‘Fire weather,’ they call it. Every day gets warmer, winds from the west, humidity down at 34%, and the river is dropping. Birds are settling into a routine, soon to be disrupted by the onset of large-scale migration. Up on the mountain, the American Woodcock is silent in the evenings but the Whip-Poor-Will is calling for a few minutes just after eight. Almost nothing is moving north on these breezy nights, except for American Bitterns and the odd Chipping Sparrow.
Patches Of Red on the Mountain Slopes
In lieu of my Monday morning prowl, I slouch with a gin on the balcony at 6:30 PM to watch dawn in reverse, the return to roost. Red maples have the ridges aflame, and around the confluence, willows and others are leafing out fast.
The junk man clatters around the warehouse next door, loading up a pickup worthy of the Delta. His family and friends arrive and they kick up a racket, toting off broken stoves and random pieces of scrap metal. Turkey Vultures drift over them in a line, one after the other, as Common Grackles emit rusty creaks from the trees. A Carolina Wren makes a rare cameo on a low, shingled garage roof next to the confluence, eyeing either me or the clouds of gnats in the air.
At 7:05, the junk man and his entourage rattle off and relative calm returns. I realize I’ve not seen anything approaching a cloud all day.
Robin Point
Around 7:40, flocks of grackles are coming through the Gap and heading toward the south end of Tyrone and the flats around Grazierville, where I think they have a roost. They stream past in small flocks for another ten minutes, and then it seems that only American Robins are left. But a few more species have yet to calm down or reach home: A House Sparrow makes noise for a few more minutes, a Tree Swallow wanders by from south to north at 7:51, and a minute later, two last Turkey Vultures flap past. Against the dusk sky over Bald Eagle Creek, a large and chunky bat flutters: I’m thinking Big Brown, but it’s only a guess. Just before eight, a Great Blue Heron flaps downriver, into the Gap, and disappears.
By the top of the hour, it’s all robins. Their singing and calling goes on and on and I give it up at 8:07, as the faint smell of sewage from the treatment plant on the other side of the Gap announces an east wind.
Into the Gap
It’s now Tuesday morning. After dropping off Paola before six in Altoona, I head for the Gap to scope out my morning prowl tactics. It’s a week or two too early to be doing this regularly, but I need to get my bearings. The temperature is still bracing, at 35, and there always seems to be a breeze here between the mountains.
By 6:30, I can already detect differences between this area and my balcony less than 1/2 mile away to the west. A White-throated Sparrow ‘tseeps’ quietly from the thick privet above the tracks (where I saw the OCWA), while a steady stream of Common Grackles cluck overhead, going east. It’s at least 10 minutes before I would hear them from my balcony.
Carolina Wren, Song Sparrows, Northern Cardinals: the regular crowd calls and sings. Then at 6:46, just after sunrise, I hear the faint notes of a Blue-headed Vireo from far above me, up in the trees around the point of Sapsucker Ridge, just now in the sunlight. This is one species whose call doesn’t reach to my regular sit spot. Meanwhile, four Black-capped Chickadees, which had been singing since 6:30, cross the tracks from terra nullius—what I call a bottomland of abandoned homeless camps and thick scrub, soon to become warbler-rich—into our woods.
A Pileated Woodpecker calls from the same area as the vireo, then again, two minutes later. Another responds from nearby. All is then muffled by a giant train—engines at the midpoint, pulling 192 cars of all descriptions. The earth trembles, and a foul wind is kicked up. As it’s going by, one of the Pileateds flies across to Bald Eagle Mountain, then the other follows. Four Mourning Doves streak overhead.
Finally, the train passes on to the east, and we’re left with the pre-seven roar of traffic on Highway 453, flush against the Juniata Sandstone cliffs on the other side of the river. At the hour, two more Pileated Woodpeckers flap silently from the eastern slope of Bald Eagle Mountain over to Laurel Ridge on the Plummer’s Hollow side. Three Canada Geese go over, and then a trio of White-tailed Deer, looking scraggly, emerge from the junky tangles of terra nullius onto the railroad right-of-way between me and Tyrone. They hop elegantly over the tracks, tails flagging white, and are gone, up into the privets lining the base of Sapsucker Ridge.
Raven vs. Eagle!
Common Ravens fly steadily and silently out of the west and through the Gap in numbers today. From seven until about 7:15, I count 22, more than I’ve seen since last year.
I hear chittering and look up to see a raven diving at an adult Bald Eagle no more than a hundred yards from me, in the air above the tracks. The Bald Eagle, the one chittering, is getting the worse end of the deal as the raven, croaking in what I assume is anger, flies at it repeatedly. The eagle can only try to get away, and they tangle several times until dropping briefly out of sight over the river. The Bald Eagle flees, joining its partner, which has arrived suddenly, and they loop off into the Gap, briefly touching talons. The raven, which I’d like to think is the one from the junkyard (in a kid’s nature documentary, I suppose they’d now be calling it ‘Scrappy’), croaks a few more times and then resumes its dawn sojourn into the Gap, presumably to join the others. Like several of them, it is missing wing feathers.
Broad-winged Hawks Ravens Again
I’ve been following the daily updates from the Tussey Mountain Hawkwatch, some 20 miles to the northeast of here. Though their days have been slow, and most of their signature Golden Eagles have gone past, they’ve already seen the first Broad-winged Hawks of 2023, so I figure it’s about time the Brush/Bald Eagle Mountain corridor got on the boards. I sit out on the porch to work a bit after nine, in hopes of eventually snagging a hawk. Apparently they tend to fly extremely high on these clear days, which makes them even harder to spot from down here in the valley than from on top of a ridge.
As the temperature climbs from the 30s into the 60s and the sun beats down on my laptop, a breeze starts up and the sycamores erupt in clouds of seeds. The local crowd of vultures, a pair of Red-tailed Hawks, the odd Bald Eagle, and a nearly translucent Cooper’s Hawk are all that appear in the skies. Then, at 11:06, I spot five dots kettling in the east, high up and far beyond the Gap. After momentary excitement, they turn into ravens, I suppose the same ones from this morning.
I’m in no real hurry to get Broad-wings; heck, I haven’t even seen a migrant Osprey yet, and they’ve been back for awhile on nearby lakes. I’m just waiting for that (hopefully) inevitable late April migrant day when the raptors are pushed down low. Last year, such a day happened on April 24th, and it came with the hotspot’s second all-time Swallow-tailed Kite.