Dawn of the Mergansers
Low-hanging clouds and squishy, 37. The eastern sky is a shade of peach but the rest continues gray. No ravens.
A Northern Cardinal or two start/s ticking insistently by nine past the hour and continue/s for five minutes until the complaining noises of a Cooper’s Hawk issue from the same general area of willows and brush around the confluence. In the gloom, starlings are heard but not seen.
At 7:18, the hawk rockets from its perch, straight up Bald Eagle Creek, alighting in the far side of a tree at my 10, facing north. Now it is quiet, watching intently; there it stays, unmoving, ten minutes or more.
The cardinal/s start/s back up, invisible to me, shifting positions. A Carolina Wren, also invisible, begins to ‘tut,’ what sounds from my distance, through all the squishy tire noise and engines, like a cricket. Odd that this one doesn’t sing the familiar ‘teakettle’ song or do the trill I’ve heard them emit at dusk.
First the Black-capped Chickadees, then the Tufted Titmice. This titmouse group, like yesterday, is loud and highly visible, singing and calling. The TCN trio is complete with the nasal yanking of a White-breasted Nuthatch.
At 7:33, HOFI is two minutes late; his flight path is different as well. I wonder if I’ll lose track of him soon. Ten minutes later, around a dozen House Finches are up in the air and flying in a scattered fashion, like confetti. They wheel this way and that, not vocalizing much that I can hear, but more active than I’ve seen them all winter. At a distance, they’re difficult to tell from the small flocks of House Sparrows, but the latter fly in a more purposeful manner. Both species are in the general vicinity of where Bald Eagle Creek passes under 453. Perhaps this has something to do with the hawk.
Sawbills
Common Mergansers are not an everyday sight along this stretch of river. At 7:35, two males go over some 100 yards above me. I’ve seen enough this winter to suspect that they are wintering not too far downriver, but where they go when they come out of the Gap I haven’t a clue.
By 7:38, the Cooper’s Hawk is gone, but a couple minutes later, I catch a glimpse of it swooping silently back up into its original roost tree.
The Downy Woodpecker predictably starts at 7:45. Then a Pileated Woodpecker flaps slowly from the south side of town, or from farther away, just over the Sapsucker Ridge line and into the Gap. Though I can’t imagine many Tyroners have looked up and seen this glorious species, it not uncommonly crosses through our airspace.
My first work meeting is going to have to trump the end of this lingering dawn; after 7:50, interesting things are still happening. The last few days, a House Finch has taken to caroling from a sycamore at my 3 somewhere, and it also sounds like the Blue Jay is finally back.
Nope, just starlings gathering.
At 7:53, a temporary missed heartbeat as a boldly-marked black-and-white duck flies confusedly into town from the Gap, first toward Bald Eagle Creek, then toward me, then back toward the river, dropping out of sight. Not a Common Goldeneye, as I had thought initially, but certainly rather odd behavior for a male Common Merganser, which I have otherwise only seen flying high and straight.
The next minute, three more mergs overhead across town, for a total of six this morning.
It has only been in recent years that I have watched this stretch of river closely, but I have the distinct impression that year-round “sawbill” populations locally are on the rise. I’ve seen females with young below Plummer’s Hollow bridge so they definitely nest locally as well. Our Juniata trout populations are legendary, so it makes sense they would want to stick around instead of heading north to breed. (It’s also possible that the summer and winter birds are from different populations; suffice to say, though, that unlike at any time in the past, we now have records of the species from every season.)