days have been some variation of fog, heavy drizzle, rain, and thundering downpour. The lawns are very green, garden seeds rotting in the ground, and the forest fire index - well, why bother? What do the birds think of it all?
They don't seem to be too adversely affected. Even on the rainiest mornings, I wake to a constant chorus of birdsong. Small song birds are visiting my feeders in a steady stream, and yesterday I saw a Mourning Dove just sitting on a tree branch in the rain. She was looking damp, but not too unhappy. A dripping fan of maple leaves was slapping her on the back with each gust of wind. She was undeterred.
Birds seem to be able to put up with quite a lot of bad weather. Their feathers are waterproof, so that even though the outside of the bird may be wet, the feathers underneath are quite dry, and the bird can give itself a shake every now and again to get rid of any clinging drops. I know there are lots of places near my house where the Mourning Dove could have taken advantage of better shelter, so the weather can't be bothering her nearly as much as it is bugging me.
Bad weather can be a threat to birds, however: bitter cold in winter kills birds that haven't found good shelter for the night (I've often noticed little footprints in the winter snow - Mourning Doves again? - leading under our exterior steps, and I conclude that they are staying warm out of the wind, and close to the dryer vent). A heavy snow fall can also make it difficult for them to find food and shelter, and severe storms, like hurricanes, can carry them large distances away from their home territory. In my next article, I'll discuss some of the ways we can provide shelter for birds on our own backyard bird habitat.
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