Of course some of that food may be the sunflower seeds and peanuts from your backyard feeders, but much of it can come from other natural food sources. Most years, acorns would make up a big part of a bird’s diet. Everything from titmice to towhees depend on the fall crop of food from New Jersey’s many oak trees, but this year has been a bust. For the most part our acorn crop has been extremely low, making it a much tougher winter for wildlife than normal. So more of that stored food may be mine after all.

However, in a habitat where there is good biodiversity, there should be other wild foods that our birds are foraging for even in the dead of winter. So I thought I would venture out to some nearby nature areas and see if I could find some of these natural food sources for myself. I was pleased to still find the blueberries of the eastern red cedar still hanging on. The fruit of the cedar is an important food source for birds such as mockingbirds, bluebirds, hermit thrush, and cedar waxwings, and the tree itself provides good cover to protect them on a freezing February night.

Downy woodpeckers were about as I continued on, tapping on the bark of trees and shrubs. They are still able to find dormant insects and larva under the bark and in the crevices, the same way as chickadees and many other birds can. It’s almost wearing to watch how hard they work to find the tiny morsels. Fox sparrows were scratching on the ground under a stand of birch trees. Although the catkins that hold the seeds were long gone, the birds must be finding seeds that remained under the leaves. I wondered how much could be left at this point.

Mourning doves were perched on the sweetgum trees as I passed by. The funny round balls will hold their tiny seeds well through the winter, helping juncos, goldfinch, and many sparrow species make it till spring. Staghorn sumac berries dangled on for dear life waiting for a cardinal or woodpecker to finish them off. Sumacs are an important winter food source for many birds of New Jersey. There were still a few about as winter continues on.

A small number of seeds remained on a stand of switchgrass that I came upon. Swamp, white-throated, white-crowned, and savannah sparrows depend on these native grasses, but they were at a premium now. The winter food was there, but like all winters it was tough to find and few and far between. Winter was conducting its big finale now.

Things will get harder, natural food will become scarcer, and survival for our birds will get tougher. Many of them will not make it through the next brutal cold night, and yet like they always have, many will survive. They will be able to make it all the way to spring to migrate and to nest. Either way, their species will continue. Spring will come and food again will be abundant, and nature’s drama will continue as it always has. Get outside and watch the spectacle unfold for yourself. There is nothing else like it.