Float
It’s all about the wind. Wind everywhere, banging, creaking, sweeping the parking lot. Wind aloft, bending trees roaring on the ridgetop. 35, a steep climb down from yesterday’s 70, and more degrees to lose by the weekend. I don’t know if it’s February again, but it sure feels like March. Clear to the north and south, cloudy here in the middle of things.
At 635, the honking of Canada Geese and the first Song Sparrow. Seconds after, an American Robin trespasses over my balcony, a short-cut to the nearest sycamore south; it hesitates, then keeps going to its first morning perch. Over in that area too, a Carolina Wren teakettles.
I’m Never Ready for Vultures
Two Turkey Vultures are certainly up early, circling near the towers by 6:40. Most mornings, I don’t see them at all.
At 6:44, eleven Tundra Swans float overhead, calling ethereal notes.
Nine more Turkey Vulture appear, kettling. Soon, a House Finch, a Common Raven, five Common Mergansers, Canada Geese, and Rock Pigeons are all in the sky together with the vultures, whose numbers are growing. The last of last year’s leaves keep fooling me, and that elusive species, the white bagbird, floats heavenward using the updrafts along Bald Eagle Mountain.
At seven, there are now 35 Turkey Vultures and three Black Vultures overhead, and with eight Common Grackles, the list stands at 19 species already.
Enter the Bald Eagles. Earlier, an adult had coasted by; now, with the gale blowing even harder, a pair of juveniles scrambles around the air above Tyrone in spectacular fashion, touching wings. A bit later, on the half hour, a fourth, another adult, comes south.
Starling Spectacular
The downtown Cooper’s Hawk, which I rarely see around the streets anymore, is once again circling high over Bald Eagle Mountain. Instead of quieting, the wind gets even fiercer, tossing starlings, robins, and pigeons about like leaves. Death-defying; an image of dozens of dead starlings that misjudged a wheel and crashed into the ground, from an article I read recently, flashes into my mind. Yet the starlings are able to expertly navigate winds topping forty miles an hour, reaching the capacities of swallows or even swifts today.
For once, the ridgetop is louder than the interstate below. A raven is threading the trees up there, almost surfing; it breaks away and heads down to the fields in the Gap.
No singing down here, and nothing’s perching on the treetops. No Downy Woodpecker.
Erotic Inferno; or, All Enemies Turn Into My Teachers
Some local posts have me thinking I better get to the pond this afternoon in case the waterfowl fallout yields something interesting. The pair of Canadas is close and very suspicious: I’m willing to wager these are the two that will nest here, as happens every year.
An ell of 17 Mallards is also close, for once, perched on logs with heads tucked, and wonder of wonders, the self-same American Wigeon I haven’t seen in exactly one month is back.
The ducks, not the geese, all drift away as I approach, but nothing takes off.
Back at the Plummer’s Hollow crossing, I wait for a loooong, tatted and tagged beast to pass, the kind with extra engines in the middle, filled with tanker cars, some labeled Liquefied Petroleum Gas, others inscrutable. A whole pop philosophy dissertation flashes by as well, like the titles of this section. On the very last car, a black tanker, someone has scrawled polygons in white, 3-D, with various numbers: crash course in mathematics?
Meeting a Junkyard Jewel
Usually, Paola picks me up at Plummer’s Hollow, but today, I’m walking back to town. At around 5:25 I come face to face with the raven that roosts in the old tannery, now a famous house-recycling outfit. It starts honking when I’m still under the overpass, and flies up annoyedly from a forest of sinks and other debris, around the building where I saw it perched before roosting several nights ago. Instead of flying away, it hops around the ground right in front of an office, croaking; it’s blocking my only way back, so eventually it has to give ground, and off it goes toward town somewhere. It had let me get to about 10 feet away.
The Wind-Down
It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to see when the last birds come back. Today, it’s crystal clear, so I suspect they’ll be late. By 5:36 PM they’re just now arriving.
Most everything but Common Mergansers come back from the east and roost in the west; the farming valleys to the east have the food, but I guess the best sleeping places are the thick forests west of town.
Of all things, a Merlin courses back in, right over my head, at 5:51. It looks like it might live here.
Turkey Vultures are still coming, and the Icterids start streaming in in mixed flocks by 5:54. A raven plunges down into the trees up on Bald Eagle Mountain right at sunset, 5:58.
At 6 on the dot, church bells set the robin to calling. It’s a crisp 33 with a crescent moon; brilliant planets on the ecliptic are hidden from me, behind the building.
I go in and close the checklist, but glimpse a pair of Canadas: the day’s not done. Another robin calls at 6:09. That makes almost 12 hours of activity.