What do little ground-feeding birds do when snow blankets the
ground? They have a hard
time finding food. Some die, but the majority can make do in the
right kind of wild
garden.

Big ground-feeding birds, like the wild turkey, can survive
winters further north
because they can scratch through deeper snow.

But little ground-feeders, like white-throated sparrows,
field sparrows, song sparrows
and hermit thrushes, head South where they can find freedom from
snow. They’re what
ornithologists call short-distance migrants.

Other ground-feeding birds, such as brown thrashers and
towhees, are year-round
residents in the South, but they’re more common in winter.

That’s because their northern relatives come South to bunk in
with them for the winter.
They all hunt the treasure trove of worms, insects and seeds
served up in the leaf litter.

When we do get snow, it’s a real hardship for small ground
feeders.

We had about two inches of snow on Feb. 4. I watched these
birds to see where and how
they managed to find food.

Any bare place, no matter how small, was prime real estate. A
high-demand spot was in
the lee of a wood pile where the ground was bare.

The leaves here were all raked and churned by the birds. A
forlorn hermit thrush
huddles on the ground in this bare spot, his feathers all
fluffed out. The hermit thrush
is not a scratcher. He waited for the ground to thaw before he
could look for worms and
insects.

Beneath fallen logs and slanting tree trunks were good, snow-
free feeding spots. A
towhee and a white-throated sparrow were busy scratching up a
spot under a tree limb which
had fallen and was propped up on a stump.

Other choice and almost bare spots were under the cedars and
other evergreens where the
dense branches had prevented some of the snow from reaching the
ground.

The blue jays and brown thrashers are bigger and stronger
than the towhees and
sparrows. They penetrate the snow layer and expose little
patches of leaves. Then the
little birds come in behind them.

The blue jay found a water oak acorn. He flew up to an
overhanging branch, chopped the
acorn to pieces, and greedily gulped the orange fragments.

The birds ignored the smooth, snow-covered lawn. They seemed
to know it was a hopeless
feeding area offering no leaves to turn.

Likewise, they seemed to know the snow-covered driveway was a
wasteland. By their
behavior, the birds said they prefer unraked and untidy places
where leaves can be turned
to find bare soil.

Out beyond the lawn is a zone of dead zinnias, sunflowers and
other annual flowers and
weeds. There the cardinals and other seed-eating birds were
busily clinging to old flower
heads and picking away. It’s a good thing for them we hadn’t
cleaned up this wild place.

Of course, the birds like sunflowers and millet seeds people
put out in bird feeders,
but with enough food in a wild garden, they can get along
without bird welfare.

But for an insect-eating bird like the hermit thrush, there
is no bird welfare.

By noon many little islands of brown leaves were showing
through the snow, and by 3
p.m. the snow was thawing. The hermit thrush caught a large
earthworm. The birds had
survived another snow.

If you want to do less work while also helping the birds, let
some garden cleanup jobs
go undone. Leave those old zinnias, let those dead leaves lie
under the thickets, and
don’t cut and haul away the fallen branches.

Your wild neighbors will know what to do with them.