Sun Birds

Have you noticed any birds looking stunned lately? This robin, for instance, was frozen in this off-kilter pose the other day for an inordinately long time, only moving when some other bipeds came by. It looked as if there might be something wrong with it, because birds will usually fly away at the first sign of trouble — and they usually know you’re coming before you see them.

But the bird was just sunning. That’s right, sun bathing, more or less. They do this as part of their feather maintenance. The sun dries feathers after bathing; it helps to synthesize vitamin D in the preen oil; it also helps to spread that oil throughout the feathers; the heat may also drive feather lice and other parasites to parts of the bird more reachable by its beak. Every bird has feather lice, a population usually kept under control by preening, unless the animal is ill. The lice is often specific to the bird species it lives on, as human lice is to us.Here’s another, hunkered down on the path in the full blast of the sun.