Brown All Over
Dawn temperature swings: 12 on Sunday, 42 yesterday, and now 21. It’s mostly clear, with early light; sunrise is at 7:15 AM, and dawn activity tapers off just after 7:30. The ground is brown all over. This week, it’s supposed to be in the 50s most days, and only the 30s at night.
Countdown to Phoebes
Why don’t we just get this “winter” over with already and stop pretending there might be a big snowstorm or two in our future? (Famous last words—some of our heaviest storms can occur in March.)
I’ve always regarded the Eastern Phoebe as the first true Spring Arrival: a species that did not winter here but is returning to set up a territory, breed, raise a family or two, and then leave. Since I was a child, we tracked spring arrivals on a chart on the fridge—from the earliest March Coltsfoot to Mayflowers, and from Tundra Swans
(one I expect in the next week or two) to Baltimore Orioles. Swans, Turkey Vultures, and a few others would be recorded as flyovers in February, but that was nothing like hearing that first “phoebe” call at dawn by the garage or spring house to mark the end of my winter.
Last year, March 6 was that special day both here at the apartment and up on the mountain. The earliest return date ever was February 27, 1998. So we have between three weeks and a month to go.
Meanwhile, Back on the Winter Balcony
Once again some activity before 7: a Mourning Dove over my head low, into town; a Common Raven across from south to north, but no sound. I assume it’s JR, but hard to be sure. A single Song Sparrow flight call, and six Mallards out of the Gap, following the Bald Eagle Mountain ridgeline northeast.
Even before 7, the raven is already high up on Bald Eagle Mountain, exploring the air around the towers.
An American Robin flies through the parking lot in some mad rush from beyond 10th Street into the tangles across the river. Robins are quite cryptic now, and this is the only one I detect all day. In a few weeks, if last year is any indication, one will be singing piercingly from the eaves or somewhere as close from about 3:30 AM on. (Their first nest, a doomed attempt, was the third-lowest step on the fire escape.)
Carolina Wrens: the first in front near the VFW at 7:08, the next to the right across the river at 7:11. What seems like a House Finch goes over high at an early 7:09; what is definitely a House Finch emits a double call overhead at 7:20.
The Common Raven swoops up to occupy the top of an Interstate lamp, scattering the European Starlings already congregated there. No contest, no dispute.
By 7:25, House Sparrows are gathering on the tallest poplar, in with the starlings. The hierarchy of these two species isn’t clear to me: they are now hanging out a lot together in the same perches, and sometimes flying in the same flocks. I know that both are highly aggressive, but there’s not too much interaction yet. Finally, though, the House Sparrows are making their true numbers known: for months, they were practically invisible to me as they seemed to keep primarily in the thick bushes, and fly near street level. Today, a flock of around 30 is wheeling around for several minutes. Yesterday, I had thought this was velociraptor avoidance behavior, but today it seems too coordinated and purposeful.
Anyway, by 7:38 I’ve got other things to do before work, so I dip on the Downy Woodpecker. Fourteen species.
Mute Canadas
After yesterday eve’s appearances I figure I better start grabbing late afternoon sits on the days I am not able to walk to the pond. Before 5, I am rewarded by a single male Common Merganser heading in an upriver direction, past Sapsucker Ridge. Not long after, a Pileated Woodpecker flaps lazily over town, from somewhere over by Bald Eagle Mountain to, I presume, Cemetery Hill, a limestone ridge in the middle of Tyrone covered with some nice old woods. Unfortunately, I can’t see it from my east-facing perch.
It intrigues me that Pileateds do occasional, fearless flyovers of our urban area (sometimes dipping to attack a Cooper’s Hawk), while the Red-bellied Woodpecker, one of the commonest and least fearful species on the mountain, is never to be seen or heard. Of the over 100 species I’ve recorded from my balcony in the last year, it is certainly not one I would have predicted would be completely absent.
The after-five species are what I’m here for. No vultures or gulls today, just three silent groups of Canada Geese. The first V, of 25, goes right over my head into the Gap; two smaller groups, around 5:23, converge on the Gap from the north. I have a hard time keeping track of these locals, because their movements are highly unpredictable and they only rarely can be seen at dawn. Soon, they’ll be eclipsed by thousands of long-distance migrants.
Activity—Rock Pigeons, of course—tapers off completely by 5:30, and it begins to rain not long after.