The Strategy
Now, I know I typically hit the Plummer’s Hollow woods for early sits and long hikes on weekends, but April is going to be a bit different. The Plummer’s Hollow 200 is highly strategic, because even presuming a good NFC year, I still have to snag several scarce fly-over species during certain key periods I would miss if I were hunkered down somewhere. So I’ll be doing as much balcony sitting as I can in April, then with leaf-out and the beginning of May Madness, I’ll move my early sit to the Plummer’s Hollow railroad crossing to try to get the rarest spring migrants that I have missed during sits up on the top of the mountain the last couple of years. If I do well with the April flyovers and NFCs also go as predicted, to have a shot at 200 species for the year I still need to get most of the May rarities in the woods, all of which I’ve gotten predictably at the bottom of the mountain in the past: Kentucky Warbler, Mourning Warbler, Yellow-breasted Chat, Golden-winged Warbler, Yellow-throated Warbler, White-eyed Vireo, and Olive-sided Flycatcher.
Meanwhile, the waterfowl migration is in full swing, and other than Common Loon, the only species I am notably missing is the Snow Goose, which I got calling at night last March. I have another shot in the fall if I miss it this spring, but I didn’t get one at all last fall, so that prospect is a bit dim.
In terms of spring misses other than the Snow Goose, the main species I appear to have dipped on is the Northern Saw-whet Owl. I keep hoping I’ll get this secretive migrant via NFC like I did last fall, but I’ve heard nothing promising yet. It will thus be one of the several must-get fall species I will need in order to reach the goal.
Drip Drip Drop
Today is a day they have been warning us about all week: high winds causing mayhem and chaos across the Northeast. I lived in the Deep South tornado belt for years (and I deeply lament the recent destruction of a much-loved town called Rolling Fork, birthplace of Muddy Waters, home of the Great Delta Bear Affair, and gateway to one of America’s great wildernesses, the Delta National Forest) so local weather up here always seems a bit tame. But it can be fantastic for birds, if you are looking at the right bit of sky at the right time.
First, the rain from the front end of this cyclone needs to clear out, though. Everything is dripping, very April-ly, at 6 AM, and it’s 40 degrees (promising the 70s). American Robins and Song Sparrows are already up and at ‘em, and an Eastern Towhee calls faintly. My balcony is not the best place to hear these; I don’t think they nest at all close by.
In seeming deference to the gloomy weather, with a thunderstorm not long past and another to come, the Carolina Wren is just doing its ‘cricket’ call rather than the full-on ‘teakettle.’ A robin runs around the municipal lot next door, drinking from puddles and who knows what else.
Birds of the April Wet
By 6:30 I begin to see the clouds: low, threatening, fast-moving, and best of all, coming from the southwest. Insistent House Sparrows, doing what they call singing, echo off the pavement. It begins to pour.
The Eastern Phoebe starts up in the midst of the rumbling downpour. A Northern Cardinal follows suit, seemingly oblivious to the storm. Clouds are now roiling over Sapsucker Ridge, but after a few minutes, it all begins to quiet down and just before seven, the neighborhood White-breasted Nuthatch zips by on its customary route. A Great Blue Heron flaps lazily out of the Gap, low, heading north.
As the storm clears out, the rest of the local avifauna activate: Swamp Sparrow (still unseen), Mourning Dove, Tufted Titmouse. Like every other day, the Common Merganser pair zooms out of the Gap on the Sapsucker Ridge side, heading upriver. I’m guessing these two are nesting or getting ready to nest locally.
A sickly pink glow lights up the southern sky as Red-winged Blackbirds, Brown-headed Cowbirds, and Common Grackles begin to go over. By 7:10 AM, the cloud ceiling is tipped all over with lavender, and a Bald Eagle flies overhead. Little does it know that this particularly April 1 record makes the species a “permanent resident” of the hotspot: April 1-7 was the last gap in the data, so it has now been recorded during every week of the year.
Velociraptor Strike
In a quite spectacular way, the Cooper’s Hawk reappears in the neighborhood. It rushes in under my feet, apparently having a go at one of the robins underneath the exchange unit. Some commotion follows, but it exits, robin-less, to perch briefly on the big old red maple at the confluence. Robins everywhere start a commotion, while everything else quiets down. Well, not quite: a Song Sparrow sings on, unperturbed, while a Tufted Titmouse goes into alarm-call mode for a full five minutes (it’s the high-pitched squeak on the recording.)
In the background, a Belted Kingfisher rattles from downriver. I remember to do a grebe check: this consists of jumping in the car and heading down to the Plummer’s Bridge to scan the relatively still water downriver, the only place where I’ve actually seen a live grebe in the hotspot (a Pied-billed Grebe on March 18, 2020).
No luck, but it pays to be thorough this time of year. I head back through town and get back to the balcony.
By 7:48, this exceptionally productive dawn has already produced 30 species. April is the best month for balcony sits; last year, I managed to get around 40 species on the best days.
GREG!
Usually, when the weather is just right, I’m pacing the balcony to look at all the angles of the sky that I can. This strategy pays off at 7:53, when three Great Egrets (PH200#87) flap over in a stately fashion; I would have missed them had I been sitting facing the Gap. We’ve never recorded more than one at a time of this locally rare species, and other than an NFC recording from the end of April last year, the records have all been in August.
Three minutes after the Great Egrets, three Great Blue Herons follow on roughly the same bearing.
Five minutes later, at 7:58, four more Great Blue Herons. Eight total of this species is also the hotspot high number, breaking the record set back on an icy April day in 1979, the ‘Day of the Ducks,’ when it rained waterfowl.
The dawn isn’t over yet; surprises to follow are a Rusty Blackbird low overhead, the third of the season, and a Killdeer. Out in the Gap, two huge birds are up to something. Guessing they’re ravens engaged in their normal shenanigans, I train my binoculars in time to catch a pair of adult Bald Eagles briefly locking talons; they tumble once, then fly north against Bald Eagle Mountain, low, one following close behind the other. Renewing their vows?
Is It the Color of the Vehicles?
As I gear up for Act II (the daily loon hunt), it occurs to me that the reason the starlings and grackles and associated other sycamore-top sitters regularly spook, when I can’t detect an external stimulus like a predator, could be in response to brightly-colored vehicles zooming by under their feet. So far, this is just a supposition, but I’ve noted it twice already this morning. I can clearly see the high-profile trucks and buses in the southbound lane, and at the split second a large vehicle (once a red truck, the other a yellow bus) went under the tree, the morning congregation took suddenly to the air.
By 8:30, it’s already 50 degrees, and I wrap up the first checklist with a year-high 35 species.
Another One Down
After a short break for R&R, I’m back out for the hunt by 8:50 AM. The sky is rapidly clearing, but the winds aloft continue pushing clouds from the southwest. I train my binoculars above Sapsucker Ridge, and become aware of multiple birds flying, invisible to the naked eye: a Tree Swallow, a Northern Flicker (they are migrating through in numbers right now), and the usual scads of grackles, cowbirds, blackbirds, House Finches, robins, starling, crows, and so forth. And, best of all, another nemesis vanquished: a Common Loon (PH200 #88) speeds into sight, exactly in the area I was hoping it would appear.
It is moving quickly, this very odd shape (compared to the birds I’m used to). No wonder this is the first time I’ve seen one in the hotspot. Before this year I never knew when and where exactly to look, and I always hoped I’d get lucky and just hear one go over. I should also note that though it was a couple hundred feet above the ridge, it was not visible to the naked eye. The flight path wasn’t just a lucky guess, though: it was exactly the path that many raptors, Common Nighthawks, and other day-flying, long-distance migrants use when the winds are just right.
Such is the challenge of birding an area with close to no water surfaces.
By 9:30, it’s time to go shopping, and the trees and power poles are glistening and steaming in the heat.