Measly
March is still doing its best February. After 51 minutes, I can only scrape together 14 species from the balcony this Tuesday. The phoebe is silent or gone, and I won’t hear the Fish Crow until later in the morning. At dawn, it is 28, gusting, and flurries, with highway vehicles all trailing snow clouds. Two local Song Sparrows make a rather weak effort at a dawn chorus, but no cardinal, wren, or finch joins them.
The bird species that do make an appearance are clocking about nine minutes behind yesterday (which wasn’t sunny either). Even the American Robins are muted, although I notice one of our sublet prospects scratching quietly about around a propane tank right below where I sit.
The junkyard raven could apparently care less—it’s flying about the piles of junk, croaking vociferously. Yesterday, I saw it chasing another, but mostly, it is alone.
Common Mergansers appear to be thriving, flying about closer than I have ever seen them here. The black-and-white males are spectacularly wintery against the snowy hillsides.
Even the European Starlings are keeping their heads down this morning, not to mention the Rock Pigeons, so the sky is mostly empty. Finally, at 7:47, the nearest Northern Cardinal starts its morning song cycle, joining an insistent Tufted Titmouse. As I go in, blue is starting to seep through from the west.
A Flurry of Vultures
After 4:30 PM, I decide to have another try. Despite a few sunny patches now and then (inconveniently, while I was tied up in meetings), the day got windier and more snowier, though the flurries don’t lay. It stays around 28 degrees.
The weather is evidently too much for the starlings, who in 24 minutes don’t make an appearance. A few Rock Pigeons are up and about, but again, no robins. Other than a Common Raven and a couple Mourning Doves, the only others that make incongruous appearances are a steady procession of Turkey Vultures and a single Black Vulture, floating back from Sinking Valley over the top of Brush Mountain and westward, presumably toward an early roost. They don’t seem to have overly much trouble with the weather, but they’re not wasting any energy on circling, either.
Waterfowl Nights
I’ve gone through the two weeks of late February and early March NFCs but it will be a few more days until all the checklists are posted. About three of the nights, presumably those with southerly winds, had some impressive waterfowl numbers, particularly of Tundra Swans, with some large Canada Goose flocks and fair numbers of Long-tailed Duck, American Wigeon, Green-winged Teal, Gadwall, and Northern Pintail. LTDU, GWTE, and NOPI are new for the year, bringing the Plummer’s Hollow 200 to a modest 73 species. The Pintail is my first ‘yellow-alert’ species for the year, meaning one that I had quite a good chance of missing. In over 50 years, we’ve only seen one (in flight, 17 April 1991), and it is a new NFC species.
A single Song Sparrow has been the sole passerine candidate for an NFC, but in a couple weeks, sparrows and others passing over will begin to hog the spectrum. For now, on the active nights, I’m enjoying the crystal-clear Killdeer, Ring-billed Gulls, and waterfowl, as well as the dawn and dusk choruses getting earlier and later every day, with more and more activity courtship from the American Woodcock. Both Barred Owl and Eastern Screech-Owl are calling. Once the Spring Peepers kick in, things are going to get a bit blurry, though.