A clammy 48; the robin is already singing when I hop in the car at 6:25 AM. Astronomical twilight. Dark at the gate, Stygian hollow, then a brisk walk up First Field in nautical twilight. It’s in the low 50s up here, with pockets of warmer and cooler air about. I pop the chair together and wait for the Spruce Grove to wake up.
Not-so-civil twilight: clouds of gnats around my face, and a moth-like creature zooms by. In January, mind you. A UFO resolves itself into a jet heading west. Quiet where the ridges join at the top of Brush Mountain—the quarry is mute and the interstate, down off to my left, only a dull roar.
Number 40 for the year, a Great Horned Owl, does classic hoots from far off at 6:59.
A brief panic: my coffee thermos disappeared! False alarm - I took it out of my pack and there it is on the grass.
The Spruce Grove Awakens
At 7:03, a Hermit Thrush calls once from deep in the grove. A Mourning Dove hurls itself up and out, then northeast, disappearing into the dawn, bound toward mom’s feeder.
The racket begins at 7:07 with quiet White-throated Sparrow tseeps, then their other call types, and some snatches of ‘sweet Canada.’ Small birds begin to flutter around like bats, in and out and through the spruces, then down the field, perhaps to the feeders as well. Juncos and Song Sparrows mix in, and a cardinal. After five minutes of this it calms down, something I’ve noticed in every morning awakening: activity goes in cycles, with periods of overlapping noise and then lulls, then more calls and songs.
In under ten minutes the Spruce Grove has disgorged its occupants. At 7:25, with a robin flyover, the rest of the dawn commences. Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, and White-breasted Nuthatches call and sing in a loose winter aggregation, working the black locust-Norway spruce edges. A rooster from Sinking Valley down to my right doesn’t count.
Might get sunny; might get cloudy: I’ll take anything over yesterday. The sun seems to be losing at 7:33. Carolina Wrens holler from separate points, and I hear a single call from the local Sharp-shinned Hawk.
Anticline
The view up here stretches northeast across the ruins of the tectonic Nittany Arch, with the eponymous Mount Nittany at 25 miles in the middle distance, Tussey Mountain framing the east and Bald Eagle Mountain the west. On the clearest days, distant knobs at the far end of Penn’s Valley, at 50 miles, are visible.
In the foreground, the field drops to the barn and houses, with Sapsucker Ridge to the left and Laurel Ridge the right. Brush Mountain ends at the Tyrone Gap two miles away, so I can glimpse the same flyovers I see from my balcony.
This is how I know about the European Starling commute. Today’s a good day for it: clouds of them go by at 7:35, a mile from me, against the orange sky. Some 350 all told, heading to Tyrone. Maybe they’ve come from farther than Sinking Valley; the protected swamp at Canoe Creek in the next valley would be a good candidate. Regardless of which valley they’re sleeping in, I suspect plenty more head to Altoona and Bellwood.
The rest of the woodpeckers wake up, and what seems to be the last Eastern Bluebird sings, down from dozens in December. At 7:40 AM, the list stands at 21 species. Back and forth through the Gap: Rock Pigeons, Mallards, a pair of Canadas, and six Common Mergansers. Ten American Robins appear silently in a nearby ridgetop tree: rare for them not to have anything to say. I move and they flee, calling; later, more small robin flocks cross the field, hold-outs, I’m guessing, from the throng here in December. The wild grapes could be running dangerously low. I’ll know more on Sunday when I do my sit over in the thickets of Bird Count Trail off Laurel Ridge.
A Hairy Woodpecker won’t shut up; two Common Ravens arrive.
Rana!
Before I go, I need to investigate some odd clucking sounds down Laurel Ridge trail behind the spruces, off in the ridgetop woods.
The clucks, it turns out, are Wood Frogs, not far from the vernal ponds where in two months they’ll be in orgiastic splendor, in their hundreds. But it’s January. Odd.
All in all: nothing unexpected from the storm, and no breeze to push a raptor up from the valley at first light, as sometimes happens at this perch. At 8:32 the sky is empty, but as I’m getting ready to head to home-work, Blue Jays arrive at the lower field’s edge, and the air is filled with calls: two American Crows waiting to go through the kitchen’s latest mulch heap leavings; an incessant Carolina Wren; ravens; House Finches, American Goldfinches, and the rest of the feeder birds.
In what eBird tells me is our all-time 4,000th complete checklist, the hotspot adds four species to the Plummer’s Hollow 200 today (Great Horned Owl, Hermit Thrush, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Sharp-shinned Hawk), so we’re at 43, with 157 to go. This weekend, I’ll crunch the numbers of our very first sprint, of 52 for the year.