Laura Erickson’s For the Birds

In the summer of 1979 while Russ and I were living in Madison, Wisconsin, I raised a baby Blue Jay I called Ludwig. He was a dear little guy who taught me a lot about Blue Jays.

One morning after Ludwig was getting pretty good at flying, I found a tiny, bright red wind-up propeller toy in my Rice Krispies. I grabbed a rubber band off our doorknob, wound up the propellor, and shot it up in our dining room. Instantly, Ludwig flew up and grabbed it in mid-air, and carried it in his beak straight to me. That quickly became a game, with him tirelessly bringing it back to me like a well-trained golden retriever so I could shoot it up again. I’d rescued Ludwig from a dog—a golden retriever, no less—when he was a young fledgling. He was perfectly healthy and strong, destined to be released into the wild, so as soon as he could flit about at all, I took him out in our apartment building’s small backyard every day so he could spend minutes, and then hours, figuring out the big world and building up his flight skills where he could land in bushes or trees, not on tables and chairs. Soon I was playing our propellor game with him out there. Our apartment building was small—just two stories with five apartments—sandwiched between a huge brick building and a building similar to ours on the other side, with a thick hedge topped by a couple of big shade trees along the sides of the yard and the alley behind. I had to be careful where I aimed the propeller, not wanting it to get caught in a tree or end up on our roof. I was pretty good at that, but one warm, sunny day I misjudged something and the little propellor ended up on the roof. Ludwig flew straight up for it, but the moment he alighted on the roof, he seemed to collapse, tilting to one side, one wing drooping low, his crest straight up, his beak wide open. I’d never seen anything like this and thought he’d had a stroke, heart attack, or something equally dire. I ran into the basement storage room where our landlord kept a ladder and climbed up to the roof. Ludwig wasn’t too far out of reach but didn’t respond to my voice. I’m terribly afraid of heights but without even thinking, I started crawling up on the roof itself. But the moment I touched him, he shook his head and then his body plumage, flew down to a shrub, and started preening. Now that the danger had passed, my fear of heights kicked in at full force. The last 8 inches or so between my outstretched hand and the propeller felt insurmountable, so I left it on the roof. I was shaking by the time I got down the ladder and plopped down on all fours on the grass. Within a minute or so, Ludwig flew back to the roof, grabbed the propeller, and brought it to me, still shaken on my knees. Ludwig seemed fine but I was still scared that there was something seriously wrong with him, so I called my dear friend Malcolm McDonald, who worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and had handled baby corvids. When I described the situation, he chuckled and said Ludwig had just been “sunning,” or sunbathing, told me that while birds are sunning they seem to be in a trance-like state, and assured me that there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. Now that he mentioned it, I vaguely recalled reading about sunning in one of my ornithology classes. Sure enough, it was listed in the indexes of both my ornithology textbooks, though one had it as a subentry under “behavior.” In both cases, the entire discussion was limited to one short paragraph in a large textbook, no mention of Blue Jays or other species, and no photos. When birds sun, they raise their back and neck feathers to allow the sun to reach their skin, raising the surface temperature. The light and heat probably get any lice and mites scooting around, sunlight on the skin stimulates Vitamin D production, and sunlight on the exposed uropygial (or oil) gland just above the tail stimulates oil production. Every sunning bird I’ve ever watched had its beak open, which probably helps it maintain the proper internal temperature. The moment they stopped sunning, they retreated into a shrub and started preening vigorously. At the time Ludwig and I had our backyard adventure, he’d never been outdoors without me, so I know he’d never sunned before. I assume that touching the warm, sunny roof seemed elicited the behavior unbidden. But being in that trancelike state, sunning birds are extremely vulnerable, so I suspect before engaging in these behaviors, birds must quickly figure out how to do it safely. A similar behavior is anting—sitting on an anthill and either picking up ants to smear them on their feathers or dropping into the same posture as sunning so ants will crawl all over the body. Ant bodies are laced with formic acid which may act as an insect repellent. The first time Ludwig picked up an ant in our house, he instantly spit it out, raised his crest and shook his head—the formic acid taste must have surprised him. But then he cocked his head, moved his tongue in and out a moment, grabbed the ant again, and started smearing it on his feathers. Apparently the taste of the ant elicited active anting. Passive anting—allowing ants to crawl over the body—probably offers the same benefits as both active anting and sunning—most anthills are in the open, so the bird can get a dose of formic acid along with the sun. I first witnessed that kind of anting by Blue Jays in the mid-90s. The front lawn of a yard down my block had both a big bare spot crawling with ants and a spruce tree where a pair of Merlins were nesting. Several times, I saw a Blue Jay fly up above the nest and hover, apparently checking whether the Merlin was in or out of the nest, and then dropping to the anthill, toppling to one side, and going into that weird trance. I could never see whether the Merlin was on or off the nest, so don’t know if an empty nest told the jay the coast was clear or if a Merlin on the nest assured the jay that the falcon was too busy incubating to pose a threat. In the 90s, I had a licensed education Blue Jay named Sneakers. She was mostly an indoor bird. I put her in a bird cage to take her to speaking events, and several times after a daytime program, as I was carrying her out to the car she toppled over in that sunning position. Unless I was in a big hurry, I’d set the cage on the car roof for a minute or two, letting her enjoy the sensation until she stopped of her own accord. When passersby noticed her, they always thought she was dying do I’d have to explain sunning. On Sunday, I heard from Keith Peterson, who sent a photo of a Blue Jay sunning in his Eden Prairie yard. He had never seen this before and said, “I’m thinking it’s either injured, sick, or maybe just basking in the sun.” So even though I don’t think he’s ever taken an ornithology class, he had more insight about this cool behavior than I did when I first saw it. I was thrilled to see his photo, since even though I’ve seen more Blue Jays sunning than any other species, I’ve never managed to get a picture of a it. Oddly enough, the only photos I have of sunning birds in my own yard are of a robin, Brown Thrasher, and chickadee. Anyway, I was delighted to hear from Keith. You can see his photo of the sunning Blue Jay, along with some of my photos of sunning birds and a picture of Ludwig in my apartment, on my blog.