In Like a Lamb
By 6:17 AM, an American Robin and a Song Sparrow are already singing. It’s clear and calm and 28 degrees, heading down to 26. Something, I think a cardinal, explodes from behind a building by the river to my right and drops back down to Bald Eagle Creek over beyond the 10th Street bridge. The junkyard raven starts its twilight honking.
Looking east, I spot a single, silent Canada Goose wandering out of Logan’s Narrows (the oldest modern name for the Tyrone Gap). A blob in the dead ash catches my attention, perhaps a clump of leaves I hadn’t noticed before, or a new bagbird. I almost pass it by, but out of curiosity I glass it. Lo and behold, a stoic Cooper’s Hawk! It’s been what, over a month since one has perched nearby? This is the first time I’ve seen our neighborhood velociraptor take up this particular post, much less at dawn. It seems to care less about the noisy garbage truck making rounds a few feet away.
Mackerel Sky
Sunrise today is 6:47. The cirrocumulus are putting on quite a show, backdrop to numerous flocks of the common species up and about. The Cooper’s Hawk has vanished.
For the first time, a mixed Common Grackle/European Starling flock arrives, around 10 of each species, from upriver somewhere. (The grackles don’t seem to be flying with other Icterids now; indeed, I have not seen the Brown-headed Cowbirds in quite a while, period.) Most of the grackles settle elsewhere, but one male claims his local posts: the tallest sycamore at my 1, the tallest poplar at my 11, and a lower, broader tree next to the poplar.
By just after sunrise, every local regular has made an appearance or vocalized. After 7, the only new species are Red-winged Blackbirds, high up, heading east.
Courtship and Territory
Robins certainly move fast. Today, as if knowing it’s March 1, a pair is getting uncomfortably close to me, and I know what this means: I’m in their space. First, they perform various maneuvers out on the farther lines, perching, flying up, landing next to each other, moving apart.
Then, they fly in to the nearest wire off the balcony at maybe 15 feet away, and both peer at me intensely. Next, to the nearest sycamore at my 3, making soft noises at each other, beaks half-open, jumping around in the limbs. Then, back to a wire across the lot, with one tumbling up into the air playfully (see below), heading back to the tree, and the second over my head to perch on the chimney right behind me. All the time, they’re making those sharp robin sounds, possibly at each other but more likely at me.
With a sinking feeling, I realize they’re after a home somewhere around the balcony. We’ll give them ample opportunity: this is the last balcony blog post until around March 12 when we return from a trip. Hopefully, they won’t choose the lower rungs of the fire escape again this year.
See you after the phoebes return!