Around 5:43 AM on Sunday, I round the Guesthouse Curve and a Whip-Poor-Will flushes from the tar area, off to sing elsewhere. Dave texts me minutes later, as I’m dropping the first group of birders off at the barn: Carolina Wren fledglings are all over his porch.
Later in the day, after the Pennsylvania Society for Ornithology field-trippers have departed, I go up to the garage to pull off more NFC data. Not only is there a growing mound of excreta three inches from my laptop box, but also a line of it from there to the outside. The nest is stuffed with three alert and no doubt hungry Eastern Phoebe nestlings, the first brood ready to fledge, generation number 52+, I would guess.
I haven’t moved the laptop box or wires because I have the idea that the presence of a flycatcher family might be a deterrent to any curious/evil Sciurid looking to chew apart my antenna wire, as happened last year up at the barn, where I lost well over a month of critical data recording time. Whether that’s true or not, it’s nice to have an official NFC guardian, or five, as it were.
These Kids Today
And so it has begun: the world of late May fills up with bouncing, scuttling, awkward fledglings, a wonderful meal for Corvids, grackles, snakes, raptors, and all the rest. After the survivors make their ways, some of the parents will go on to brood number two in June, while other species will bring out their own first-round progeny.
Those species are still in the earlier stages, as far back as pair-bonding, courtship, and nest-building.
On the bird walk, everyone got to observe a largely oblivious female Black-throated Green Warbler intently ripping away at the fibers of a wild grape vine along the road to the Far Field. Over in the Spruce Grove, territorial male Blackburnian Warblers sang from the spruce tips, and zipped back and forth to the highest branches of deciduous trees to do the same. The females, presumably, are already on their nests. Not far away, a tiny, inquisitive pair of Golden-crowned Kinglets flitted about us deep down under the spruce branches; we are elated about this, as it is quite likely they are already breeding, something that has happen only a few times before.
Acadian Lekking
There are so many Acadian Flycatchers now that the Hollow is overflowing, and we find them well up into the chestnut oak-black gum woods on Laurel Ridge, and along Plummer’s Hollow Run’s shallow feeder watercourses, mostly dry in the renewed drought conditions. I don’t know if those marginal individuals will be successful, but in the deep hollow, where I found 19 on Saturday’s hike, some of the males have been collaborating in a tropical rainforest trick. Three or four, or perhaps more, are gathering together in the space of maybe 50 meters, singing and calling and flying about in the understory, almost manakin-like. I can’t think of another species that does this here. Eventually, females will presumably pick the fittest males, and they’ll clear out their territories, which they will aggressively defend the way those other linear territorial nesters of the Hollow do, the Louisiana Waterthrushes. In the Acadians’ cases, they also nest up in some of the moister side hollows, whereas the waterthrushes only nest along the stream, meaning we have at least twice and perhaps three times as many breeding pairs of the former as of the latter.
Saturday: The Early-Early Birds
Certain species in areas with more light, or which perch on treetops, are singing well before five AM now. Some, like Barn and Northern Rough-winged swallows here in town, are even flying about in the near-darkness not long after five on some days, able to make use of the streetlights’ glare, I would suppose. In Tyrone, the American Robins are still the only ones that get up before I do, and they regularly start singing before 4 AM, around the astronomical twilight begins, next to some unfortunates’ apartments. The rest don’t rouse until around 4:30.
As a bulky and mangy-looking feral cat stalks among the hedgerows and garbage bins of downtown, skulking under the cars in our lot, a Yellow Warbler, presumably safe from the feline, sounds once at 4:33 AM. A Song Sparrow goes once in the distance and then at 4:36, a Green Heron calls from the river, off somewhere for an early feed.
Yesterday, the Barn Swallows were making noise by 4:16; today, one flies by at 4:47, a full hour before sunrise, and a minute later I hear the first roughie. Another train goes by as I attempt to choke down a mushy, filamentous banana. I need to switch my breakfast up.
At 10 ‘til 5, the Yellow Warbler finally sings again, and then the rest of the chorus gets going: Northern Cardinal, Eastern Phoebe, Gray Catbird. Either they’re all extremely loud, or it’s just that the traffic is at a minimum. At three minutes before five, the Yellow Warbler launches into its third song variation of the dawn.
Up on Bird Mountain
A bit later on Saturday, I head to the mountain to see what we need to be prepared for on Sunday. In addition to hotspot-record numbers of Acadian Flycatchers, I hear eight Ruby-throated Hummingbirds of which I only glimpse two, also an all-time high for the Plummer’s Hollow; ditto with nine Louisiana Waterthrushes.
Both Black-billed and Yellow-billed cuckoos seems quite common this year, as also indicated by the numbers I am finding at night via NFCs. The Great Crested Flycatchers have dropped a bit in numbers as some have no doubt moved on, but the woods are still bursting with Scarlet Tanagers and Red-eyed Vireos. The REVIs are one of the few highly visible forest species, chasing each other about as they pair up and defend territories. Blackburnian Warblers seem to have filled all their niches in the spruce groves and down in the Hollow, while the transient Tennessee Warblers have dropped considerably in numbers, though a few are still around, detectable by the constant staccato songs. Other transients are scarce, however, with only Blackpoll Warblers in fair numbers (eight this morning).
In all this tropical glory, some of the common and more drab species are often forgotten. Here are two, both already getting ready to usher their young out of their nests, or close to it, I would guess:
In a month, the field will be bursting with both species in plumages of all descriptions, as well as many—technically, ‘zillions of’—Indigo Buntings, with tons of Common Yellowthroats to boot.
180 out of 200
The Plummer’s Hollow 200 added its 180th species with Yellow-bellied Flycatcher on May 17th. The Dirty Half Dozen are now:
Yellow-breasted Chat
Golden-winged Warbler
Blue-winged Warbler
Prairie Warbler
Alder Flycatcher
Olive-sided Flycatcher
For the latter two there is still time, and also they may show up on the NFCs; I have had most flycatchers at night at least once in the past. As for the warblers, I’ll keep looking until the end of the month, but at least the Prairie and particularly the Blue-winged should show up in the Fall. The Chat may as well. The Golden-winged, well, it breeds and leaves early, so unless it shows up on a diurnal recording, we may have to dip on it.
One major caveat: I am way back at the 13th in my scrolling through the NFCs. At present, I am less than halfway through the night of the 13th-14th (around Global Big Day), when between 100 to 200 birds went over every hour. If the nights continue that active, I won’t get through May until the middle of June. So I would guess, given what turned up in May last year, that the true species numbers are a bit higher than 180.
Crossing 9 PM, and Beyond
On Sunday evening here at my balcony, the birds start to settle down and perch on the wires nearby around 7 PM: swallows, Mourning Doves, House Finches, House Sparrows. Some scrutinize me, or each other.
A male Common Grackle perches a bit farther away, showing off his iridescence and puffing out his feathers. I would guess his progeny are getting ready to fledge by now.
Our local Red-tailed Hawks are both circling and hovering over town after seven, and a Cooper’s Hawk is about as well, not to mention a large kettle of Turkey Vultures. It’s still a bit chilly, though, and the avifauna calm down rapidly over the next couple of hours; I just want to see if any robins cross the 9 PM threshold. I close the checklist well prior to this to do some office work, and from inside, I can hear the last chittering of Chimney Swifts by 8:55. At 9 PM on the dot, I step back out onto the balcony to catch the last few phrases of the last robin.
Up on the mountain, something similar is happening, not with robins but with Eastern Towhees, the last to give up. Whip-Poor-Wills go on throughout the evening, while Ovenbirds sing their mimicked night songs even more often than Field Sparrows do, all the way until after 4 AM. Barred Owls are also boisterous, and American Woodcocks are peenting again, though only a few times a night. Scarlet Tanagers sing and call from time to time, as do Chipping Sparrows, Common Yellowthroats, Eastern Wood-Pewees, Great Crested Flycatchers, Acadian Flycatchers, Gray Catbirds, Brown Thrashers, Blue Jays, American Crows, Song Sparrows, American Goldfinches, and both Yellow-billed Cuckoos and Black-billed Cuckoos. Some of these may also be nocturnal migrants, and it is often difficult tor impossible to tell if they are flying while they are singing or calling, or perched, or indeed whether the vocalizations are from migrants passing overhead rather than the local population. All this in addition to the standard NFCs, which on good nights begin to clog the spectrum not long after the towhees shut up, and go all the way until the dawn chorus starts up, which up in the field is happening by about 4:40 AM, approximately the same as in town. In a good hour, over 20 identifiable species may go over.