At the Plummer’s Hollow Crossing, around about 6:47 PM, I pour a tequila and soda with ice to dull the effect of the trains thundering by on both tracks, a few yards away. Today is the first of an occasional series of mid-year sits from a location that allows me to keep track of the numbers of species returning to roost through the Gap. The trains are a bit rough, but after they’ve gone, the relative calm that descends lasts at least 20 minutes per track, and sometimes up to an hour or more.
Bottom of the Mountain, Entrance to the World
I’m always careful to sit just over the invisible line, inside our property, not far from the gate and its forest of signs telling the obstinate and addled what not to do. We try to keep our side of the tracks pure, because the other side—terra nullius—can be a wild bit of no man’s land. The respectable, often unsuspecting folks range from railfans, fly fishermen, swimmers, and visitors paying respects to a couple of memorial markers, to birders, rafters, hikers, and canoeists. The somewhat dubious crowd comprises skeet shooters, teens tempting fate to balance on the treacherous, collapsing rail trestle over the river, a family of firewood harvesters, and people with nowhere else to go for the night. There are also walkers from the valley and Tyrone, and in the past, an elderly bicyclist who used to live in the village of Upper Tyrone Forge, now vanished under the privet jungle.
While we always welcome casual walkers to the hollow who can both read and follow the list of rules on the signboard up inside the woods, the sketchy crowd are the ones we are most anxious to keep out, particularly those who have “always wondered what’s up there” (glancing to the side and down, shuffling feet). Bottle hunters and other treasure seekers, and morel hunters, are the folks most often caught on the cameras. But then there are the illicit encounters in that category euphemistically termed “vice.” They range across the spectrum, and mostly know to keep their micro-enterprises and amorous encounters in terra nullius. Worst of all (by some accounts) are the raspberry poachers. Those we chase away at gunpoint (figuratively, anyway).
So I enjoy sitting here and occasionally glaring people down. As a Gen X’er, hanging out is one of my specialties anyway. Sometimes, one must engage in a surreal conversation; it’s amazing how an entire world exists of folks whose currency and social lubricant is weed. I guess it’s always been that way. Until I started getting interested in the wealth of birds down here, this was an area to get through as quickly as possible, out into the loud, wide, open spaces, or back into the sanctuary of the Hollow. One of those strange liminal zones between worlds.
The birds scarcely notice the iniquity, and were it not for the chainsaws of the family who harvests firewood on a nearly daily basis now, they would be barely disturbed. This evening, I have only had to gesture one dirt biker away from the gate area, and after that, it’s just me and the birds.
Ephemera
And the bugs. As the evening progresses, the sky fills up with a mayfly hatch, many already attached. There are midges as well, and a range of other creatures. Some parts of the sky are hazy with invertebrate clouds, measured, I understand it, in hours.
Now to the birds.
Mourning Doves echo like owls, and a Pileated Woodpeckers calls, but at first, the sound array is quite muted. The odor has shifted from manure, wafting from the valley on an easterly breeze, to the healthy smell of damp woods, as the cold begins to flush out of the Hollow. One of the Red-tailed Hawks from the antenna area circles over Sunny Side, and soon is joined by its mate. Without trains, and with foliage to block the highway roar, I can pick up the faint song of a Yellow Warbler downriver, and a Red-eyed Vireo droning on. Behind me, a Hooded Warbler sings, while the Louisiana Waterthrushes, frenetic as ever, rush back and forth across the tracks, calling and even singing as they fly.
Around 7:15, bird sounds begin to fill the cloudless spaces. I recall the winter, rushing down the tracks to get to the pond, as soon after 4 PM as work would allow, with the onset of darkness by five. Now, the evening stretches until nine, and I’m curious to find out what happens, even at the end, after the bats are out.
Though it’s only May, a katydid starts to scratch, while an Ovenbird ‘teachers’ from Laurel Ridge somewhere, and a Common Grackle sails overhead, up from the river in front and down into the Hollow behind. I hear the new, haunting call of the Common Raven, one I haven’t heard all year—I can’t see the bird, but yesterday a pair was making the call over the mountain; I wonder whether it’s associated with some stage in the nesting/young-raising process.
Woodwind Section
After 7 PM, Wood Thrushes sing from three locations, interspersed with ‘tut-tut-tuts’; a Song Sparrow responds from close at hand. The insects are out now in the tens of thousands—none, thankfully, on a mission for blood. Then Blue Jays, mostly silent, emerge from the Hollow woods, alighting on the tall, still-bare locusts across the tracks. This is a pattern several species follow, perhaps for a threat assessment (me?) before diving into their hidden roosts in terra nullius.
Now the Red-tailed is hovering stationary above Sunny Side. A Wood Thrush has posted up to the locust behind me, in plain view a few yards away, singing and calling in alarm. Perhaps it is annoyed by me.
By 8 PM, American Robins, from out of the mountain, have perched on the locusts and are vying with Wood Thrushes for dominance of the sound spectrum. For a few minutes, two Rose-breasted Grosbeaks join in, dueling songs across the tracks. A Common Raven, perhaps my junkyard neighbor, flaps rapidly and silently in from town and disappears into Sapsucker Ridge somewhere.
Turkey Vultures are out in flocks, but they’re all heading east. They either come from the west through the Gap, plastered against Sunny Side, or they emerge from over the top of that mountain and head south over the pond. At one point, I focus on Tyrone, and see a cloud of them, black blotches against orange, over Cemetery Hill, heading toward the roost west of town.
Grackles continue to return in pairs or alone, mostly toward Tyrone. At 8:10, a small accipiter suddenly appears from Sunny Side and circles above the tracks—A Sharp-shinned Hawk! Unlike the much more common and visible Cooper’s, this species is tougher to see around here in the breeding season, and seems to stick to the deep woods. I watch as it continues to circle and finally dives down into Sapsucker Ridge.
The End
Past 8:30, it seems like the birds are wrapping up quickly. I am thinking that perhaps the chorus will end sooner than it does in Tyrone, if only because the sky is much darker (and the air is colder) over here. Robins and Wood Thrushes haven’t diminished much, but Northern Cardinals have ceased, and Baltimore Orioles have also fallen silent. But now the grackles are returning in bigger numbers, and European Starlings as well. Chimney Swifts are going both directions in pairs and trios, along with a few Barn and Northern Rough-winged swallows, but certainly not in the numbers we’ll see after they bring out their families.
Odd, but I haven’t heard but a couple snatches of Gray Catbird all evening, and time is running out. Small bats are about and ticking by 8:38, as swifts continue to go by in the growing darkness. Grackle number 40 goes over at 8:39, and a minute later, everything has hushed except the crickets. One final grackle flies past at 8:41, then two unidentifiable bird-shapes swoop across the tracks, and then it’s over.
Except It’s Not
After a couple minutes of silent dusk, I hear a crackling noise from terra nullius, then some tentative meowing. The catbird chorus, an avant garde affair, has commenced. Others join in, and not to be outdone, the local robins start to call and sing as well. At 8:47, as this brief, post-chorus chorus reaches its peak, a final Chimney Swift chitters by unseen. Three bats gorge on the insect feast against the pink border of Sapsucker Ridge, where it plunges to the tracks and river; later in the summer, before it gets too dark, I will count dozens at this hour.
Venus brightens above the mountain, and at 8:52 the birds have finally shushed. The lights of a westbound flicker down at the bend, so I jump in the car and scoot across the tracks.
Back in town, robins are still yelling. It’s noticeably warmer here; where it was 60 at the crossing, it’s probably still brushing 70 here, from all the pavement.
Thank you for describing the sights and sounds so vividly. I’m a neighbor on the hill at Birmingham, a geologist by profession but a novice enjoyer of birds. I love checking my observations with yours each day to see if I might be right. Cheers, Dorothy Merritts.