False Spring
January ends with rain, sending ice floes down the river to jam up duck traffic. On the first day of February, I gulp in new oxygen, heading up the Laurel Ridge knife-edge for a rare circuit of the hotspot. As always, the unstable Bald Eagle sandstones seem ready to collapse wholesale on the tracks below, except for the few staunch outcrops.
The loudest bird in these quiet times is the White-breasted Nuthatch. As breeding season draws close, males are singing incessantly to their mates, six- to ten-note series, hah-hah-hah… Not much else is about except for Common Ravens croaking and tumbling around and about the Gap.
Somewhere up on top, the mid-morning silence is nearly deafening—it’s too early in the year for Carolina Wrens to be singing, and we’re still over a month out from Killdeer migration. Even the American Crows are muted today. I walk parallel to a group of ten Wild Turkeys, distant. bug-like, stalking through a distant field off in the valley. They’re matching my pace.
At a certain oak deadening, I pish for an instant, and a silent Red-headed Woodpecker flies in to inspect me. Laurel Ridge is bursting with other woodpeckers, but it’s the first time I’ve seen this particular species so far from its usual haunt in the Far Field, a couple miles away.
A bit further on, a Ruffed Grouse explodes from the blueberry thicket nearly under my feet. As it glides off the valley side of the ridge, three more erupt from the mountain laurel ticket to my right and disappear down into the hollow side.
Later, in the spruce grove, I pause for a breather at the bench by my father’s grave. Mom comes up here a lot and feeds the small birds. I am immediately mobbed by eager Black-capped Chickadees and Tufted Titmice, but I have nothing to offer.
Before a planned visit to the houses, I call into the thicket where the Hermit Thrush spent a fair amount of January. I couldn’t coax it out during the coldest of the cold, but it’s in there today, clucking away.
As I meander down toward the house, House Finch song beckons me from a Sapsucker Ridge thicket, and am lured back across the dead goldenrod, violently crushed by months of storms. The finch is somewhere down in a mess of Dark-eyed Juncos and a noticeably dwindling number of White-throated Sparrow. Little surprise: one of the winter holdover Eastern Towhees has survived the cold and is hopping up out of the melted patches, reep-ing lustily. Not a Carolina Wren to be seen or heard, but the rest of the winter regulars are packed into the privets and grape tangles, with Northern Cardinals galore. Still, no FOYs today.
Vulture Vanguard
The next morning I am alerted to a clockwork Spring arrival by Dave’s Morning Porch post: a Turkey Vulture soaring down an early morning ridgetop. Groundhog Day is the expected date for this species to poke its head into northern Blair County, if only for a brief period. It spends the winter not far away, in the more hospitable farming valleys to the south and east, but, like the Black Vulture (still absent), seems to need a bit of warmth and thermal activity to make it as far as the hotspot. We had none of this in January, so we’ve been vulture-less until today. Not that it’s at all warm; we’ve got one more day to wait until a vaguely spring-like day is supposed to arrive, with the expectation of a few new species on the move.
A flash of something different out the dining room window a bit later in the morning alerts me to three Cedar Waxwings among a small group of American Robins and European Starlings dining on the last of the freeze-dried fruit clinging to the 10th Street trees. A few waxwings have over-wintered in the area, but this trio is the first I’ve seen of them.
February Thaw
As promised, the 3rd sees the temperature soar into the upper 40s and perhaps even 50 in the shade by the early afternoon. I’ve planned for this, and pull the lounge chair and table out on the balcony for the first afternoon sit of 2025. And, judging by the February prognostic, the last for a couple of weeks at least.
At 2:17 PM, as if on cue, a trio of Black Vultures appears over the towers. I’d be willing to bet they are from the population that winters in Nittany Valley not far away. A Red-tailed Hawk shows up and circles with them in the strengthening, first-of-the-year thermal. By the half hour, the three vultures have settled in to rest on the shorter of the two towers—a definite sign of spring when the metal heats up enough to perch on.
The bird of the afternoon is the House Finch, singing on and on and on from nearby sycamores. With the brilliant sunlight starting to fade around 4:30, I become aware of one of the town’s Common Ravens flying over with nesting material in its beak.
Among the flocks of House Finches, singing as they fly, a single Purple Finch calls, FOY for 2025. A Cooper’s Hawk swoops through town, scattering finches and starlings. With the sunset, two Mourning Doves rip east into the Gap, and the activity winds down to starlings gathering to catch the last rays and vocalize on the sycamore tops. When the sun is gone they fly away, the House Finches stop singing, and as the temperature dips, only the Rock Pigeons stay active, looping about above my head.
False Spring Ends with Dawn
Tuesday the 4th is a rare winter balcony dawn. Work these days is typically 4 AM to 11 AM, so I am lucky today to have a chance to see what might turn up in the heavy winds and still-warm temperatures. This could be it for a while: well before 7, it’s still in the 40s, but the week looks to turn colder, with multiple winter storms on the way.
At 6:56 AM I hear a Song Sparrow fly over, and at the hour, I hear it sing, the first time this year. From the brushy patch across the river, it carols over and over, another tentative sign of a far-off season.
The gusty winds increase as the dawn breaks. A cardinal ticks and then a robin zooms over my head, barely clearing the balconies and porches. At 7:40, three male Common Mergansers whirl by on their way upriver, the first since January 1st, possibly marking the beginning of its species’ migration season. Then one, two, three Bald Eagles circle and dive in the winds, one heading east, another staying north, and a third heading south along Laurel Ridge.
Just before 8, the star of the morning appears. A Ring-billed Gull appears suddenly out of the Gap. It drifts close over my head, fighting the wind, in no hurry. It disappears over the rooftop, looking left and right and down, as gulls are wont to do. I wouldn’t be surprised if it stopped for a bit at the reservoir above town.
Grouse and Merlin and Ice, Ice, Ice
On the 5th, Dave flushes five Ruffed Grouse along Laurel Ridge, at a different spot than I did on the weekend, but plausibly the same individuals. It’s the largest number of adult grouse seen in the hotspot in a single day since five were reported on a day in 2007.
The Merlin returns to town the next day, on the cusp of an ice storm. I catch a glimpse of it chasing starlings or House Sparrows through downtown. This is the first falcon of the winter—unlike last winter, no Peregrine has stopped by for any pigeon dinners, and the American Kestrels are keeping to the valleys to the east.
On the 8th, after an ice storm, I slip-slide down the tracks, more to stretch my legs than in hopes of anything new. The false spring is already a faint memory. But at least the Common Mergansers are on the move: I am able to get quite close to a male accompanying three spiky-headed females in the quiet stretch below the bridge, and for once, they don’t spook immediately. Back in town, a Great Blue Heron, I assume the one that was flying excitedly around the confluence last week, is stretched, recently dead, on the opposite bank of the river not far from the apartment. It’s right below a mess of electric wires, so it could have died from a crash or from the flu, or even at the hand of a rogue fisherman. It’s quite sad; I can’t remember ever seeing one of these magnificent birds dead like this before.
A pair of ravens is all about the town today. They are ripping branches off of trees and whooshing back and forth with them, croaking and perching on buildings. Every year it seems this species becomes more comfortable with Tyroners.
After the second ice storm of the week, a granular affair, I trudge up to see Mom and check what’s been happening at the feeders. The House Finch crowd has left, all but a pair; they’ve returned to town, I can confirm, and are already getting ready to start the breeding season. A few American Tree Sparrows are still about, but nothing out of the ordinary has shown up.
The 2025 species list stands at 57. I’m guessing the next species to arrive will be the Common Grackle, but from the looks of it, we’ve got weeks yet until things start getting active again.
