A crisp 42 and dropping. Last evening, the north winds of a dry high blew all the haze away and we are back in the most glorious part of May. I suppose this put a temporary hold on the Swainson’s Thrushes streaming north by the thousands every night, as we ease toward the end of their migration; they, along with a trickle of Gray-cheeked Thrushes, have outlasted most of the warblers, sparrows, and Indigo Buntings that only a week ago were still clogging the night spectrum.
This dawn, other than a bit of a sluggish beginning, there isn’t much change in bird activity even as the temperature eventually drops into the upper 30s. Something that sounds like a Great Horned Owl but is most likely a Mourning Dove sounds at around 5 AM, among the American Robins and Eastern Phoebe exclaiming over the already clamorous traffic. Yellow Warbler, Barn Swallow, Northern Cardinal: one after the other, they start their routines, but the most staying power today belongs to a Northern Rough-winged Swallow, from a perch over by the creek, who gurgles on and on for so long, over half an hour without stopping, that I begin to think it has morphed into a starling.
The first overhead fliers are Mourning Doves in the semi-darkness, reminding me a bit of winter. By 5:28, twenty minutes before sunrise, the first Common Grackle posts up to the bare branches of the dead ash and begins to creak, and a few minutes later, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird arrives to the balcony for a sip. Finally, the roughies take to the air, accompanying the Barn Swallows that have been about for a few minutes already. In the distance, Chimney Swifts commute from town along the crest of Bald Eagle Mountain, toward the valley.
By 6 AM, still an hour until the sun hits the balcony, the bulk of the local species have appeared. The House Finch nest in the fern, now with five eggs, is visited by a skittish mother; the pair spends much of its time on the closest wires, exclaiming at me, but I’m pretty sure I’m not too much of a bother.
Starlings in the Straw
A Red-eyed Vireo starts up at 6:09 from over by the 10th Street bridge, the last of the regular songsters to arise. A minute or two later, a second is droning away above the confluence. Some movement in the parking lots around 6:13: two European Starlings have arrived, and the landowner, a robin, immediately flies in from nearby, on the lookout. They putter about in the grass, gathering up yellowish lengths of straw in their beaks, cramming in a half dozen stalks each, then alight toward town. The operation is quite deliberate, each piece selected for length and no doubt other desirable qualities.
Ten minutes later, three of them return and waste no time gathering more straw; they’re gone again in less than a minute. Meanwhile, Rock Pigeons are commuting in numbers over the mountain today, the first I’ve seen such a crowd leaving in quite some time. They’re always a dramatic sight against the deep blue dawn skies, and today, they’re unaccompanied by swifts, which have all left Tyrone for buggier locales.
At the half hour, two American Goldfinches chase each other frenetically, high over the creek, switching directions in dizzying fashion. Two starlings are back for straw at 6:33; at 6:49, one lands on a tree near the confluence and starts ripping off bark strands. A few minutes later, another flies off from the parking lot with a wad of straw in its beak and a long strand clutched in its talons. I would guess all this activity has to do with house-building for brood number two of the year; some nook or cranny of downtown is being replenished in preparation.
The sun is taking forever! Back in winter, it arrived much earlier relative to first light, because it was rising at about 133 degrees southeast, directly across the interstate between Brush and Bald Eagle mountains. Now, rising at 69 degrees northeast, it has to clear all of Bald Eagle. Finally, at 7:05 AM, when only finches and vireos are still singing, it tops the trees. No hazy sunspots today, just sunlight the way it’s supposed to look. The Yellow Warbler sings once as the rays strike the confluence.
Shorebirds!
If you’ve been following the nightly saga, you will remember that the NFCs started in February with Ring-billed Gulls, Killdeer, Tundra Swans, and Long-tailed Ducks. Gradually, passerines, mostly sparrows, entered the picture in March and April, accompanied by occasional Caspian Terns, a Barn Owl, Great Blue and then Green herons, more American Bitterns than I ever imagined were possible, Virginia Rails, a Sora, a Common Gallinule (first county record), and so forth.
Late April belonged to the Chipping Sparrows and Hermit Thrushes, then finally, in early May, the sparrows shifted to Field, White-throated, Swamp/Lincoln’s, White-crowned, Vesper, Savannah, and Grasshopper, as the first Rose-breasted Grosbeaks and Scarlet Tanagers appeared. Indigo Buntings and warblers of all descriptions filled the night skies in the middle of May, along with Black-billed and Yellow-billed cuckoos, a Least Bittern, the occasional Bobolink, various flycatchers, some local and some flying over, and a progression from Wood Thrush to Veery, Veery to Swainson’s Thrush, and Swainson’s to Gray-cheeked Thrush. The Swainson’s are a particular bother to tally, as they often call while the spring peepers are going, with similar sound images. Gray-cheekeds, with a few sounding suspiciously like Bicknell’s Thrushes (but we’re mostly too far west for those), are easy to pick out of the thrush swarms, but overall, it will be a relief when they’ve all passed, in ten days or less. In the Fall, they’ll return in much larger numbers, but often obscured by the katydid chorus.
The last migrant push is shorebirds. When I have a block of time, I plow through some nighttime hours—it often takes longer for me to scroll, clip, and ID than it did for the night to pass in real time. The dominant shorebirds are Spotted and Solitary sandpipers, but we’ve also had Greater and Lesser yellowlegs this spring, as well as Least and Semipalmated sandpipers. The most recent additions are a Dunlin from 1:10 AM on May 24, and at least two Whimbrels from a one-minute period around 11:16 PM on May 22nd. I’m quite happy about the Whimbrels, which constitute the first hotspot as well as Blair County record. It’s nice to be able to snag normally high-flying shorebirds migrating long-distance from the coast to Arctic breeding grounds. These Whimbrels may have been headed for a stopover on the northern shores of the Great Lakes before continuing to the western side of the Hudson Bay or beyond.
The shorebird migration will continue into June, and who knows what else will pop up? I won’t complain—the Plummer’s Hollow 200 is at 183, and with the ‘dirty dozen’ passerines nowhere to be found, we’ll need every NFC we can get.