For the Birds: Birds camouflage to increase survival

Juvie Spotted Towhee with adult Spotted Towhee

Photos and text by Christine Southwick

Have you been seeing little brown birds that you can't identify, that don't seem to be in your bird book?

Great news! Those aren't strange out-of-area birds, nor do you require new binoculars. Those are baby birds still clothed in their nestling camouflage.

Juvie Spotted Towhee, just learning to eat seed.
Note: gape color around mouth

The most dangerous time in most birds’ lives is while they are in their nest. Predators of all types go after them: raccoons, coyotes, and crows love eggs and nestlings; hawks, owls, cats, and loose dogs, will eat young birds, and the defending parents.

In fact, each day in the nest increases the chance of being discovered. Many ground bird nestlings, like White-crowned Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, and Spotted Towhees, leave their nests as soon as they can walk, a couple of weeks before they can fly.

Dark-eyed Junco
Can you see the white outer-tail feathers?

Spotted Towhees and Dark-eyed Juncos start out striped and in various degrees of brown, so that they can blend in with the ground and dried grasses. Most all local nestling sparrows are all browns, with the white highlights coming later. Fortunately for those of us who watch birds in our backyards Black-capped and Chestnut-backed chickadees come out looking like their parents (their nests are in trees).

Sunday I was lucky enough to watch a fledgling* Chestnut-backed Chickadee take its first bath. It was on the edge of my three-tier bird bath, fluttering its wings. It then flew up, and back to a different position. It looked like it wanted to get its feet wet, lifting first one foot, and then the other, but quickly grasping the rim. It flew around  several times, even repeatedly landing on the crook of the dripper, trying to figure out how to take that first bath.

Juvie American Robin

It was so exhausted that a parent fed it twice during this time of trepidation: Flutter, flutter, pace, fly off, hover a little, land, shift feet, flutter some more. It finally jumped into the water and jumped back out holding its dripping wings akimbo as if to say, “Ick, is this what getting wet feels like? I don't like it.” (Forgive the animalism—who knows what the bird really thought, but that’s how I interpreted the whole scene.)

At any rate, maybe it decided a cool dip wasn't so bad … I saw a couple of fledglings bathing later that same day.

*fledgling-  one that has left the nest, but is still being fed by the parents