Tomorrow, the sun will rise three seconds later and then it’s all downhill from there. The evenings will still be getting longer for another ten days, but the mornings will get later all the way until the beginning of January.
The inimitable American Robin starts to sing sometime around the beginning of astronomical twilight at 3:35 AM. Today, it’s clear and in the upper 40s, still unseasonably cold for June. At 4:49, when I stumble out, Jupiter is farther from the towers than it was yesterday, and Saturn is still visible over Sapsucker Ridge, but the Moon is nowhere to be seen. A Gray Catbird is already mimicking hesitantly from some nearby thicket when at two minutes until five, a sliver of the Moon rises in Taurus, to the north of Jupiter this time. An Eastern Phoebe can now also be heard through the ever louder robins. One has again posted up above the perch roof, making it quite difficult to hear anything farther away.
Our Yellow Warbler has definitively gone missing, and the swallows don’t get up early anymore. I don’t know the warbler’s story, but the swallows almost certainly have hungry mouths in their nests now; that earlier activity would have been courtship.
Changing Patterns
While the overall local species composition changes very little in June, the daily activities of the around 40 I can see or hear from the balcony shifts on a nearly basis now. For example, while the Yellow Warbler has gone mute and possibly left, the Warbling Vireo—still never showing itself—is singing longer and louder than it has since it has arrived. Cedar Waxwings and American Goldfinches seem to be mostly paired up now; both species are extremely noisy, but the waxwings activate before 5:30, while the goldfinches don’t appear until a half hour after that.
Once again, a Great Blue Heron soars low overhead, ejected from the river downstream at 5:29. Four minutes later, a Belted Kingfisher flies silently up from the river and then over the rooftops of town.
By right after sunrise, a fair number of species are already up in the air: European Starlings, Common Grackles, robins, Chimney Swifts; House Sparrows are “singing” loudly from the hedges. Wispy clouds move in as a Mallard flock that gets larger every day, now at nine, circles over Bald Eagle Creek beyond the Burger King.
The corvids are also vocalizing later. A Common Raven doesn’t honk until 5:57, while in the depths of winter it was usually the very earliest riser.
Finally, one minute apart and just before the hour, Northern Rough-winged and Barn swallows gurgle and chatter nearby, while a few weeks ago they were chasing about the parking lots well before 5 AM. Today, a lone Barn Swallow circles overhead at 6 AM, calling mournfully for almost a minute before settling into a more familiar and seemingly conversational chatter. Twenty-six species.
Fern and Fernando arrive to a nearby wire at 6:02, perching a couple feet apart and swiping their bills repeatedly, in unison, on the thick metal strands. They emit their querulous calls and then Fernando begins to sing. The Downy Woodpecker couple flits about the nearby trees, trilling loudly.
The House Finch parents don’t wait long. Fern must already have gathered breakfast somewhere. At 6:04, calling loudly, she dives into the hanging fern, and a ruckus begins. After going in briefly himself, Fernando posts to the nearest wire and sings, the same liquid phrase, over and over. Perhaps because the nestlings are getting larger, the feed takes longer, and isn’t over until 6:10. The tiny and the huge: the nestlings quiet down again, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird female visits the porch feeder next to the ferns, and an adult Bald Eagle soars overhead.
An unusual sight at a quarter past the hour: a pair of White-breasted Nuthatches, old friends indeed, are back. One flies by from the river to the creek and disappears; the other follows and is briefly visible, hatching up a branch in the large catalpa just the other side of 10th Street.
The surprises continue. At 6:47, I hear a Killdeer. This species can regularly be heard just to the south of here in Grazierville, where I presume it nests, but I haven’t heard it up from the balcony in weeks. And then Turkey Vultures: three huge shapes from out of the Gap, early for June, evoking memories of late winter. A Brown-headed Cowbird flies over—another species that has only made rare appearances here in June. A Tufted Titmouse sings and as always is nearly drowned out by the regulars; no Black-capped Chickadee, however.
And then an odd, almost gull-like call which I can’t place, over and over—perhaps it’s a Blue Jay—coming from somewhere up the river. Finally, it hits me, an unmistakable and far-carrying cry I used to hear so much in the Yazoo bottomlands of the Mississippi Delta: Red-shouldered Hawk! Around here it’s a somewhat uncommon breeding species, and we’ve never recorded it in the hotspot before during the summer. This is because it prefers somewhat more isolated areas of bottomland forest along rivers, I guess; I would suspect it isn’t fond of the noisy and constricted corridor in the Gap. Perhaps this individual will show itself one of these days; it makes me happy to think about all the unbirded, privately-owned patches of near old-growth sycamore-willow-maple swamps along the Little Juniata that stretch for miles up the valley toward Altoona. Who knows what other riparian species might nest in there alongside the Yellow Warblers, Orchard Orioles, and a million American Redstarts?
The sun clears the ridge at 7:02, as a House Finch with a sprig of nesting material in his beak lands next to a female on the wires in front. If it’s Fernando, this is the beginning of a ritual leading to a third brood. After a few seconds, they’re off (I see the same behavior later in the day).
Congress in Grackleville
In the evening, I’m a bit distracted, listening to a favorite politician on a favorite podcast. Swallows and swifts are diving over the confluence; swifts are still in low numbers, indicating that the nestlings haven’t fledged yet. Once again tonight, a Cliff Swallow pair is about, and I wonder, again, whether they are from a colony and if so, how far away is it? I don’t see them enough, or at dawn, to make me think it’s close by, but like all swallows, they do range quite widely during their diurnal feeding sojourns.
I was tuning out the grackles but I can’t help noticing that more and more are congregating in the nearest sycamore as well as the rest of the greenery between it and the confluence. Pairs and small flocks are arriving from all directions. No predator is about, but they’re louder than I’ve heard them since the winter. Small groups of three to eight fly out briefly and then settle back into the branches. At 7:34, with a single, indescribable, and synchronized noise, the flock, now at least 50 individuals, including stubby-tailed juveniles, lifts off and over my head, going north.