Enter the Woodcock
Today’s the day! I can barely contain my excitement: antenna season has begun. On summery Thursday, I strapped the nocmig (nocturnal flight call, NFC) antenna in its plastic bucket to the garage roof up on the mountain, and hooked everything up to a refurbished laptop. Appropriately, I’m running the free version of the Raven software that will allow me to clip and analyze what flies over at night. This will pretty much take up the rest of my free time this year, but it’s how I will pick up the species necessary to top 200.
First, though, an early sit on the powerline at a gray dawn threatening snow. 23 and so calm that I can easily hear a pair of Great-horned Owls far off to the south by 6:19 AM. A Mourning Dove calls five minutes later, and then that familiar chortling, an American Woodcock somewhere below me in the scrub, PH200 #67. This is a bona fide Spring Arrival, and within days, when others arrive, the species will colonize our fields, doing spectacular, ‘peenting’ display flights and occasionally crashing into the ground. We get numerous pairs, some of which end up nesting.
Later, when I look at the NFCs, I discover that the species arrived at least as early as two nights ago. Last night, once was evidently disturbed by Dave when he closed the garage door around ten, so they’re already down in the field. In March, they and Spring Peepers will clog my sound spectrum to a quite annoying extent.
Despite the uninspiring weather, it’s an eventful dawn after the woodcock dies down. Tundra Swans and Canada Geese can be heard, and the Song Sparrow wakes before 6:30, along with several Northern Cardinals, two Carolina Wrens, a Northern Mockingbird, and, last but not least, guineafowl. Oh yes, and plenty of roosters.
Gobblers
Wild Turkeys gobble from the thickest thickets below. I can only list two but there are at least a couple flocks, I would guess. We’ve already found their scratching up here on the mountain, and in a couple of months, the toms will be displaying prominently along the trails in the field, and hens will be looking for places to nest.
Today, despite the cold and gloom, it sounds more like a Spring morning, with nonstop calling and singing before seven. American Crows call incessantly, louder and louder, harassing something, as someone starts hammering and what I take to be a calf lets out the most unearthly bellow. Only the faintest orange sliver over Short Mountain indicates any type of sunrise.
The commuter starlings have an easy inbound flight today. By 6:52, nothing but crows, wrens, and guineas are still calling; other species activate and call briefly, but not even Tufted Titmice have the fortitude to keep going in this weather (even though it never does snow). Nevertheless, I wait until 7:25 to wrap, with 25 species. I’m not even sure what to call the clouds at this point.
Back down around the houses and barn is the typical hub of activity. Hairy, Downy, and Red-bellied woodpeckers are all drumming, what I take to be courtship in action. After months of near silence, the Red-bellieds are back to their loud selves. Dark-eyed Juncos are chasing each other and trilling non-stop. Mourning Doves are hungry enough that they are willing to ignore the marauding gray squirrels, bane of Mom’s feeders.
Cirrus Uncinus
Mares’ tails greet me for a later afternoon sit with the mercury at 40, in which I attempt to see the Merlin again but get a Cooper’s Hawk returning along the same flight path instead. The red maples are in full bloom; somehow, I had been thinking all winter that they were willows, but I can see now that the black willows are nowhere near flowering.
Today, the wind-down starts later than yesterday, though only three Turkey Vultures return. I am trying to figure out when, exactly, the starlings commute back over the mountain, but it takes them forever to leave. First, they stage in the highest sycamores and poplar. Then, they circle and pip, circle and pip. Finally, I catch a group heading off through the Gap, and another going south, upriver. Once again, a pair of Canada Geese is the last species to appear, and once again, they issue from the north, heading south. Last night, I caught them on the antennas as well.
With what I can glean from the antennas, we now have 12 solid hours of diurnal bird activity, and some nocturnal flight calls as well. I am profiling the nights in separate posts.