Nature & You: 'Wild canaries' seem to disappear

Mysterious disappearance of ‘wild canaries’ an annual phenomenon

Along about this time each and every year, the same frustrating thing happens. For those of you who feed the winter songbirds, vast amounts of treasure are expended on the purchase of expensive food stuffs. “Wild canaries” are easily enticed to backyard bird feeders. In the winter, these birds look nothing like a lemon-colored canary. Their winter garb is feathers that are a drab olive color.

Then along comes the spring season. Enter stage left. The season change is accompanied by a dramatic shift in the feather cloak that is exhibited by the “wild canaries.” Spring is when they get that lemon-yellow color. When this dramatic plumage transformation takes place, these little birds quit frequenting the bird feeders outside of your home’s windows. That causes no little amount of angst among those of us who feed wild birds.

It is not as if the “wild canaries” have departed for Canadian nesting ground; their preferred nesting sites are near, not far. The one key factor, however, is that the typical suburban backyard is not their nesting site of choice. The “wild canaries” opt for those nonmanicured tangles of low shrubbery that are just not to be found in most home lawns.

If your housing subdivision has a greenbelt component, you might want to consider enlisting the help of your neighbors to rally support for a proposal to leave some of that natural area unkept and wild. With any luck, you might be able to entice the “canaries” to stick around when seasonal changes spur the color change to their plumages. At the very least, it is worth a try.

Neil Garrison, NewsOK Contributor

Neil Garrison was the longtime naturalist at a central Oklahoma nature center.