The lone pine sit is the first I ever did, some five years ago. The poor thing attempts to survive in the field just off the trail above the amphitheater; deer have girdled it, leaving it brown above, but with some green sprouts below. I haven’t done this sit yet in 2023: it’s a good way to watch the morning flight to the east, and hear just the right balance of field and forest. But today, something’s off.
Clammy Haze
The Whip-Poor-Will is a latecomer and a transient in today’s chorus, down in the tar area by 5:14 AM, just for a few minutes. After awhile, it’s back to the deafening combo of Field Sparrow-Indigo Bunting-Common Yellowthroat-Great Crested Flycatcher-Gray Catbird and twenty more, reaching a peak around 5:30.
It’s cool for May, low 50s or even upper 40s, with wisps of fog in the field, but the light only comes slowly toward the theoretical sunrise, no sudden beams hitting the tops of Sapsucker Ridge, no flocks silhouetted against an eastern sky, which is a dull gray rather than pink or orange, shading to dirty blue overhead.
No Dawn Wave
I missed the rolling dawn, but that’s only good on crystal clear mornings when Canada’s not on fire. From the lone pine’s vantage point, the movement of certain species that rush about in brief morning flights starts to the east, beyond Laurel Ridge, out over Sinking Valley somewhere, in synch with the light of the coming sun, at this latitude moving west at somewhere around the speed of sound, covering a mile in just a few seconds. The dawn chorus itself, the sound component of the spinning globe, can be visualized as a wave rushing westward, comprised of many smaller waves, each the rise and fall of a species’ dawn songs across a range, with great silences over the oceans, all on a 24-hour repeat. This perpetual east-to-west dawn wave is a bit hard to wrap your mind around, unless you’re sitting at just the right vantage point. Today is not the day.
Time to roam. Behind me on Sapsucker Ridge, the local Black-billed Cuckoo calls, just as the nearest Yellow-billed Cuckoo clucks; it’s 5:51 AM.
Sunspots
I happen to have made it to the barn just as the sun climbs over Laurel Ridge with little fanfare. The haze at the horizon is so thick that I risk gazing at it with binoculars, and am rewarded with a spectacular view of its sunspots, pulsating, amoeba-like, as tongues of flame make the star’s surface appear to boil slowly. A nice build-up to next-year’s total eclipse, but without the fanfare and media frenzy.
My eye is caught by a commotion in the barn. The Kubota is parked back inside, and to the right of it hangs a hardhat, into which dives a diminutive form. I approach, and a Carolina Wren flies out, onto a tractor tire, then the floor, then out through a slat window. Evidently the hat has not been used this year, so what safer place could one wish for to raise a family? A bit later, on the outside, I see both male and female wren enter the barn from the window slats.
In the yard, the black walnuts and black locusts are popping with activity: Brown-headed Cowbirds silhouetted up top, Red-eyed Vireos and American Goldfinches ceaselessly chasing through the middle levels, and a Chipping Sparrow apparently feeding a fledgling.
The local Baltimore Oriole is making his rounds, singing while feeding, hopping from spot to spot up through the walnuts. His song is quite unlike those of the population along the tracks and river; indeed, no two orioles sound alike.
Out in the field, Eastern Bluebirds, who have been singing since first light, are chasing each other. I check their nest box, but I can’t tell if anything is happening there; perhaps a brood has already fledged.
A pair of Red-bellied Woodpeckers crosses the narrow neck of the field, and one alights atop an electric pole, probing for food.
Up by the garage, a Yellow Warbler is singing, and somewhere, the resident Red-winged Blackbird ‘easies.’ Both species are associated with wetlands, and it is a bit unusual to have them nesting here, which I believe at the least the former is doing. A chipping sound issues from the forsythia thicket, and out pops, of all things, a Yellow-rumped Warbler, late in the season to be hanging around. I think it’s with a small migrant flock: I hear a Nashville Warbler and a Bay-breasted Warbler as well, pretty much approaching the tail end (pun intended) of the spring migration.
By 7:30, most everything that is going to vocalize has done so, and an oddly warm south wind starts up. I suppose it’s just my imagination, but I notice that the Northern Cardinals have switched from ‘birdy-birdy-birdy’ to ‘gittup-gittup-gittup.’ Or maybe that’s a difference in dialects between here and the deep woods.
Before heading back to town, I grab more nights of NFCs. Two Eastern Phoebe fledglings bash against the windows as their distraught parents flit about on the outside. I’m not worried about disturbing them: if phoebes were bothered by us, they certainly wouldn’t be nesting where they do.