Snow White on a Friday Afternoon
At long last, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. At 2:48 PM, three Red-tailed Hawks from up by the Bald Eagle Mountain towers swoop down to town out of a clear blue sky and rush directly over my head, the trio staying close together, brilliant light reds and dirty whites in the blinding sun as if they all just got new plumage. I would be very surprised if this weren’t mom, dad, and a young ‘un; this is the first time I’ve seen three together like this in 2023, and no others have been in the area.
Earlier, two Common Raven trios appeared suddenly from the north, diving, touching wings, and tumbling over the ridgetops. There are too many ravens around and too much odd behavior to know whether these might be new families as well; like the hawks, though, they have certainly had the requisite time to raise up young.
A Cooper’s Hawk is also around; Dave tells me that one is indeed nesting up in the woods, and is frequently harassed by American Crows. I have to wonder whether the ones I see in town and the ones up on the mountain are the self-same birds.
Turkey Vultures come and go throughout the afternoon, though I don’t see them at dawn counts these days. We think a couple may be nesting up in a hollow tree above the field, and others are scattered about the nooks and crannies of the area.
Another raptor that has gone missing from the dawn is the Bald Eagle. This afternoon, an adult cruises over, into the Gap.
I’ll have more to say in coming days about the family adventures of the local avifauna as I can catch glimpses of behavior. One thing I do notice is that they’re a lot more jumpy now. Case in point: birds usually ignore sirens here. But not today. A particularly loud wailing from downtown cues a male Common Grackle to flush from Grackleville (the confluence these days) and perch on a power pole, acting quite alarmed, then fly over to the dead ash.
At 3:17, the first all-white Rock Pigeon I’ve seen from my balcony drifts by. This is one that I think I’ll be able to keep track of.
The Last Blackpoll
The goal on Saturday morning is a final sweep of prime habitat to set the baseline for breeding species and catch any final diurnal migrants coming through. After this, migrants will trickle by into June and some will be caught on the nocturnal microphone, but the daytime species composition will remain exceedingly similar from day to day and week to week until July. I’m buried in work these days, so I will be reverting to weekday and Sunday balcony sits (alternating dawns, mornings, afternoons, and evenings) and Saturday dawn sits in the woods at a different location every week.
This Saturday, it’s that Yellow-bellied catcher Flycatcher search spot on Greenbriar in the expanse of deep woods I’ve been visiting off and on since January. I park the car at 4:46 AM, with the temperature at 38, and for once, I’m ahead of everything. I quickly grab my gear and slog upward through wild geraniums and jewelweed to get to Dogwood Knoll, just as the first Northern Cardinal goes off, accompanied by a distant Whip-Poor-Will. Like in town, by 5 AM I have detected about eight species, but out here this includes multiple Acadian Flycatchers. The chorus grows in intensity and complexity for the next half hour before beginning to ebb.
As I walk to my sit spot, I flush a pair of extremely agitated Black-and-white Warblers in the dark; they may already have nestlings in the same spot where they take up residence every year. It’s amazing how faithful birds are to the same nest locations year after year. After eight years of intensive late spring and summer birding here, building on decades of prior data, I can accurately predict where most of the territories will be of species such as this one. This knowledge also allows me to judge whether species decrease or increase in numbers from year to year, once the northbound migrants have cleared out.
One species that is definitely up is the Great Crested Flycatcher. In past years, I would struggle to detect two or three over the course of a morning, but today, after only a few hours, I tally nine, which are likely representative of nine breeding pairs, or close to it.
Already by 5:18, I hear the first Yellow-billed Cuckoo (numbers steady this year) and a Cooper’s Hawk. I think I hear a Red-breasted Nuthatch, and so does Merlin. We’ve gotten them near here in July, but those could have been post-breeding individuals.
At 5:26, a second cuckoo, also Yellow-billed, sings at a different, higher pitch. By 5:30, 24 species are already on the books.
I grow restless and begin to roam along the trail, about 200 linear yards in both directions. American Redstarts are in their typically dizzying numbers, but Cerulean Warblers are the real story. We seem to have more every year, and 2023 has hit a new high. At one location, four males are singing from different high perches. Years ago, when we first started seeing them, Mom tells me, they were thought to be dwellers along rivers and other lower elevations; they’ve certainly adapted well to our ridgetops.
Another species that is up in numbers this year is the Yellow-throated Vireo. It is in all its normal territories—around eight—but has spread into several new areas. I think we’ve run out of room for Red-eyed Vireos, but apparently REVIs, YTVIs, and Blue-headed Vireos are able to all co-exist, and thus our woods may have reached vireo capacity now.
What Does Merlin Think?
So for this whole sit-and-pace in the deep woods, during which I tally 43 species up to 7:15 AM, I have left Merlin running to see what it hits on. I go back to the Red-breasted Nuthatch location but can only find a White-breasted Nuthatch so I reluctantly give that one up. Overall, Merlin thinks it hears 29 species to my 43 (and none of mine are solely visuals). But Merlin is far from infallible. It thinks it hears a Philadelphia Vireo, because apparently it has not been disciplined enough. I let it revel in its misinformation, but then a more serious faux-pas occurs: a White-eyed Vireo. This is utterly incorrect, and I won’t bore you with the details of how I know; trust the fact-checker.
Merlin also hears a Carolina Wren where none is found, a non-existent Red-winged Blackbird flying over, and a phantom Warbling Vireo (Merlin just loves making up vireos, for some reason). But here’s the real crime: at the open-ish area where Greenbriar and Bird Count trails come together, it tells me, in all seriousness, that it hears a Golden-winged Warbler.
Stop. Just stop. This is beyond misinformation and has now reached the level of disinformation. I am being gaslighted by an A.I. spewing fake news. How easy the Plummer’s Hollow 200 could be if I let the tech do the thinking!
This is a fun game, though it can be cruel at times. I even do a little GWWA playback, just in case… In all seriousness, though, I think it is quite important to clarify what species Merlin is getting wrong; it also highlights the importance of knowing one’s local geography and the habitat requirements of each species. As for the vireos, well, they are a group already increasing in numbers for generally unknown reasons, amidst all the songbird decline. They hardly need a fake boost.
In terms of today’s list, Merlin ends up detecting just 23 of 43 species correctly, barely over 50%. But one it does get immediately, as do I, is a Broad-winged Hawk, emitting its shrieky whistle from the treetops. I suppose it is nesting nearby, as it usually does.
THE END
Maybe this year will finally be their year. Off and on for a very long time, a pair of Golden-crowned Kinglets have stayed to nest in the spruce grove. And every time, barely days or even hours after the eggs hatch, their nestlings are gobbled up by squirrels. I won’t keep close tabs on this year’s pair, so as not to unduly stress them. They will need all the energy they can get.
Finally, as I’m getting ready to go back to town, I hear the unmistakable and almost impossibly high staccato of a Blackpoll Warbler near the deer exclosure. This boreal woods nester is traditionally the last warbler to come through, so in my mind, May Madness is at an end, and spring along with it.
Back to the Balcony
Now that I’ve gotten warbler mania out of my system (for a couple months), it’s time for a Sunday survey from the comfort of my own home. Maybe the bird list is going to be monotonously the same every time, but what the birds are up to will not be.
The alarm sounds at 4 AM, its usual time, and as usual, the town is echoing with American Robins. I stumble out, coffee in hand, into the 44-degree chill, still in pajamas. No rain again today, as the drought goes on; the deep blues that followed the dry high have now given away to some wispy clouds, enough for a majestic sunrise, the first nice one I’ve seen in weeks.
All the way at 4:33, the Barn Swallow decides to make an appearance, and soon after, a Northern Cardinal and then the Northern Rough-winged Swallow. Barns fly about in the darkness, calling—do they hunt insects this early?—while roughies mostly sit, particularly on the gravel.
They chase each other and call continuously for close to an hour. I must say that I am surprised swallows are the earliest risers save robins; I always though they were among the latest to get up.
At 4:46, the Yellow Warbler sings loudly, ‘sweet sweet sweet I’m so sweet!’ from directly in front of me, in the bushes by the creek. That’s odd, because it usually sings from the confluence some 100 feet away. It carols every couple of minutes from this new perch.
The early-early crowd, which these days I define as before 5, no longer includes catbirds or Song Sparrows. I guess this has something to do with what stage they are at in their breeding cycle. Meanwhile, the Eastern Phoebe, which for weeks was a late riser, is calling again before five, part of its responsibility that now presumably includes taking care of brood one while brood two is on its way.
I have this idea the fern finch female spends the night away from the nest, but when I tap the pot, she flushes. I guess she is just accustomed to the door opening now, and didn’t spook when I went out.
At last, at 5 AM, the nearest Gray Catbird meows. I’m not happy with catbirds these days: one ruined over an hour of prime NFC recording time the other night because it felt that need to mimic that comes over catbirds at 3:20 AM.
A couple minutes later, the Yellow Warbler is singing from its customary perch at the confluence, and has switched the pitch and rhythm of its song. Over and over he goes, a new one every six to eight seconds.
The nearest Northern Cardinal male flies up to its favorite dead ash snag and ‘chew-chew'-chews’ into the twilight, facing north.
At 5:22, somehow through the wall of robin-roughie-yewa noise, I catch a few bars of Wood Thrush from downriver. My Sunday trick doesn’t work well now, because even though there is little traffic noise, this is more than compensated for by the decibels of the dawn chorus. Later, I am able to snag an Eastern Towhee and even an Eastern Wood-Pewee in other breaks, but no Indigo Woodpecker, Pileated Woodpecker, Scarlet Tanager, or Rose-breasted Grosbeak.
Finally, at 5:30 the roughies start to ease up and set off to feed. One alights or a nearby wire:
And a few minutes later. I see it zig-zagging through the air above me in a finale, but thereafter, the pair is feeding leisurely on the wing, with none of the frenetic and almost choreographed flight patterns they took earlier.
At 5:37, the second Mallard pair of the morning, males again, buzzes the apartment. They get very difficult to see in the summer. Later, some raggedy Canada Geese go over as well, as Chimney Swift silhouettes draw trails against the brightening northern sky. Behind me, I glimpse a swift disappearing down the yellowish-tan brick chimney next door, which explains why a group of three has been hanging out in that general vicinity (if you can call what they do “hanging out.”)
Then the Warbling Vireo starts—and it sounds like from exactly the same spot at the creek where the Yellow Warbler began. A few minutes later it, too, has resituated to the confluence.
Darwin Nominees
A-HA! That robin hopping awkwardly in the lower branches along the river has spots on its breast! Amazing how quickly it must have grown since leaving the nest, to the point that it isn’t even being attended by its parents. Not so the grackle babies, brown blobs with stubby tails hopping about the confluence trees. Grackleville is crawling with its namesake today, agitated as always, as gray squirrels run up and down the trees. As if that weren’t bad enough, I watch a ‘grackling’ get beaten up by one of its own: a big male come in and pecks at it, trying to knock it off a branch. The male flies away and the grackling goes on trying to figure out how to survive in this cruel world.
(Excuse the violent descriptions: I should know better. I lost a friend at Bakhmut yesterday, so it’s a small consolation that at least birds don’t organize themselves into massive groups and go to war over territory, as we do.)
All the species that are going to appear have appeared by 6:04 AM, 33 in all, with two Americans, crow & goldfinch, the last.
I wait until the sun clears the ridge, as is customary. At one point, I catch a starling in the act:
And then something unusual occurs. The Yellow Warbler has been singing pretty much non-stop for almost two hour, but then, out of the corner of my eye, I spot movement, and hear a completely different version of the YEWA song. Some loud chipping, and a warbler flies off out of sight to the right, while the other continues to sing. I wonder if what I glimpsed was an interloper? Extra-pair mating, or at least attempts, are known for this species, so it wouldn’t surprise me. The second seemed out of place; I watch the local pair of Yellows go back and forth across its territory quite regularly, but this appeared to be an outsider.
At 6:54, as the ridge becomes illuminated, the temperature reads 41 degrees, and my feet are freezing. I spot a red minivan backing along the narrow interstate berm; it comes to a halt, then pulls forward and stops. The driver, a paunchy fellow, gets out, and saunters toward the concrete barrier; he bends down and grabs something—what, I’ll never know—remounts, and drives off in the direction of Altoona, oblivious of the 57 Pennsylvania traffic laws he just broke.
Right as the sun clears the ridgetop, and the minivan driver is tempting fate, a Canada Goose flaps in from the east, but thinking better of it, abruptly switches direction and heading back to Sinking Valley.
How Not to Make a Desolation
RE - Ceruleans. I did a lot of atlas blocks (04-08) in Sproul State Forest. I was surprised to find Ceruleans not at all uncommon on the upper parts of high steep slopes. My surprise probably came from a Lower-Trail influenced assumption, as you say, that they were on hillsides along rivers.
Re - Vireos. I wrote the atlas account for YTVI. I wondered why REVI so-outnumbered YTVI., two species so seemingly similar (tho of course with requirements we can't fully grasp). The best hypothesis (a hypothesis in need of factual backing) I could find was that REVI "out-competed" YTVI, pushing them from favored forest interiors to less favorable, more open margins of forests. Which sort of fits with where we tend to find YTVI.