At 5 AM it feels like Chiapas, a cloud forest landscape, cleansed air dripping with the night’s storms. On the balcony, 97% humidity, 66 degrees.
There’s a heavy fog on Brush but Bald Eagle’s still open. Eastern Phoebe, American Robin, Barn Swallow, Gray Catbird, all loud and repetitive today. Chimney Swifts and bats are out and about at 5:30.
At 5:36, A juvenile Bald Eagle, an unruly brown, wings slowly upriver past me and disappears. I’ve not seen an eagle in quite awhile, and rarely does one go by this early. Stormy weather often seems to shuffle the rhythms and rituals of the local birds, particularly when the water rises. Four minutes later, another surprise. The unmistakable chips of a Yellow Warbler across from me in the brush along Bald Eagle Creek. Where have you been the last couple of weeks?
By a quarter to six the birds are quiet, the first chorus over. This leaves an opening for Common Grackles, who emerge as a mass from the trees and clamber into every available perch on the spindly dead ash. Thirty gather, boisterous, then within a minute they’re off; at 5:52 all is quiet again. But after a few moments 60 more burst from the trees, together with a few dozen European Starlings, and they scatter in all directions. The lull returns.
Whither Finches?
Fern’s nest has had five eggs for a suspiciously long time. I think they might be infertile and just as I conclude she won’t be back, a House Finch I think might be Fernando shows up on a wire to sing. A bit later, five more finches show up together on the wire, and by the way they’re acting, it seems like this is the whole family. Fern spends the next hour flying into the nest and brooding, but flees every time I try to get up and use my camera.
Around 6:24, fog has wrapped up the town. A young robin tries repeatedly to land on a wire, but it doesn’t have good balancing skills; flustered, it flies off. For once I actually glimpse the Yellow Warbler as it darts from tree to tree, chipping but never singing.
Something is about. Flocks of swallows, grackles, starlings, robins, and Cedar Waxwings are lifting up from the trees into the fog, flying about in a tizzy and calling excitedly, but I never see anything. Perhaps it’s a Cooper’s Hawk, hunting low.
Foggy Bottom
At 6:35, a juvenile Pileated Woodpecker, half-grown and raggedy, flaps slowly in from the north over town, practically brushing the rooftops. This makes an unprecedented three woodpecker species—with the heard Downy Woodpeckers and Northern Flicker—for the morning. As the fog grows thicker, a Belted Kingfisher rattles from somewhere out in it, and a Fish Crow appears and disappears. Finally, at the top of the hour, something I’ve been waiting for: A Blackburnian Warbler, singing just once, from somewhere off in the confluence treetops. A remind that it’s molt-migration time; this one could very likely be from Plummer’s Hollow. Later, I find more post-breeding dispersal surprises when I scan the night spectrum, which I will tell you about in a little while.
At 7:03 the sun pokes its head over the ridgetop, and Northern Cardinals begin to sing. By 7:12, the fog has largely lifted, and I’m in full sun by 7:20. The birds liven up at last, and the temperature starts its steady rise into the 80s, as it’s doing every day now.
New One at Last
Nights have had their share of rain, so I often don’t get more than a chorus of drips and scratchy calls I can’t ID. But around the end of June, there was a noticeable uptick in warblers, with a Black-and-white Warbler as well as a few American Redstarts, and some zeeps that can’t be identified to species. Chipping Sparrows are the most common, but I also hear clusters of their calls right around nocturnal songs, so I am suspicious that the NFCs I hear are from birds flying about the hotspot (or maybe they sing when they fly over). Ditto the Field Sparrows, Killdeer, and Indigo Buntings. The woods warblers, though, make me suspicious. The young are certainly old enough to be off on their own, but flying from where? To where? It’s still a month or more until the great southward journey begins.
The Grasshopper Sparrow that flies over at 11:11 PM on the night of June 29th is definitely from farther away than the hotspot, though. Whether it’s been displaced from its fields by people with machines, or flying for some other reason, is impossible to know. But at 4:20 AM on July 1st right after a rainstorm, an unmistakable Veery. It’s a common bird if you live a thousand feet higher. The nearest members of this species nest a few miles away, up in the Allegheny Front. I would certainly take this one for a molt-migrant.
And then at 10:23 PM, I see a doubled call smudged by raindrops, and at first assume it’s a Spotted Sandpiper. Then I spot more calls in the course of a minute, and take it for an American Pipit, yet at a lower register. After I listen to it, I’m just about to chalk it up to an American Goldfinch, which sometimes calls and flies around at night, when on a hunch I match it to a bucket list shorebird, the Short-billed Dowitcher. This is major news: a new species for the hotspot, the first since the Whimbrel on May 22, and number 188 for the Plummer’s Hollow 200, the first addition since Dunlin showed up on May 24. (At one point I thought we had a Dickcissel, but it seems likely it was a Bank Swallow or something else.) Quite an auspicious beginning to what I think of as the least understood month in birding, at least in these parts.
Test Flights
The July oddness continues with a beautiful Independence Day. It rained again last night, so everything is freshly washed, but it’s not as dead silent as I would have hoped on a major holiday. A few early cars roar about, a truck or two go by on the interstate, and Norfolk Southern never takes a break, with four trains passing, include a loud one that parks, in the hour after 5:30 AM.
Not that it matters much. The dawn chorus hushes before 6 AM, and never ratchets up again, so there aren’t many distant songs to catch, except the Indigo Buntings from beyond the bypass.
Closer at hand, Eastern Phoebes are singing with renewed vigor, and one even lands on a nearby wire, the first this year I’ve seen that happen. Later, one calls loudly from the top of the sycamore at my 11, then sallies out over downtown and returns to the tree. Maybe it’s a juvenile: I tend to attribute most of the odd behavior one sees in July to young birds.
At 5:45, the Yellow Warbler returns. I heard one sing faintly from upriver, a few minutes ago, but this one just chips. A loud clanking starts up over at the VFW, as last night’s bottles hit the dumpster. A Mourning Dove faces off with me, puffs up its chests, and coos.
At ten to six what I presume is the same flock of eight Mallards I often see comes out of the Gap and veers south, following the river. Then the Common Grackles, predictably now, flush from their roosts up into the dead ash. Only 20 do this today, and as usual, they don’t stick around long.
As six approaches, a flock of 11 House Finches, semi-translucent wings glittering, head off into the Gap, calling. This is intriguing. It looks like the juveniles are already banding together to search for food. A bit later, more flocks go by, a taste of things to come.
By 6:09 it’s eerily quiet, even with a mostly clear sky and tons of light. I thought the hush yesterday was from the fog but today it’s even more pronounced. I guess it’s a mark of an ebbing breeding season. There’s probably no point these days to loud and continuous singing for an hour or more. Even the robins and catbirds aren’t vocalizing much, and at one point I hear only the monotonous chip of the Yellow Warbler and the buzzes of waxwings (it helps that the local House Sparrows are mostly quiet now, and the starlings and grackles feed elsewhere at this hour).
The lull is broken by strange cries. It probably seems like hyperbole, but a pair of Common Ravens are giving ghastly, mournful screeches from out by the interstate, one high, one low; I’ve never heard them make this sound before, and they continue for at least 20 minutes. Adding to the unusual quality of this six o’clock hour, a lone male Common Merganser speeds out of the Gap heading north, beak open. He makes a wide swing over the end of town and then returns, never closing his beak.
Naturally, a juvenile Bald Eagle appears. It’s July 4, after all. Appropriately huge and impressive, this one, I would guess the same individual as yesterday, comes from the same direction but today heads north.
Chimney Swifts are leaving town today in tightly-packed groups, and I saw one couple flying side by side and rocking their wings. Swallows are scarce, with only a handful of the local Barns about. I would guess the bugs are better elsewhere. At 6:47, the oddest robin song yet breaks out from a sycamore to my right. I never spot the singer, but I would guess it’s a juvenile because, you know.
For the first time in ages, the Rock Pigeon count tops 100 this dawn, and by 7, it’s at 117. I expect it will continue to rise throughout the month, at least on clear mornings when commuters like to head from town over the mountain and are easily counted. (“Clear” is a relative term; by 7, it’s already clouded up.)
At the end of it all, five Mallards appear from the north, off Bald Eagle Creek somewhere. They fly close enough that I can see they’re all juveniles. A few minutes later, I see them again back where they started, circling back toward me for the second time. I think they’re on a test flight; I wonder if two of them might be that lost pair from our dusky parking lot a few weeks back. These five, quite sure of themselves, drop sharply into the confluence and bunch up close together in the muddy current, then drift downstream out of sight.