Güero Bird Club Newsletter! July!
superpotent uropygial preen serum for medium to plumulaceous feather types
If you thought human skincare was an involved and commercialized process imagine managing feathers. You only own one outfit and it keeps you warm and dry and is light enough to fly in and you wear it all year but it’s couture with 5 thousand or 10 thousand or 80 thousand!!1 pearls because it is also how you show charisma and attract a lover. You must clean, tone, hydrate, and style and film it all with a ring light and upload it to youtube for a million views on your asmr channel.
First a dunk. For the fun of it, to cool down, and to wash away the dirt, oil, and caked on aphid crumbs from lunch. Everyone enters the pool a little differently. Robins like to step in with confidence breast-deep shake vigorously head whipping back and forth wings flicking. The aerial specialists swifts and swallows just skim the surface. The trick is creating your own water pressure. Woodpeckers prefer to wait for a shower2.
After a bath, it’s time to preen. A bird will use its bill to comb out its feathers, reorganizing the tiny interlocking barbs to achieve maximum aerodynacism and waterproofing, removing any pesky ectoparasites like lice or ticks. Some lucky birds like herons, egrets, nightjars, and dippers have a serrated toe that they use like a fine secret comb. Most birds have a uropygial gland at the base of the tail that secretes a sort of oil concoction. The bird dabs oil on its bill and then works the oil through all of its feathers, from root to tip. The oil conditions the feathers and keeps them from drying out, becoming brittle, and breaking34. The hoopoe’s preen formula is a patented probiotic blend5!!!!
The avian spa would also include an option for a dust bath dry shampoo, sunning (cormorants swear by it!), & a formic full body scrub where a bird sits on a pile of ants. For nights in, nothing says self-care like wiping a millipede all over your iridescent feathers and it doubles as a snack like your honey-avocado face mask6.
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Ugh! but there’s always those feathers you just can’t reach/it is so much easier to braid someone else’s hair. Sometimes some birds like owls, doves, vultures, parrots, & crows show their affection by allopreening — combing through the face feathers of their beloveds. Intimate nit picking seems to strengthen pair bonds and is correlated with increased breeding success rates7 & It’s real real cute !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Guero Bird WATCHING AND LISTENING Club is going outside all the time early morning, regular morning, and evening & we always bring our binocular library to share :) choose the size that’s right for your circadian rhythm!
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7:17AM “beat the heat!”
For those curious about the secrets of the dawn chorus, a quiet and gentle morning ramble to pay special attention to bird song/be mystified by sweet somethings/we can spend time describing tone melody pace rhythm frequency/we can write some lyrics/we can hum along July 7 at Mt. Tabor and July 10 at Powell Butte*
9:00AM ~summer hours~
Wildwood Recreation Area on July 27 a wonderland of lush ferns and firs and the splashing salmon river its the woodsy summer camp all the city slicker kinglets etc escape to when the sidewalks melt pack a picnic lunch for after the walk!!!
Whitaker Ponds stroll on July 31 a classic
6:30PM
not a “morning person”? try birding at the opposite end of the day!
when the swallows stoop and spiral and sup
a great mess of crows poppy the sky towards a communal roost
juncos trill out a prayer from little cedar pulpits
and sometimes sometimes an owl begins her silent work
Whitaker Ponds Wednesday July 17
*Powell Butte* extinct volcano, second largest park in Portland, a unique habitat of open grasslands and meadows. Dairy cows grazed last century. Small groves of pear and walnut trees remain8. When we walked there in June we heard birds that prefer those wide open spaces & I hope we can hear them again next week! Tune up your ears!!
Savannah sparrrow - buzzy, like a cricket singing the song sparrow song
Common yellowthroat - “wichity, wichity, wichity”
Lazuli Bunting - each individual has its own special combination of elements and it sings only this exact song it’s whole life9! a bubbly, jumbled, excited carol
Willow flycatcher - “fitz bew”
I HOPE YOU CAN COME :)
This month we’re all reading “FEATHERS” by Raymond Carver. For an immersive experience we recommend reading at Errol Heights park10.
~discussion qs~
is the narrator a jerk or what?
how much beauty can you buy? how much beauty buys you love?
are you a city bird or a country bird or a bird of paradise?
is the peacock part of the family? after everything we know now about preening, would you let a peacock join the dinner table?
what the heck is red gravy??
bye bye for now,
GBC
this one emperor penguin had 80,000 feathers https://www.birdnote.org/listen/shows/which-bird-has-most-feathers
Ehrlich, Paul R., et al. The Birder’s Handbook : A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds : Including All Species That Regularly Breed North of Mexico. , Illustrated by Shahid Naeem, Simon & Schuster, 1988.
Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology. Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Handbook of Bird Biology. Third ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2016.
photo of gland from http://www.histology-of-birds.com/galleries.php?id=35
Martín-Vivaldi M, Peña A, Peralta-Sánchez JM, Sánchez L, Ananou S, Ruiz-Rodríguez M, Soler JJ. Antimicrobial chemicals in hoopoe preen secretions are produced by symbiotic bacteria. Proc Biol Sci. 2010 Jan 7;277(1678):123-30. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1377. Epub 2009 Oct 7. PMID: 19812087; PMCID: PMC2842625.
Perin Marcon, A., and J. V. Perin Andriola. 2023. Rufous Hornero (Furnarius rufus, Furnariidae) anointing with a millipede (Diplopoda, Spirobolidae) in southernmost Brazil. Journal of Field Ornithology 94(4):13. https://doi.org/10.5751/JFO-00394-940413
Elspeth Kenny, Tim R Birkhead, Jonathan P Green, Allopreening in birds is associated with parental cooperation over offspring care and stable pair bonds across years, Behavioral Ecology, Volume 28, Issue 4, July-August 2017, Pages 1142–1148, https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arx078
https://www.portland.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/powell-butte-nature-park-brochure.pdf
Greene, E., V. R. Muehter, and W. Davison (2020). Lazuli Bunting (Passerina amoena), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (A. F. Poole, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.lazbun.01
https://www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-city-life/2024/06/errol-heights-park-beavers-portland