We were promised an end to the rain, but here in Tyrone, at 5 AM, the cost of that is a pea-soup 36. Luckily, my job’s start time is now 9 AM, so that affords sufficient time for a warbler circuit.
5:45 AM. The tracks and deep hollow echo with Wood Thrushes, Ovenbirds, Louisiana Waterthrushes, and a Winter Wren. Parking is at a narrow pull-off above the long stretch, where it’s a brisk climb to intersect Ten Springs Trail, then up Dogwood Knoll to Greenbriar Trail. The idea is to take Greenbriar to Bird Count, getting out of the woods and into First Field by 7 AM, then looping around the field and grounds to retrace my steps.
Valley fog hasn’t made it far into the Hollow, so it’s a sunny dawn ahead, and the trees are steaming. By 6 AM, 21 species are already on the list, with the highlight a Rose-breasted Grosbeak singing sweetly from the treetops overhead, PH200 #148. A little further on, a Purple Finch is also singing somewhere up in the brilliant sunlight of Sapsucker Ridge, ushering in a veritable deluge of song and activity. Nothing is moving in big mixed flocks or fallout numbers, so the high species numbers today seem more a response to the oppressive week of bad weather than anything else. Whatever it is, I’ll take it!
If you’ve followed the morning species curves this year, you can see why May is a month apart:
42 species by 6:30 and 50 species by 6:52. I have usually been able to detect 50 before seven on a route from First to Far Field and back, but I have never done it this way before. By 7 AM, 55 species; 60 by 7:37; 68 species total, by the time I wrap up the first instalment of May Madness at 8:40 AM, back on the balcony.
Just the grosbeak and a lone female Indigo Bunting (PH200 #149) in First Field are FOYs, new for the year. Twenty-one more tropical species are yet to arrive—a few passage migrants and the rest to breed—and a dozen beyond that are the BOLOs I’ll be spending most of my time chasing between now and the end of the month.
Warblers are still filling in the empty spaces. Several Common Yellowthroats were ‘wichity-wichity’-ing in the field; they have been passing over for several weeks, and claiming other territories in the valleys, but not up here, until now. Ceruleans and Worm-eatings and all the other breeders are in their usual numbers; Nashville Warblers are at several locations; Blackburnians sing in the deepest parts of the Hollow.
The sun is heating the field quickly, but there’s not much time to linger this morning. As I head back down in reverse, the vireos are waking up: Red-eyeds are gradually building in numbers, and will soon overwhelm the Blue-headeds (and everything else). The fog is now in the Hollow, thick and clammy down at the gate, as if the last two hours were a mirage.
Back on the balcony, the mist is filled with swallows, and a Baltimore Oriole duet.