Ashley Kloes, research coordinator with the Davey Institute, talks about why Davey arborists have to consider migratory birds in their tree work, as well as some general information about migration and how you can help and feed birds in your yard.
In this episode we cover:
To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.
To learn more about the best trees to attract birds, read our blog, Best Trees and Plants for Bird Lovers.
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Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!
Ashley Kloes, research coordinator with the Davey Institute, talks about why Davey arborists have to consider migratory birds in their tree work, as well as some general information about migration and how you can help and feed birds in your yard.
In this episode we cover:
To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.
To learn more about the best trees to attract birds, read our blog, Best Trees and Plants for Bird Lovers.
Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company
Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!
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Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week our expert arborists, share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more, because here at the Talking Trees Podcast, we know trees are the answer. I'm joined this week by Ashley Kloes. She's a research coordinator for the Davey Institute in Kent, Ohio. My old stomping grounds Ashley. I grew up in that area and then lived in the next town over for 15 years.
Today we're going to talk all about migratory birds. Tell me a little bit about how that became your thing.
Ashley Kloes: Growing up I've always loved animals. That's always been my biggest interest and biggest passions. My dad liked to feed birds in the backyard and was always pointing out which species were there, what was coming over. We lived right next to a park down by Youngstown, and we would get a lot of birds coming in. There's a little wetland behind our house, so we'd get a ton of birds coming into those feeders. Definitely started young and was always an animal person.
Doug: I'm guessing Mill Creek Park.
Ashley: It was. Yes.
[laughter]
Doug: Tell me about those early days and learning about the birds and how that becomes a career.
Ashley: It just manifests slowly. It was never something that I specifically set out to do. Just started that passion, that interest at a young age. I was always the one in high school when we did the little bird segment in the science class who already knew all the species and all that kind of stuff. I ended up going to Kent State University and getting my degree in zoology. Definitely the ornithology, the study of birds classes were my favorites, and just ended up at Davey. They had an opening back in the diagnostic labs and slowly moved up and became the bird person over here. Just kind of happens.
Doug: How do migratory birds intersect with Davey Tree? Those two things, obviously birds and trees go together, but how does it work with Davey? Tell me a little bit about your job.
Ashley: I don't do a whole lot specifically with birds here, but answer some questions. Davey does a lot taking care of migratory bird areas. There is a big law in this country, it's called the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and it was signed back in 1918 between the US and Canada. It was later signed also by Japan and Russia and Mexico. That was back in the day, there was a lot of birds being hunted to use their feathers for fashion. It was really wiping out a lot of bird populations. This was back during a time that people were under the impression that nature was inexhaustible.
Cutting down trees was fine because they'll grow back. Killing birds for whatever reason was fine because they'll come back. There was even a case where they were trying to get protections for birds all the way back in the 1850s, I believe. It was said by Congress that the rock pigeon or the passenger pigeon doesn't need any protection because they're so prolific, they're everywhere, there's no way we're going to destroy them. The last passenger pigeon died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
Doug: Wow.
Ashley: It was a really big push for this act to finally be passed and to stop those trades of birds. That ends up the actual meaning of the law. It's unlawful to pursue, hunt, take capture, kill, possess, sell, purchase, barter, import, export, or transport any migratory bird or any part nester egg unless authorized by a permit. Obviously as a tree company, we're not doing any of those things intentionally. We're not going out and hunting birds, we're not taking feathers, we're not collecting. This law also covers what's called incidental take. That is the accidental killing or destruction of birds or their nest while doing an otherwise lawful activity. Like you said, birds and trees go together, peanut butter and jelly. You can't have one without the other. It's really important for the Davey crews out in the field, even homeowners, anybody who's doing anything in their yards and trees to be looking out for birds and nests and to avoid doing work around those areas while there is an active nest present. That's the big way that this intersects with what Davey does.
Doug: Well, what do you do then when you get to a property and you got to work on a tree and you've got a bunch of birds nesting up in there? What is the procedure? You wait or --
Ashley: Yes, for the most part. It's definitely a hard question because sometimes you have the scheduling right down to when the client wants something done, but legally, if that nest is in that tree and there's active eggs, if they're actively building the nest, or if there's babies, you can't do that work. There are buffer areas so you can go a different area away from that active nest and do some work so you can do other stuff on the same property. Little things like songbirds, the buffer area is not quite as big Raptor, so hawks and eagles, it's a lot bigger of a buffer area that you can't do work within.
You pretty much just wait. You wait until the birds are out of the nest to do that work. One thing that Davey does is we try to prune trees and do tree removals and stuff during the wintertime because that way there's no birds nesting, you don't really have to worry about that at all. It's also better to prune trees in the winter anyway for tree health. Then it keeps the crews busy in the winter too. It spreads out some of that work that would otherwise be overwhelming in the summertime, so mostly waiting.
Doug: Well, I would think most people would understand that. I was at a garden yesterday where they had two nests. They had a robins nest and then I wasn't sure what the second bird was, but of course, they were very careful. They didn't want to scare-- Most people when they have a bird's nest around the property-- Even my son had one in his front door, they said, "Okay, we have to stop using the front door because we don't want to scare this bird away. We don't want to bother the babies." I would think most people would understand that.
Ashley: Yes, for the most part it seems to be a good thing. These people that care that much about their trees usually care about nature as a whole, so they care about the birds as well.
Doug: Let's talk a little bit about migration. I know from being a bird lover and just an amateur bird lover, that in the spring is the migration. I have a little fountain running and that water seems to attract birds I don't normally see during the year. Talk a little bit about the migration in general.
Ashley: Birds actually migrate for a few different reasons and contrary to popular belief, it's not just weather. They don't leave the US kind of more northern cold states because of the cold. Most of them can actually handle the cold pretty well. They tend to migrate more for food resources and nesting space. In the winter we also don't have insects, we don't have leaves on the trees, we don't have berries, all that kind of stuff. When the leaves are off the trees, there's not really nesting space for them, not quite as much shelter.
They'll go down to warmer habitats that have that more abundance of food and then they'll come back up here in the summertime because we do have that explosion, all of that leaf break, all of the insect emergence. It's a lot of food for them to come up here. It's really advantageous for them to do that migrating. They will use a couple of different means to migrate. There are some, it's just ingrained, kind of instinctual that they know how to get from one place to another, but they'll use landmarks so they know where this mountain or this building or something is at. They'll use that.
Some of them, it's been speculated that they can use the magnetic fields. There are some species like pigeons that can actually use scent, which is pretty unique in the bird families because a lot of them don't have super great senses of smell. There's a lot of different ways that they can get to where they're going.
Doug: It's just amazing to me the whole migration thing, how they figure out where to go and when to go. Is the timing the same every year or close, or do we know?
Ashley: It's pretty close. There are many triggers that tell them it's ready to go. The same kind of things, the food populations. When that gets a little bit lower, they know to leave here. Some of it's just regular circadian rhythms, so again, it's instinctual, they just kind of know and they can use temperature and length of daylight. A lot of rhythms, a lot of circadian rhythms and annual rhythms in animals and plants or based on the amount of daylight hours. Weather can change, temperature can change, so they don't just get up and leave the first cold day of fall.
I'm sure you know, living in the same general area, we get those just randomly sparse pretty early. They don't just take temperature under account, a lot of times it's daylight.
Doug: Do they go as a group or are they going like one at a time or does it depend on the species?
Ashley: Depends a little bit on the species. A lot of time they're going as a group. Most of the time they'll fly at night also. The cooler air temperatures make it a little bit easier to fly. There's not quite so much drag in the atmosphere. It's also a little bit safer. Their predators aren't awake as much at night, so they have a little bit safer way. Then during the day, they can stop for food along the way when all of their prey items are active.
Doug: Do we know why some birds don't migrate? Why they stay? Is there enough food for them? Is that basically it or are there other reasons?
Ashley: Yes. That's about it. There are a couple of species that just don't move because they have a good source of food. They can hide it. They can store stuff for winter. They can find things throughout the winter. Actually, if you are a person that feeds birds in your backyard quite a bit, you may notice that there's some individuals of species that would normally migrate that actually stick around. That really shows you that it's not the temperature that does it, but it's the food sources. If they have a constant supply of food through the winter, there's individuals that will actually stay around.
Doug: I had no idea. What would be a species that would stay if you were a bird feeder that normally might fly south?
Ashley: I think pretty much anything that'll figure out it's got food. I know that a lot of robins tend to move south, so a lot of people see the robins and that's their first sign of spring. Well, around me, they must find enough food because we see robins all winter long here at the institute. They don't move. They have plenty of food here through winter.
Doug: That's always funny when people say, "I saw the first robin of spring," and I say, "Well, I saw the first robin of spring in January."
Ashley: As long as they got food
Doug: While the birds are nesting, what should I do? This has happened. If I find a little baby blue jay in a window, well, or something, what am I supposed to do?
Ashley: I'm sure it's happened to everybody who goes outside and has trees in their yards. It's definitely good things to know. It depends a little bit on how old the baby is. If you go out and you find a chick that their eyes aren't open or they don't really have feathers, or their feathers are just really fluffy or even look like pins instead of feathers, those are too young to be out of the nest so they fell out or something happened to it. Look around, see if you can find the nest. If you can, and you can reach it, the best thing to do is just put them back.
If you can't reach it, get a box, get a bucket, some container, put a little bit of grass or straw or leave something in there and put them up as high as you can get them out of predator's reach and the parents will come back to take care of them. It is definitely a myth that the parent birds will not come back and take care of their chicks if a human has touched them. That's an old tale that was told to get children to not mess with baby birds. You can absolutely do that.
Then if you happen to find a chick that looks fully feathered, they might not look quite like the adults, but they have feathers all over them, those are called fledglings. Those are the babies that have got out of the nest because they are learning how to fly. They're learning how to be adults. Those ones are supposed to be out of the nest. Leave them alone. You can make sure they're in a safe area, don't let your dog out in that spot if you know there's a fledgling underneath the tree because they can't fully get away yet.
Normally, if you look close enough, the parents are still close by keeping an eye on them. Definitely just leave those ones alone. They're supposed to be there. Then if for any reason, any of these birds you see that they're injured, if there's blood, if there's a broken wing, a broken leg or something, the best thing to do is contact your local licensed wildlife rehabber. You can Google that. The Humane Society has a really good list of licensed wildlife rehabbers because included in that Migratory Bird Treaty Act you can't take a bird in and try to rehab it yourself.
That falls under the possession spot of that, and there are people who are licensed and it is their job to go ahead and rehab and release these birds.
Doug: The blue jay we found was obviously a fledgling. Obviously, I stay after we called and said, "blue jay." The same thing explained to us and the bird was fine. As homeowners, what can we do to help the birds? Is feeding the birds, is that a good thing?
Ashley: Yes, absolutely. There's a ton of things you can do. Generally, when it comes to feeding wild animals, it's a no-no, except when it comes to birds because some of their food sources are getting smaller, they're not things that are really going to run into much danger if you're feeding. Just make sure if you're feeding or have a bird bath, you clean out those feeders and waters regularly so they're not holding onto any bacteria or any other diseases. Yes, absolutely feed. Planting native plants is a wonderful thing to do. Native trees, fruit and nut bearing trees, bushes, anything that brings in insects for feeds you could put up nest boxes, different things like that.
There's a ton of things you can do. Another big thing is birds hitting windows. If you have an area that's normally close to trees where it reflects the trees off, birds can't really tell that a window's a solid object so they can fly into that window. There are a ton of solutions to reduce that glare on the windows and get them to not hit windows. They sell stickers. There's specific bird-safe glass that's less reflective. It has a pattern on it. Anything you can do with that, even if you have kids, I've seen people go out with just temperate paints and do little paintings on their windows, put window clings up. Anything like that's really good to keep them from hitting those windows.
Doug: If I am thinking about feeding the birds now I use a special mix. What do you recommend as a number one feed for somebody if they haven't been feeding the birds before, what's an easy thing for them to fill the feeder with?
Ashley: The easiest thing is probably just one of those pre-made mixes or the black oil sunflower seeds. That's a cheap one to do. It's always good to have a variety of things depending on what species you want. The little finches eat the little things more like the Niger seeds, so they have those hooks or you can put a bunch of different feeders up. You could do one of those mixes or the black oil sunflower seeds, one of those little tubes with the Niger seeds. Oreos love oranges, so you could put out little orange slices.
Blue jays, like peanuts a lot, you could do the whole-shelled peanuts. Really the bigger variety you get, the bigger variety of species that you're going to see come to your feeders.
Doug: Tell me what it would be like if I was walking out in the woods with you and I'm hearing all this stuff in the background. Are you able to identify all these things that are singing that I can't see?
Ashley: Yes, most of them. That's a really good way to look for birds and to do bird watching is learning what they sound like because there's a lot of birds that I hear way more than I see. Because they're little brown birds or they're way up in the canopy, or they're real secretive so they don't come out close to people. That's a really really good way to see what you have in the area without actually seeing them.
Doug: Tell me about some of the birds that mean spring is here for you in Kent, Ohio. Is there something that shows up at a certain time and you're like, "Ah, they're here," or something like that?
Ashley: I think I get that for every bird that I see coming in. Just last week I saw the first blue heron around here. We have a couple really big blue heron nesting sites at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. They nest in big aggregates. That was really exciting. I saw another one yesterday, saw a northern flicker out across the street. They're a really pretty little woodpecker. Eastern Phoebe, I saw over the weekend. We were out in Pennsylvania hiking and saw some Eastern Phoebe's. I think I get excited at every species that I see come back.
Doug: For me at my feeder, it's the rose-breasted gross beak that [unintelligible 00:18:21] for me, I think that's sometime in May and it's like, okay, spring is officially here and that's just one of my favorite birds to see.
Ashley: Yes, absolutely.
Doug: Tell me a little bit about what you get out of this job.
Ashley: Yes, absolutely. I really like what I do. It's a nice mix of a lot of different things. Obviously, I love birds. I love being able to work with animals. I do a decent amount with the insects around here too, so some entomology, get some of the animal work in here. Since I started with zoology, I didn't really have a whole lot of a plant background. That's definitely been a newer love of mine since coming on Davey about five years ago and learning a lot about that so that's great. I think the scientist mind in me wants to learn about everything all the time.
It is just great being able to be outside. I do a lot of work on our research plots and implementing a lot of our research projects, maintaining all of those areas. It's a good mix of being able to be outside, be in the field and being able to come inside in the wintertime and work on reports and stuff when it's cold and I don't really want to be outside. A good mix of everything and I love being able to help people out, answer any their questions and being able to teach as well. It's a little bit of everything that I like. It's a really good mix.
Doug: Well, actually, that was a lot of fun. Thanks for schooling us on birds. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for your time.
Ashley: Anytime. It was great to be here.
Doug: I love feeding the birds and especially seeing all the different species this time of the year. Now, next week we're talking all about hardscaping, why you should consider your trees when building a patio, deck pool, or something else. Tune in every Thursday to The Talking Trees Podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster. I'd love it if you would subscribe to the podcast. Where else could you possibly have this much fun? As always, we like to remind you on The Talking Trees Podcast, trees are the answer.
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