I collect dead birds, not for myself, but for museums and other institutions that will preserve remains so they can be used for education or scientific study. Each year, during the holiday season, I prepare legally required reports for the Ohio Division of Wildlife and the U.S. Fish a Wildlife Service. These allow me to continue to possess salvage permits so that I can stop along the highway and legally retrieve an unlucky bird that failed to escape the path of a speeding automobile. Most of the birds I collect are found as I manage and co-manage nearly 400 nestboxes, nestjars, nest burrows, and platforms for birds.
During 2014, I salvaged 41 birds representing 13 species. My days in the field began on March 1st when I started returning 62 nestboxes and baffles to their mounts within two nestbox grids and one marsh on the Delaware Wildlife Area.
Salvaged Eastern Bluebirds
I found nothing to salvage until March 11th when I began to clean out nestboxes that had provided winter shelter for Eastern Bluebirds. Within a week, I salvaged a dozen bluebirds that had starved during cold winter weather. Polar vortexes made extreme cold and snow the norm last winter, and bluebirds paid the price.
Some local bluebirds choose to roost in my nestboxes for the entire winter, while other winter residents might be birds from more northern latitudes that migrated to Delaware County. Also, local bluebirds that migrated south for the winter begin returning to Central Ohio in mid-February to reclaim territories for the next nesting season. This may account for the fact that for every female bluebird found dead, three males were found. Males return before females in order to claim nestboxes and territories.
Wintering bluebirds feed on poison ivy berries, wild grapes, moonseed, and rose hips if the morsels are not covered with ice and snow. Considering how severe the winter had been, I was relieved to salvage only a dozen deceased bluebirds. A House Sparrow killed the thirteenth-salvaged bluebird on or before May 2nd when I collected it.
Did finding twelve winterkilled bluebirds forecast a sparse nesting season to follow? Well, maybe. My annual mid-May bluebird nest count is a measure of the nesting season and I counted 26 nests in 2014 which is 48.8% fewer nests than 48 counted the year before. Bluebirds in 2014 raised 187 fledglings representing 81% of eggs laid, a very good success rate. For comparison, in 2013, 74.8% of eggs developed to fledge 314 bluebirds.
Salvaged Tree Swallows
Between April 26th and September 17th, I salvaged ten adult Tree Swallows; all but one had been killed by House Sparrows. Murderous, alien House Sparrows inflict bloody head wounds and other gross injuries to their victims. The swallow not killed by a sparrow showed no evidence to explain its death.
Between June 12th and 22nd, I salvaged five nestling swallows that failed to fledge. I found other nestlings that failed to fledge, but during the heat of summer, decomposition begins immediately at the time of death and fly eggs and maggots tell me to recycle the remains back into the natural environment rather than my freezer. When I monitor my nestboxes, I carry zippered plastic sandwich bags and index cards so salvaged birds can be bagged with appropriate records of dates, locations and other required information.
Five swallow nestlings that failed to fledge are tiny samples of a larger story. My nestboxes fledged 885 Tree Swallows in 2014 which sounds very good, but it is anything but good since swallows laid 1585 eggs and only 1116 hatched, which is 70.4% of their initial potential. Most disturbing, once hatched, only eight of every ten nestlings (79.3%) grew to fledge. In other words, 231 hatchlings died as nestlings. The success rate of 55.8% from egg to fledging was the lowest rate since 1990.
Once a family completes its reproductive cycle, I excavate and tear apart their used nest in order to count unhatched eggs and mummified remains of hatchlings and nestlings. In nests that lost two or more nestlings, remains showed that they died in stages, a sign of a limited food supply that came up short. During food shortages, competition takes place among siblings and they start dying days apart.
Small flying insects make up most of a Tree Swallow’s diet and a swallow’s ability to successfully reproduce is determined by its food supply. Other conservationists and I observe, count, and analyze our nest data to a point, but entomologists could provide the best answers to our questions. Bees, butterflies, dragonflies, and other insects have their champions that make their own observations, and questions always arise about how extreme weather fluctuations and climate change are affecting their subjects.
As I monitor my nestboxes, I record European wasp nests and paper wasp nests that I must evict to keep cavities available for nesting birds. I even record the number of chambers in each wasp nest. In 2014, I removed wasp nests from 16 (4.1%) nest chambers among 389 nestboxes. In 2013, as I monitored 384 boxes, I removed wasp nests from 52 (13.5%) nest chambers. For 2014, the wasp population was down to 30.4% of what it was the year before. My wasp nest data are an indicator of what might be happening among other insect populations with similar life cycles, insects that supply food-energy for nesting Tree Swallows.
Window Collisions and Traffic Claimed Other Species
Three birds were victims of window collisions, not at my home because I don’t wash my windows. Clean windows reflect images of landscapes that can fool a bird, especially if it trying to outmaneuver a hawk. Glass windows claimed an American Robin, a Prothonotary Warbler and a Mourning Dove. Traffic along highways and byways claimed the following species: Red-winged Blackbird, American Coot, Gray Catbird, an immature Common Grackle, Prothonotary Warbler, a female Northern Cardinal, Carolina Chickadee, a first-year Cooper’s Hawk, and a mature Red-tailed Hawk.
I delivered all but one of my salvaged birds to the Ohio Wesleyan Zoology Museum. The lone exception was a road-killed Carolina Chickadee salvaged as I was on my way to a Columbus Natural History Society meeting at the Ohio State University Museum of Biodiversity on Kinnear Road. After I arrived, the small bird was bagged and laid to rest in a freezer.
Student curators at both museums will determine if the skins of salvaged birds can be preserved, and their bodies replaced with cotton, and if wooden dowel rods are needed for added support. After everything is stitched back together, a preserved specimen can be used as an educational prop or an object of scientific study for hundreds of years. As they prepare study skins, student curators enhance their skills as their aptitudes are brought into focus. Preparing study skins can lead to future careers as professional curators, taxidermists, educators, scientists, veterinarians, surgeons, etc.
More About Salvaging Birds
Read the following article to learn about preserving salvaged birds: Winker, Kevin. Spring 2000. Obtaining, preserving, and preparing bird specimens. Journal of Field Ornithology. 71(2):250-297. The article can be found at the AOU Web site.