This is the first Fox Sparrow to have ever been seen on campus, and it’s dead! These birds are not very common on the East coast but they winter in NC in small numbers. Campus birders tell me they’ve never seen a Fox Sparrow on campus, neither have I, we also haven’t heard them. Maybe he was passing through…or migrating…whatever it was it all ended against a window of the CIEMAS building. Second bird of the year, the same day as the Titmouse.
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Tufted Titmouse strikes first
Migration has not started yet, but some resident birds still navigate through our heavily built campus. Cardinals, Chickadees, Titmice, Nuthatches, Mockingbirds, Robins, and other species winter here in NC and constantly fly around our campus. Although migration is the most dangerous season for collisions, because of the high amounts of birds, their tiredness, speed, and flying habits, winter migrants also collide against windows and get hurt, and often die.
I hadn’t found any dead birds this 2014, but today when I was walking to my office early in the morning I was surprised by a dead Tufted Titmouse. It had hit a window on the French Family Center building and I picked it up. Now, he’s part of our database, just another bird life lost to a window… Let’s hope we don’t accumulate many data points (dead birds) this year!
