Salary or Sustainability
By: Jessica Rousakos
Have you ever gone skiing? If so have you ever wondered what habitats used to occupy the trail you are skiing down? The Bicknell’s Thrush is a bird that lives in the White Mountains. The bird travels between two habitats: The White Mountains and the island of Hispaniola. While occupying the white mountains during the summer, their habitat is slowly being destroyed. Ski mountains are expanding their trails but are ruining ecosystems in the process. How can the ski mountains expand without disrupting the habitat of the Bicknell’s Thrush?
As I have explained above the Bicknell’s Thrush has two habitats. During the summer, the bird occupies the White Mountains. To be more specific, they live in northern U.S. and southeast Canada. They mostly live on very high elevations. Then during the winter, the bird migrates to the Island of Hispaniola. This island consists of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It breeds in montane fir and spruce forests. In the winter, the Bicknell’s Thrush is in broadleaf montane forests (All about birds).
This is a picture of a Bicknell's Thrush
In terms of food the Bicknell’s Thrush eats insects and other arthropods. They also eat fruits (All about birds). During the summer, the bird is mostly a ground forager. They eat insects like larval moths, butterflies, ants, bees, cicadas, and spiders. For fruit they eat things like bunchberries, blueberries, and wild grapes. These small fruits are actually very important when the Bicknell’s Thrush is migrating. Also, fruit makes up a good amount of its winter diet too. In fact another food that female birds eat are snails. The snails are said to have calcium needed for strong egg production. Typically, the females will eat more snails during nesting (Bicknell’s Thrush Catharus Bicknelli).
When it comes to nesting, the Bicknell’s Thrush use twigs and moss in a small tree. Females lay about three to four eggs. The eggs are blue with light brown speckling (All about birds). One interesting fact about these birds is they do Polyandry. Polyandry is when both males and females mate with multiple partners. Females lay four eggs and each of them could be from separate males. In fact, multiple males visit the same nest providing food for the offspring. To be honest they have no idea if they have biological offspring at that nest because they mate with so many different females.
The Bicknell’s Thrush is a song bird. It is medium sized which is about 6.3-6.7 inches in length. It weighs about an ounce. The way you can tell the males apart from the females is that the males are bigger. The bird has light brown coloring and a spotted breast (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). The Bicknell’s Thrush sings with a spiraling flute-like whistle. The song is mainly sung by the males. The song has been described as a chook-chook, wee-o, wee-o, wee-o-ti-t-ter-ee.
This is an example of Polyandry
While the bird is flying on the breeding grounds they sing their songs are utter flight calls during their nighttime migrations (Hinterland Who’s Who). The Bicknell’s Thrush is a very important and interesting bird. Some interesting facts are as I have mentioned above, they use polyandry.