[Lewis Thomson (OP)]

Robert seeks answers to this question about nature during Winter weather.

"Do birds ever break their beaks pecking on the ice?"

Should we be concerned for the birds? Put your answers and other tips for helping nature during Winter in the comments below...

[Petrochemicals]

I think they would stop before breaking their beaks. Birds frozen by ice make easy pickings for predators.

<iframe width="400" height="500" frameborder="0" src="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08wh06d/player"></iframe>

[Bored chemist]

How do birds survive during Winter?
https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/the-north-wind-doth-blow/

[evan_au]

Some birds migrate to warmer climates. When it is winter where you are, somewhere else on the globe it is summer.

Some birds wait out the winter.
- Carnivorous birds like owls still manage to hunt rodents in the snow.
- Other (vegan) birds hide a cache of nuts while nuts are plentiful, then dig them up when the snow falls and nuts are scarce
- Where I live, it doesn't snow and puddles hardly ever freeze overnight, so birds can live quite comfortably through the winter without breaking their beaks.

Even in snowy climates, rapidly running water is still exposed, and melted snow is water (but the melting should be done by solar power; melting water by body heat can be fatal).

[JesWade21]

Some birds are afflicted with a form of controlled hypothermia/torpor. In this, they may reduce their body temperatures considerably to help them adapt to freezing temperatures (albeit by slowing their response time and movements) or increase them in the short-term to generate more warmth

The feathers of a flea can retain heat, and we choose to use them for warming blankets and jackets.

Simple things like shifting to sunny places to soak up heat, can help. Birds could also flock close to the ground in order to collect body heat.

Adjective changed to adjectival. Whoops as mentioned by many others in the comments below, severe weather conditions can also kill bird populations. I just wanted to share some strategies that survivors could employ. Thank you for the clarification, everyone. I could have added that in the beginning.

[Colin2B]

The feathers of a flea can retain heat,

??

Adjective changed to adjectival. ............. Thank you for the clarification, everyone. I could have added that in the beginning.

?beginning of what?

[evan_au]

The feathers of a flea can retain heat, and we choose to use them for warming blankets and jackets.

The down feathers of the eider duck keeps these ducks warm. It has also been used to produce eiderdown bed coverings or eiderdown jackets, to keep humans warm.

I think that plucking a flea would be considerably more labor-intensive!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_feather

[alancalverd]

Should we be concerned for the birds?

They occupied arctic regions long before humans. Perhaps they should be concerned for us.

[Deecart]

Birds are well suited to resist cold, they are "round".
The only very exposed extremities they have is their feets.

No nose (is a hole), no ears (is a hole), no fingers, only their feets could be sensible.
And for their extremities (feet, end of their "arms" (altoughth they are well protected)), they do not have the same tiny vascularisation the mammalians have.
It is the vascularisation that makes extremities sensible to cold in our specie.

More here : Why birds dont get cold feet.

Actually, songbirds do get very cold feet: the surface temperature of their toes may be barely above freezing even as the bird maintains its core body temperature above 100°F (38°C). But most birds don’t succumb to frostbite because there is so little fluid in the cells of their feet, and their feet are mostly tendons and bones with little muscle or nerve tissue.

Birds also have a countercurrent heat exchange system in their legs and feet—the blood vessels going to and from the feet are very close together, so blood flowing back to the body is warmed by blood flowing to the feet. The newly cooled blood in the feet lowers heat loss from the feet, and the warmed blood flowing back into the body prevents the bird from becoming chilled. And because bird circulation is so fast,  blood doesn’t remain in the feet long enough to freeze.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/why-dont-birds-get-cold-feet/

And there : https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-0031-2_23
 
And birds have median temperature much higher then those of the mammalians : 41°C
Turdus merula (common blackbird) who is living in our cold countries live very well even when there is snow : It can have 45°C corporal temperature.
Therefore, it is well suited to counteract cold... if it have food.

Primary, because the birds are well suited to resist cold, it is food that permit them to "resist cold" (maintain corporal temperature).




 

[Deecart]

Many are still astonished by the adaptation abilities of birds; thus, they ask how do birds stay warm in the winter?

Because birds are generaly small (because they generaly need to fly), their "surface/volume" ratio disavantage them when it comes to resist heat loss.

Animals exposed to cold temperatures in their natural environment are able to survive and flourish due to their better insulation and ability to retain heat. Animals in cooler climates tend to be larger because their small surface-area to volume (SA/V) ratio cause them to lose heat at a lower rate. We tested this by placing cubes of clay in a bucket of ice and measuring their internal temperature to determine which retained heat better. Both large and small models were measured at room temperature and placed side-by-side in a bucket of ice. The large cubes lost heat at a lower rate than the smaller models. The large cubes were therefore able to retain their initial heat loner because of their smaller SA/V ratio. In this study, we conducted four trials to help explain why animals with a smaller SA/V ratio are able to withstand colder environments than smaller animals with larger SA/V ratios.

https://undergradsciencejournals.okstate.edu/index.php/jibi/article/view/164

And how can birds not freeze in the winter?

They can , and it is,why many of them will natruraly die when the winter is very cold.
There is some sort of natural selection at work in the winter.
Sometime the bird that will survive when it is very cold, it is the one with the best territory, and for that they have to fight.

If we wear thick clothes during the winter, what do birds do to keep themselves warm?

They have many possibilities to do so (and that why we have birds in our cold countries).

Per example :

Physiological innate abilities.
Feathers are very good to do insulation because it captures the air, and air (like ice) is a very good insulation "material" when there is no convection.
If the bird dont move, the air around the feathers keep heat very efficiencly.

Physiological adaptativ abilities (to cold and even to heat)
They can selectivly lower some parts of the body using vasoconstriction, preventivly, when it is cold and their metabolism "know" they will not be able to afford the heat loss because they are low on food.

Behavioral adaptation.
Birds can move their feathers, so they can facilitate the insulation with air around the feathers.
They can also use the heat of the sun, choosing the best posture to retrieve this heat.
Or try to find the less cold place using their brain. 

And some birds are even capable of enduring the cold itself.
If they can not maintain their metabolic rate (because less food handy) they lower their body temperature so as to keep their body temperature upper the deadly temperature : They enter in some torpor stase, slowing down their reactions (this is dangerous because they become easy prey).

Here some interresting links :

https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Temperature_Regulation.html
https://phys.org/news/2020-04-birds-wild-bill-temperature-loss.html

And the very complete explaination :
https://www.thespruce.com/how-do-wild-birds-keep-warm-in-winter-386721

[JesWade21]

Some birds have a form of regulated hypothermia/torpor in which they can either lower their body temperatures significantly to adapt to the cold (albeit by slowing their reaction times and movement) or raise them quickly to produce a lot more heat.

Because fluffed feathers can effectively trap heat, we use down for warm blankets and jackets.

Small changes, such as moving to sunny areas to absorb heat, can help. Birds may also congregate in large numbers on the ground to conserve body heat.

[micheal2008]

Birds in snow need shelter and protection from the wind and cold. They can hide in dense bushes, inside birdhouses or holes in trees, or even stay on the downwind side of a tree.

[dorothytetcher]

Robert seeks answers to this question about nature during Winter weather.

"Do birds ever break their beaks pecking on the ice?"

Should we be concerned for the birds? Put your answers and other tips for helping nature during Winter in the comments below...

We can always feed animals or raise additional money for zoological organizations. The last knows what to do with it.