Goodbye to January
The last of a very long month seems, at first, altogether unextraordinary. Light snow, light breeze, continuing unseasonably warm at 30. Cloudy.
Early Rush
At 6:54 AM, I hear a Dark-eyed Junco flight call, delicate, barely perceptible.
Two Mallards hurry from north to south, and then the flight call of an American Tree Sparrow, heading north to its feeder.
A pair of massive shapes emerges from the Gap’s twilight above the tracks, beyond the interstate. As realization dawns, I scramble for the camera, but the Great Blue Herons are disappearing behind the sycamores, heading for a fishing hole up the Juniata, by the time I can get a shot off. Too dark yet, anyway. This is significant: I’ve not seen a pair since November 19th of last year.
A Mourning Dove flutters over above the roof, against the harsh beeps of a backing work vehicle.
Today, it’s snow needles instead of flakes, a flurry of them by 7:07.
Next into action is the Carolina Wren with its typical ‘tut’ calls. Another Mallard, a drake with neck out and head held low, wings north up Bald Eagle Creek, and at 7:10, what may be more than one Song Sparrow go over, emitting flight calls, the last of this early rush.
After a lull, a Common Raven croaks from somewhere, and the Black-capped Chickadee starts, now well before the school bus brakes it synchronized with last week. I get a bath from a cloud of snow needles blowing off the porch roof, and blue starts to spread across the sky.
Crescendo
At 7:20, the screech of school bus brakes over at the VFW collides with the roar of a southbound dump truck on Interstate 99, just as the 18-wheeler Ace Hardware truck (‘The Helpful Place’) rumbles up to the light on 10th and Pennsylvania at the start of its local supply run. All this against the background of a westbound train. Not to be drowned out, Tufted Titmice start their litany of contact calls.
Seven + one Rock Pigeon are up at 7:22; they become nine together as they finish their four or five flock circles before heading out to the Gap.
Starlings arrive, HOFI chimes but I don’t see him, and House Sparrows yell from the miniature tree by the drive-in bank. (I think it’s what’s called a ‘weeping cherry’-HOSPs seem to love it as a roost spot.) An American Crow caws. Fifteen species by the half-hour: quite unusual!
The dawn isn’t done. More groups of Rock Pigeons than usual are leaving early, and a raven croaks harshly around the interstate lights at my 12, but I never do see it. Seven House Finches do their confetti flight, tiny droplets above the bulk of a juvenile Bald Eagle flapping east over Sapsucker Ridge.
At 7:40, across the rivers somewhere, the Carolina Wren starts up its cricket call again as the flurry tapers, and it is answered by another trilling downward, back toward my 3 or 4. Starlings congregate excitedly at the top of the 1 PM sycamore, and I swear I hear an incoming one emit a wren-like trill.
In a 2023 first, three House Sparrows land in the parking lot flush up against our building. I can’t get a fix on what they’re after.
Teakettle!
Finally! A Carolina Wren is now in the brush along Bald Eagle Creek just north of the 10th Street bridge, and it lets loose a somewhat garbled ‘teakettle’ song.
One Downy Woodpecker, then two, are calling, as a Bald Eagle disappears southward along Sapsucker Ridge. Cross the Northern Cardinal off the no-show list: just before 8 it finally starts to tick. From the list of what I fully expected, only the Cooper’s Hawk is absent. For the second day in a row, no robins—I think they’ve finally left. Nineteen species, the highest I’ve had for a sit since the very first day of the year! Why the uptick? Hard to know.
I do know I’m glad for a last glimpse out into the Gap from the laundry room off the balcony, as I’m taking off my gear at 8:05. A Merlin glides into town, right over the apartment building.
During breaks, I poke my head out, but no robins are to be seen. The starlings have also calmed down and thinned out; none are around the fruit trees on 10th or Pennsylvania, today, so I think this particularly buffet has pretty much played out.
On my lunch break, a Cooper’s Hawk is perched in its usual tree.
Gadwall!
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays are the days I manage to get to the pond. Today, I set off on a tear at 4:30. Gray, grim, and nothing. No bird flies, no bird calls, all the way from town and through the Gap. Not a pigeon, not a cardinal, nada.
At the pond, the light is already fading by 5. I scan the Mallards, all paired up; I count around 28, including one who looks to have just a bit of American Black Duck in it. I’m trying to see if that American Wigeon is still around; it went missing in early mid-December but showed up again at the beginning of January, so there’s still hope.
And there it is! Maybe. Or not.
As luck would have it, a Gadwall drake has joined the flock! The wigeon is gone—I’m gonna say it moved on—so this is a pleasant replacement and a great way to end January: number 57 for the Plummer’s Hollow 200. We’ve never recorded a Gadwall before in the pond or river (or before mid-March). The few records are always of individuals or small flocks flying by day (seen) or night (recorded).
I creep closer, sans camera, but a looming train sends me back. Just then, two Great Blue Herons, I’m assuming the same from this morning, return from upriver, maybe 50 yards above the Little Juniata, and one emits a strangely high croak. Last I see of them they are stooping to feed or roost somewhere on the river above Ironville.
Mark, I enjoy reading your daily articals. I often see those GBH at the mouth of the run that enters upstream from the trestle at the red light hole in Tyrone Forge. Also, I have a pair of barred owls roosting and calling day and night 50 yards from my back door. They have done so annually in late winter for almost 40 years!