If you’re looking at some of your yard birds this month and thinking, “What is wrong with that bird?!” Don’t panic. It’s that molting time of year for our feathered friends.
Molting is how birds replace their feathers. They need to be able to fly so they’ll molt in stages. Some species will look quite messy during the process, even losing all their head feathers at once (see photo) then regrowing them. Some molt more gradually.
How often do birds molt? Depending on the species they molt annually or biannually – if they molt in and out of breeding colors like our pictured American goldfinch, it’s the later. Those who don’t make a color shift still need that annual molt because feathers wear out and worn feathers make for poor flying.
Pictured (Top, Middle; L – R, Bottom) above: Juvenile male Anna’s hummingbird, juvenile spotted towhee, adult Steller’s jay, adult American goldfinch and adult blue jay.
Most of the pictured birds are still recognizable, except that poor blue jay who looks a lot like a scrub jay having the worst day ever.
Note: While not common, we do have blue jays in Oregon. Generally they are found in northern and northeastern Oregon, but there have been sightings in the Rogue Valley.
Our juvie birds are molting into their defining features. For the towhee, they’ll molt out of their mottled brown head feathers into either dark gray if they are female or jet black if they are male. Also, their eye color will turn from brown to light or dark red.
The juvie Anna’s has a lot of molting left to do as their spotty refractive throat and hood feathers are replaced with a full head of bling.
What are those spiky things on some of the birds’ faces? When new feathers grow on a bird, they are encased in a waxy covering with a very sharp tip; thus the term “pin feathers.” As the feathers emerge, the molting bird will have to do a lot of grooming to get the waxy casing off. They do this both with their beaks and their feet depending on where the feathers are.
Our close-up of a molting Steller’s jay shows us the process of removing the wax is not an instant one. It takes a lot of grooming time, especially on those hard-to-reach feathers. Highly social bird species will help each other with the wax removal process through mutual grooming. Loners are on their own.
All species of birds go through several different types of molts for various reasons. Young birds have to molt that baby down and grow more adult flight feathers so they can fly. However, as you can see with the towhee and the Anna’s, many have what is called a “first basic” plumage which can look similar to adult plumage or quite different.
The towhee is well into their “formative plumage.” They’ll look fully adult by their first fall.
Some species like our Oregon form juncos will molt into a “tweenage” form. Juncos’ first flight feathers are a spotty gray and brown pattern. Males then molt into their “tween” colors. They’ll have gray head feathers for their first year, then molt into that sleek black hood their second year.
The Anna’s is working on finishing up its “definitive basic plumage”; it will have all the markings of an adult.
Many adult birds are molting now too. As mentioned above, they need to be able to fly while molting, so the process of fully replacing their old, worn feathers with new ones is a long one. Steller’s jays, for example, will molt from May through October, with most of the molting done in June and July.
They may look quite “beat up” as they molt, but they’ll never rock that full out bald-headed look their blue jay cousins have to deal with. The blue jay’s unfortunate molt makes for funny photos but can be a concern to an observer who isn’t familiar with their molt cycle. They look like they have some horrible disease, but it’s just their annual replacement of those amazing crest feathers.
Often the funny photos can be tricky to get because blue jays and cardinals and other species who lose all their head feathers are more vulnerable to predation with bare heads, so they tend to be quite secretive during the process.
As for our American goldfinch, and all other species who molt twice a year as adults, they’ll begin their not-so-quick-change from day-glow yellow to their pale winter look around September. They don’t get much of a molting break because they’ll begin the return to their spring/summer look at the end of February.
Molting birds need a lot of extra calories to help them along, so if you’ve been thinking about putting out a wild bird feeder, now is a good time.
Then sit back and enjoy the crazy patchwork look of your local birds as they get their molt on.