Wednesday’s dawn is an improbable 51 degrees: puffer jacket weather. On a brisk north breeze during the night, the spectrum is clogged with warblers; it will take weeks to clip and identify the myriad NFCs of this single August night when the cold suppressed the insect orchestra.
This morning, it’s time to check on the Crossing. Now that sunrise is around 6:30 AM, it doesn’t make sense to get out before 6 AM. At 6:04 AM, the first Northern Cardinals start to sing, and soon become the dominant element in the dawn chorus on both sides of the tracks, joined a few minutes later by Eastern Wood-Pewees.
The wavering call of an Eastern Screech-Owl wafts up from somewhere deep in the impenetrable tangles of terra avium, on and on, minute after minute. Meanwhile, the cardinals switch from singing to ticking as the first Gray Catbirds and Carolina Wrens go off.
At a quarter to seven, an Osprey lifts off from near the river somewhere and climbs directly up the steepest part of Laurel Ridge, skimming the treetops. The local Canada Geese, all 85 of them, decide to navigate the Gap on the Bald Eagle Mountain side today. A bit later, another Osprey heads upriver toward town.
Around seven, a Blue-headed Vireo chuckles from the entrance to the Hollow. It starts to spit rain and cloud over, and the passerine flocks don’t quite come together in time for me to find more than a handful of the common species. It is quite a bit more difficult to intercept a large mixed flock down here than up on top of the mountain, but I can see them way up in the canopy, halfway up Sapsucker Ridge. Once again, Merlin alerts to a Swainson’s Thrush; I don’t list it, but later, after looking at last night’s clogged spectrum, I find it likely, as many went over in the night.
At one point, my brother Dave lopes by on a walking poem circuit, and mentions that a screech-owl was also calling up by the houses. The calls we’re hearing are apparently referred to in the literature as “monotonic trills” and are associated with dispersing young after the summer breeding season.
My own meander takes me down into terra avium, but other than the wood-pewees, the birds are still pretty sluggish. Large, colorful caterpillars are rapidly stripping the trees.
Silence of the Robins
Wednesday’s balcony sit begins at 6 PM. It’s been a while since I’ve seen how the final hours of the day play out. During most of the time, I’m in a meeting, but I keep a headphone in only one ear so I can also hear the bits and scraps of birds. This time of year, there’s not much.
Not long after six, a long line of Mallards—16 in all—can be seen feeding at the confluence on a rare night that no one is fishing. At another point, I glimpse six Common Mergansers disappearing into the Gap, while 113 Canada Geese return from Sinking Valley in several boisterous flocks low over town.
I am most impressed by the descent of the American Robins. They’ve become all but noiseless, issuing only the slightest of whispers these days. By eight, several have lined up silently on the wire across from me, preening. They hang out there as others join, until finally, the whole flock swooshes off quietly to a nearby roost. Not long after the hour, with dark clouds getting darker, even the Chimney Swifts hang it up, and I catch a distinct hint of fall.
Bullbats and Chupacabras
On Thursday, it’s back up to the neck. Dawn temperatures have returned to the 60s and the air is humid, though the worst of the biting insect season seems to have passed.
At five before six, an Eastern Whip-Poor-Will can be heard over on Laurel Ridge somewhere, as every morning. Today, however, rather than a two-minute aubade, the goatsucker moves several times. At one until six, it sounds quite distant, having taken all of a minute to move from the first post. Then, at 6:03, it is even farther off. At 6:06, it has come closer, and then, at 6:12, it is back, singing loudly from the woods a few hundred feet away for a few more minutes.
In the interim, a nice group of Veeries descends, with their down-sliding peeps possibly mixed with a couple Swainson’s Thrushes, while on the ground, the first Wood Thrushes are clucking nearby. At 6:09, a familiar, frenzied fragment, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet dawn song, the first of the season. Later, in the gloomy air, I am unable to find it.
Indeed, this is one of those mornings that gets darker rather than lighter, though it doesn’t actually rain. To make things worse, most of the clouds of passerines are staying in the treetops. At this juncture of the Plummer’s Hollow 200, the priority is to glass every perch-and-sally flycatcher on the many snags roundabout, on the off-chance of finding that rarest of pewees. Alas, each and every one is either a wood-pewee or an Eastern Phoebe, with a few empids on the lower limbs.
At 6:34, I distinctly hear the peent of a Common Nighthawk. This is the height of their migration, so I expected to pick a few up. Last year on September 17, at dawn, I saw one cruising along the treetops on Sapsucker Ridge, heading south, while I was up by the spruce grove.
The black cherries on both sides of the field and up on Sapsucker Ridge are already buzzing with Cedar Waxwings. A mass of some 25 forms a swallow-like swarm of activity above my head, while a few Barn Swallows, a Cliff Swallow, several Chimney Swifts, and a few last bats zoom about. It must be quite a feast up there.
Eventually, the action moves north up the field, and as I scan the loose mixed flock, I am elated to see two nighthawks flapping about in the midst of it. After a minute or so, they are out of sight, following the bug cloud northward down Brush Mountain.