I’m at the Plummer’s Hollow Crossing by 5:37 AM, just as the first of four early trains goes by:
In town, American Robins, an Eastern Phoebe, and Song Sparrows were all already singing by 5:10 AM. Out here, when trains aren’t blocking out everything, I hear silence until the first Northern Cardinal at 5:39. There is some faint robin noise, but I think it’s from the ones under the bright lights a half-mile away.
I set up what I think will become my customary spot and settle in for coffee.
That’s the spot during train # 4, a bit later. I’m sleep-deprived, but I wanted to get out here before the heavens opened. Right now, they’re still closed:
Barely.
At 5:50, train number two goes by, and it’s a raunchy one. Also a long one, with engines in the middle, and garbage cars throughout. I’m at the edge of our property, under some box elders at the very base of Sapsucker Ridge, not 20 yards from the train. The acrid wind is enough to nearly provoke a gag reflex.
When it’s gone, I can hear a local robin as well as cardinal # 2. At 5:54, the first Eastern Towhee ‘reeps’; they’re common out here. Then a Song Sparrow, and more cardinals and robins.
Just after six, an Eastern Screech-Owl trills briefly from the woods behind me. This is one I’ve not yet detected from the balcony. And two minutes later, some loud ticking is followed by an explosive celebration, a Louisiana Waterthrush along Plummer’s Hollow Run. To me, the song always seems to echo, evoking some cavernous space, as if it were in a mountain gorge.
A Brown Thrasher starts up, but it doesn’t do much. The other dusk, from the balcony, I heard a Northern Mockingbird, but I think both these species are seasonal down here. Mockingbirds prefer Sinking Valley, and thrashers are up on the mountain. The principal mimic, yet to arrive, is the Gray Catbird. Once it’s here, telling the three apart by ear is a bit tricky. (A lesser-known mimic, the Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher, hasn’t arrived yet either. Other common local mimics are Blue Jays and European Starlings.)
Now, at five past, a Mourning Dove is moaning from Bald Eagle Mountain somewhere. Its call sounds quite similar to a certain frequency attained by some of the passing trucks on the highway.
The lasting chorus here in the Gap is towhees, cardinals, and Song Sparrows, with some robins, several Black-capped Chickadees, who will be nesting nearby, and Brown-headed Cowbirds. In the background, I can hear robins fighting, naturally.
At quarter past, another species I almost never get from the balcony, the White-throated Sparrow (which, I read, has four sexes), does a few bars of its song, evoking a place it is probably on the way to: ‘Sweet Canada, Canada, Canada!’
Bats are still around: before any birds go over, a small one and a large one are fluttering about. Then, at 6:16, the first of a lengthy train of Common Grackles creaks and squawks overhead. Mostly, they’re in pairs, and all but two of almost 50 pass by in the next 10 minutes heading east. They’re moving quite fast.
Pretty much everything is over by seven out here. I think, in part, this has to do with the impending storms. I do enjoy the drumming and calling of the four common woodpecker species—Pileated, Downy, and Hairy, with Northern Flickers—as other than the Downy they are quite marginal in town. I’m consistently surprised that no Red-bellied Woodpeckers make it down here.
The privet thicket behind me, after disgorging some excited cardinals that have something going on in between the train tracks, only yield a single Ruby-crowned Kinglet today:
After inspecting me, it heads across to terra nullius and the woods along Plummer’s Hollow Run, singing all the time.