Saratoga Springs, New York

News on the Fly

Winter WondersChristmas tree

by Howard Youth

AFTER THE HOLIDAYS, GIVE A PRESENT

If you're among the millions of people who will purchase a cut Christmas tree this year, consider donating your tree to your backyard birds after the holidays.  Take off the tinsel and other non-biodegradable items and either "plant" the tree out back or drop it in your backyard brushpile.  There it will provide months of cover for songbirds, rabbits, chipmunks, and other wildlife before enriching the soil as compost. 

A standing Christmas tree can be adorned with hanging offerings for birds, such as pine cones stuffed with peanut butter and seeds or suet.  Christmas trees can also be pruned down to small branches that provide cover for perennials or chipped to make mulch for your beds.  Winter wrens and white-throated and white-crowned sparrows are among the cover-loving songbirds that will appreciate a browning Christmas tree out back. 

There's another way to share your tree with wildlife:  Buy a tree with a root ball, so that after the holiday you can plant it in your yard and draw in passing golden-crowned kinglets, black-poll warblers, red-breasted nuthatches, and other conifer-loving species.

WINTER HUMMINGBIRDS

During the holiday season, many of us would never imagine that December and early January are hummingbird months, but they can be.  Virtually the entire span of the U.S. West Coast is year-round territory for the Anna's hummingbird, South Florida usually plays host to some wintering ruby-throated hummingbirds, and reports of wintering individual rufous hummingbirds in the East in November and later are now annual events in many eastern states.  In recent years, reports of small numbers of wintering black-chinned, Allen's, Anna's, and a few other hummingbirds have been on the increase in the Southeast.  Scientists are learning more and more about what makes these feathered dynamos tick.

NEW COLOR ADDED TO COLOMBIA'S AVIAN KALEIDOSCOPE

A holiday present for all who love birds:  A colorful new songbird was described from one of the last vestiges of cloud forest in a remote part of Colombia.  For a country often trumpeted by the international press as a bastion of bad news, the Associated Press report of this bird's discovery is a bright note.  Not only is the Yariguies brush-finch striking, with a rusty crown, lemon-yellow underparts, and a black mask -- it's now protected, thanks to the Colombian government's declaration of 500 acres of the bird's habitat (a place that's home to many other unusual wildlife species) as a national park.  A few bird species are discovered each year, and this brush-finch goes down as one of the highlights of recent years.