Monthly Archives: August 2024

Seeing Yellow: Visit from an odd cardinal surprises local couple

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Photo by Bryan Stevens • A male Northern cardinal leads a young cardinal to food sources.

Unicoi resident Bobby Davis called me last week to share news about a sighting of a yellow cardinal. Bobby said that he and his wife, Tressa, have two bird baths and a hummingbird feeder in their yard and are in the habit of watching the comings and goings of their feathered friends. At 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 8, they noticed a yellow cardinal in the yard near some rhododendrons.

A “yellow” cardinal is simply a Northern cardinal that has inherited a rare genetic condition that causes the bird’s feathers to turn yellow instead of red.

A news item posted to a website for The Wood Thrush Shop in Nashville relates the story of a backyard feeding station in Harriman, Tennessee, in Roane County that was visited by a yellow Northern cardinal on a regular basis.

Yellow Northern cardinals have been seen in at least four different states the last 10 years but remain a rarity.

The article explained that the yellow coloration in affected cardinals is caused by a rare genetic mutation. The colors red, orange and yellow in a bird’s feathers are created with carotenoid pigments derived from the foods they eat. In the male Northern cardinal, yellow pigments from the diet apparently are converted to red by a specific enzyme. In a very rare genetic mutation, probably affecting fewer than one in a million cardinals, that enzyme is lacking, so the conversion to red doesn’t occur and the feathers are bright yellow instead.

Back in May of this year, a yellow cardinal given the name Maize was spotted in Alabama. That sighting took place less than 15 miles from a location that hosted another yellow cardinal in 2018. Was Maize a descendant of that yellow cardinal spotted six years ago?

Perhaps the yellow cardinal will stick around at Bobby and Tressa’s home. Bobby informed me that they have an ordinary pair of red cardinals that resides in their yard, but he noted that the three birds have not interacted.

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Interestingly enough, there is a bird with the actual name yellow cardinal, but it is not closely related to the Northern cardinal. This South American bird has the scientific name of Gubernatrix cristata and is a member of the tanager family.

The yellow cardinal was formally described in 1817 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot under the binomial name Coccothraustes cristata. The word “cristata” means crested or plumed.

This yellow cardinal ranges in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Its natural habitats are dry savanna, temperate shrubland, subtropical or tropical moist shrubland and temperate grasslands. The yellow cardinal is threatened by habitat loss and from pet trade trappers for sale as exotic pets. Males are trapped at a higher rate than females, and the yellow cardinal is considered endangered due to the constant entrapment. If recent counts are accurate, only about 1,000 t0 2,000 of these birds still exist.

Photo by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Pyrrhuloxia, also known as desert cardinal, is related to the Northern cardinal. 

The Northern Cardinal, on the other hand, is an abundant, beloved songbird. There’s additional evidence to put forward as testimony to the popularity of the Northern cardinal. It’s the official state bird of seven states: Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. Only the Northern mockingbird, which represents five states as official state bird, even comes close to the Northern cardinal in this respect.

Cardinals are a widespread species, ranging westward to the Dakotas and south to the Gulf Coast and Texas. The southeastern United States was once the stronghold of the cardinal population. In the past century, however, cardinals have expanded their range into New England and Canada. These birds have even been introduced to Hawaii.

The Northern cardinal has only two close relative in the genus Cardinalis. The pyrrhuloxia, also known as the desert cardinal, ranges throughout Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, as well as in Mexico. The third relative is known as vermilion cardinal and is found in Colombia and Venezuela. This bird suffers some losses to the exotic pet trade, but its numbers have managed to remain fairly stable.

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I’ve been an active birder since the early 1990s. To share a sighting, ask a question or make a comment, email me at ahoodedwarbler@aol.com.

Native wading birds wander widely in late summer

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Photo by Bryan Stevens • A great egret captures a frog from a pond’s edge in South Carolina.

The fish pond at my home has attracted a stalker. Amid the cattails and beneath the drooping branches of tall bald cypress trees, a lurking great blue heron has patiently been stalking fish, frogs and anything else that comes within striking reach of the bird’s sturdy dagger-shaped beak.

The heron’s visits have prompted me to dig into my archived columns this week. Please enjoy this column, which was previously published in July of 2019, about summer’s wading birds.

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North America’s stately wading birds — egrets, herons, bitterns, ibises and their kin — are well-known wanderers in late summer. As with all birds capable of flight, a pair of strong wings cannot be underestimated. Birds can show up in the most likely places.

Take for instance the first confirmed sighting of an American flamingo in Tennessee. This particular flamingo — an almost unthinkable bird for the Volunteer State — showed up along Highway 78 in Lake County on July 13, 2019.

Ruben Stoll and Alan Troyer found the flamingo, backing up their discovery with photographs of the large pink bird associating with great egrets and other wading birds. The flamingo created considerable buzz on rare bird alerts in several nearby states. Many birders rushed to add this exceptional visitor to their state and life lists.

Photo by Bryan Stevens • White ibises occasionally meander away from the coast in late summer. Immature birds will be brown instead of white.

In summers past, other exciting wading birds ranging from little blue herons to wood storks have excited the region’s birders. I recently celebrated my own sighting of one of these wanderers that made a stop at my fish pond on July 10.

I had stepped outside my house and let the door slam a little too loudly behind me, causing a stately great egret near my fish pond to take flight and fly over the roof of my house. I regretted instantly not having a camera with me.

Two days later, I got another chance. The great egret made another appearance. Unfortunately for the tall bird, he attracted the ire of the resident red-winged blackbirds. In a most inhospitable manner, the blackbirds attacked and dived at the egret, which made some awkward attempts to evade the angry blackbirds. Blackbirds are protective of their territory and have swooped at me several times when I’ve ventured too close to their favored cattails.

More prepared on this occasion, I had my camera with me and managed to get a few photographs of the egret.

The next day, only a few miles from my home, Lauri Sneyd Vance took a photograph of a great egret that stopped at her home in Limestone Cove in Unicoi County, Tennessee. Having seen my Facebook post, she notified me that she had also received a visit from an egret. Was it the same bird? Perhaps.

Oddly enough, the bird is actually the second great egret to visit my fish pond. The first one made an unseasonable stop several years ago on a snowy December afternoon — hardly a time of year I might have expected a visit from an egret in the mountains of Northeast Tennessee.

The great egret stands 3.3 feet tall. With an all-white plumage, a long yellow bill and dark legs, this egret is often described as graceful and elegant. Its likeness was incorporated into the logo for the National Audubon Society, an organization formed to protect egrets and other wading birds from a wanton slaughter in the late 1800s when millions of the birds were killed so their feathers could be used in women’s fashions.

During the breeding season, adult great egrets sprout long plumes on their back. These frilly feathers are known as aigrettes, which are used to attract the attention of prospective mates in elaborate mating displays.

According to the All About Birds website, great egrets feed mostly on fish, but they also eat amphibians, reptiles, rodents, songbirds and crustaceans. On visits to the South Carolina coast, I’ve observed great egrets dining on frogs and small fish. In prime habitat, flocks of great egrets will gather to forage together in wetlands or around ponds. More sociable than some herons, great egrets also nest and roost communally.

The other North American egrets include snowy egret, reddish egret and cattle egret. Other egrets found around the world include the intermediate egret, little egret, slaty egret, black egret,dimorphic egret and Chinese egret.

As summer advances, keep your eye on area rivers, lakes and ponds. It’s the best time of year to see egrets, herons and other long-legged wading birds. In the case of the American flamingo, I realize that lightning rarely strikes twice, but if you do happen to see a gangly pink bird, let me know.

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Share sightings, ask questions or make comments by emailing me at ahoodedwarbler@aol.com.

Photo by Bryan Stevens
A Great Blue Heron moves stealthily through a wetland.

American oldfinch much more than another pretty bird

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Miles Moody from Pixabay • A male American goldfinch in summer nesting plumage is one of the region’s most vibrant songbirds.

Johnson City resident Jo Wheeler posted a comment on Facebook on July 15 under a weekly posting promoting the “Feathered Friends” weekly column.

“We saw the American goldfinch in out backyard over the weekend,” Jo wrote. “It was amazing.”

I was so pleased to hear Jo’s excitement about the goldfinch. The American goldfinch is a commonplace bird, but once you take a close look at this bird it’s readily apparent that there’s really noting common about it at all.

Goldfinches are extraordinary in appearance, particularly at this time of the year. The plumage of the male goldfinch during the nesting season is a bold pattern of black and white against a backdrop of golden-yellow feathers. These birds also form fussy but sociable flocks that congregate at bird feeders or bird baths in many a backyard.

A sighting of a goldfinch can be memorable. I still retain vivid imagery of these birds from childhood, long before I could identify them by name. They would always appear in late summer, perching atop the three blue spruces in our yard. The trees are no longer standing, but the memories of those colorful yellow and black birds endure.

Photo by Bryan Stevens • A male American goldfinch perches on a barbed wire fence.

Summer is the season of plenty for American goldfinches. Roadside ditches are choked with chicory, evening primrose and other seed-producing plants often dismissed as “weeds.” Simply driving local roads can, and often does, produce sightings of flocks of American goldfinches as they forage for seeds.

These small, colorful finches are also regular visitors to my feeders, although they don’t really need my offering of black oil sunflower seeds to supplement the natural smorgasbord available to them.

Their fondness for seeds has inspired many of the common names for this bird, including lettuce bird, thistle-bird, yellow-bird and wild canary. My late grandmother, Bertha Sneyd, introduced me to the term “lettuce bird” as an alternative name for goldfinch. As she explained, the finches would come to gardens once lettuce had gone to seed.

This fondness and dependence on seeds for its dietary needs has even shaped the nesting habits of this species. The American goldfinch is also one of the last songbirds to nest each season.

According to a profile of the American goldfinch posted at the website for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, goldfinches don’t even start to think about nesting until late July and early August. Their nesting season is timed deliberately to coincide with this season of natural abundance. Goldfinches feed their young mostly on seeds, as opposed to most songbirds that work so hard to gather insects to feed their young a protein-rich diet.

It’s a satisfying irony that, although brown-headed cowbird females sometimes slip their eggs into a goldfinch nest, any cowbirds hatched in those nests rarely survive. While goldfinch hatchlings are adapted to thrive on a diet of seeds, the fostered young cowbirds fail to thrive on a diet so lacking in the protein derived from insects.

While the male American goldfinch during the breeding season is unmistakable in his bright yellow, black and white plumage, the female goldfinch is more subdued in coloration. Males also sing a bubbly, cheerful song when seeking to win the attention of a potential mate.

According to the profile on the TWRA website, the goldfinch’s song is a variable series of musical trills and twitters, often interspersed with a bay beephrase. The distinctive flight call is described as sounding like “potato chip” or “per chicory.”

For these and other reasons, goldfinches are favorites of many bird lovers. There are actually three species of goldfinches in North America. The two related species are Lawrence’s goldfinch of California and the lesser goldfinch, which ranges through the southwestern United States as well as Central and South America.

Lawrence’s goldfinch was named by John Cassin in 1850 for his colleague George Lawrence, a New York businessman and amateur ornithologist. His enthusiasm for birds must have impressed his colleagues. One bird genus and 20 species were named in his honor. Lawrence’s goldfinch, known by the scientific name Spinus lawrencei, honors him doubly with both the scientific and common names for the bird.

Photo by Bryan Stevens • The male American goldfinch is a striking bird in spring and summer. In late fall and for the winter, these birds have a dull plumage.

The American goldfinch is also known by other common names, including wild canary, yellowbird and willow goldfinch. I’ve also heard the goldfinch referred to as “lettuce bird.” This nickname, which was one my maternal grandmother applied to the bird, relates to the bird’s fondness for seeds. Apparently the goldfinches would flock to lettuce plants in the garden once they had gone to seed.

Come winter, this vibrant American goldfinch undergoes a transformation into a dull, drab bird with grayish feather. In fact, this annual molt usually begins in September. During the fall and winter, the American goldfinch looks almost like an entirely different bird.

It’s understandable why people love to entertain flocks of these finches in their yards and gardens. Three states — Washington, Iowa and New Jersey — have gone so far as to make the American goldfinch their official state bird.

The best strategy for attracting goldfinches is to provide some of their favorite foods. Black oil sunflower seed and the seeds of nyjer thistle are highly favored. The tiny thistle seeds require special feeders. Mesh “socks” can also be used to dispense the thistle seed.

An alternative is to plant a garden that offers an abundance of fresh seeds. A stand of sunflowers will attract goldfinches, as well as other birds such as indigo bunting and house finch. Liatris, also known as gay feather, produces flower spikes that are sought out by goldfinches for their seeds. Other favorites include asters and coneflowers. The bonus is that even after the beautiful blooms are past, the birds can still benefit from the seeds left behind after flowering.

To share an observation, make a comment or ask a question, email me at ahoodedwarbler@aol.com.