Cool weather brings first of season’s birds

If you, like me, regularly monitor bird-sighting reports this time of year, you’re bound to come across the abbreviation FOTS, for “first of the season.” Birders use FOTS to denote a bird that they see for the first time during fall and spring migrations.

Now, with Georgia’s so-called winter birds coming in to spend the cold season here, FOTS is getting some heavy use as birders report the new arrivals. The winter birds include ruby-crowned and golden-crowned kinglets, dark-eye juncos, yellow-rumped warblers, orange-crowned warblers, cedar waxwings, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, hermit thrushes, white-throated sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, Northern harriers and more than 15 duck species.

They are the birds that nest farther north during spring and summer and migrate to Georgia to spend the winter. (They shouldn’t be confused with the neo-tropical songbirds, which nest in Georgia in the summer and fly all the way to the Caribbean and Central and South America for the winter.)

“In the yard today, I saw my FOTS yellow-rumped warbler waiting to drink from the birdbath,” DeeAnne Meliopoulos of Athens reported last week. Amy Barbe, also of Athens, said the 13 dark-eyed juncos at her feeder last week were the “FOTS for my yard.” Mark McShane of Lawrenceville said he had “several good-sized FOTS groups of sandhill cranes fly overhead” while he was bird-watching in Gordon County.

As for me personally, I had a FOTS yellow-bellied sapsucker last week pecking at the big tulip poplar in my backyard in Decatur.

All of these birds add zest to wintertime bird-watching. Those starting to show up in backyards and at feeders now will remain until early spring, when they return to their northern breeding grounds to nest and raise babies.

If this winter is particularly harsh up north, we also may see influxes of purple finches, red crossbills, pine siskins and red-breasted nuthatches, birds that tend to show up in goodly numbers only in certain years.

And don’t forget about the winter hummingbirds. While Georgia’s summer-nesting ruby-throated hummingbirds are now ensconced in winter homes in Mexico and Central America, there’s no doubt that some other hummingbird species —- particularly the rufous —- will pay us visits during the next few months. That’s why wildlife experts advise that you leave up at least one full hummingbird feeder all winter.

Alien battles

I was among a diverse group of volunteers and state and federal employees who last week trekked up to a remote mountain bog in the Chattahoochee National Forest in Rabun County to do battle with some aliens —- though not little green beings from Mars.

These aliens were green plants that go by the names of Japanese knotweed, Montana grass and Chinese privet. They are among dozens of exotic, nonnative plants —- so-called invasive species —- that threaten to run amok in Georgia’s forests, choke out native species and greatly alter the natural landscape. Perhaps the best known of them are kudzu and Japanese honeysuckle.

Our mission last week was to remove or incapacitate as many of the invasive species as we could at a small wetland called Hedden Creek bog. There, the exotic plants threaten to choke out several of Georgia’s native species, including the yellow-flowered Fraser loosestrife that’s on the state’s rare plant list.

While some of our group pulled up privet, others cut off the seedheads of the Montana grass growing densely along a Forest Service road. Without its seedheads, the grass cannot spread. The Japanese knotweed —- a fast-growing shrub with hollow bamboo-like stems —- proved particularly tenacious. A winch had to be used to pull out several of the plants by their roots.

Mountain bogs like the one we were at are of particular concern to wildlife biologists. Ranging from about a half acre to 5 acres in size and covered by thick carpets of sphagnum moss, the bogs themselves are some of the “most critically endangered habitats” in Georgia, said Mincy Moffett of the state Department of Natural Resources.

“Relatively few” high-quality mountain bogs remain in North Georgia, he said. Most of them are in private ownership.

Several factors, such as drainage for agriculture and homesites, led to the loss of mountain bogs, but the major reason probably was a drastic decline in beaver populations from overtrapping and other causes. With their dams and impoundments, beavers probably were the dominant force in creating and maintaining the bogs.

The bogs themselves are habitat for several other rare native plants, including the swamp pink, Cutbert’s turtlehead, mountain purple pitcher plant and the Carolina sheep laurel. But in particular, they harbor the bog turtle, Georgia’s smallest turtle and perhaps its most endangered reptile.

DNR herpetologist Thomas Floyd said that restoring and conserving mountain bogs are critical to saving the bog turtle and other bog-loving species from extinction.

In the sky

The moon will be full Wednesday night. November’s full moon is sometimes called Frost Moon, Beaver Moon or Little Bear’s Moon by various Native American tribes. Venus shines brightly in the west just after sunset and sets in the west about two hours later. Jupiter is high in the southwest just after dark and sets in the west before midnight. Saturn rises out of the east just before sunrise. Mercury and Mars are not easily observed right now.

seabrk@comcast.net