Stalking the Wild Merganser
Cold. Nineteen, with small flocks of clouds scurrying through the skies above the Gap. Sunday balcony sits are often good for higher species numbers, because theoretically there is less noise. But not today. And the smell!
Unfortunately, Sunday is wash day for the machine-less, and the laundromat opens at six. When the breeze is just right, like today, the choking clouds of ‘perfume’-infused steam ejected from an early bird’s first cycle blanket the balcony. Fun.
Anyway, by 6:24 the Song Sparrow and Northern Cardinal are already making music. Today, the Northern Cardinal steals the show: still not its full song, but a two-part piece that sounds the most uplifting and Spring-like of the various carolers this morning.
By 6:26, a flock of eight Mallards goes over several times, telling me that the pond is freezing up. With the recent warm weather they’ve been all but invisible, but during deep freeze dawns they often roam around. A few minutes later, two Canada Geese lift up, possibly from the pond, and head off west.
Turkey Vultures are out, one group kettling overhead and another out in the Gap, against the sunrise. This means a breeze is picking up aloft. Here you can see them as dots:
As for the noise, it’s enough to blot out the most delicate and distant calls, and there is no real let-up. To what this is due I don’t have a clue; most Sundays, far fewer vehicles are about.
By 7:09, when the Downy Woodpecker calls, activity has nearly ceased. Despite the overall challenges, I log 24 species.
As is customary, I head off right away toward the pond. Below me, in the river, I spot a male Common Merganser in perfect light and position. Synchronizing perfectly with my clumsy moves in the 20-degree wind to get my camera ready, it glides downstream, and by the time I’m ready I’m ready to capture its glory on ‘film,’ it’s gone.
Nevertheless, with an oncoming train, it seems like a good idea to scramble down to the riverside trace, frozen muck that won’t toss me into the water, among rotting logs and two centuries of railroad detritus, a few feet wide. The going is a bit tough, but the water-level view might be helpful for seeing waterfowl. My reward for being scraped and battered by privets, invaders I detest with a fierce intensity, is a couple dozen Mallards floating downstream. In the afternoon, I’m still picking leaf detritus out of my navel.
Over at the pond, a small patch of open water at the far end holds some 14 Mallards, acting frisky.
On the way back, a west wind picks up, and the temperature jumps from 20 to 39 in a matter of minutes.
Winter Warblerland
A couple checklists later, I am at my Sunday afternoon sit on the balcony again. Species have become relatively predictable these days, especially during the clear dusks we’ve been getting. But one passerby makes it all worthwhile.
As anyone who knows me knows, I’m obsessed by warblers. The Plummer’s Hollow hotspot gets inordinate numbers of Parulids, particularly in migration. We’ve even set a few state records. What’s not to like about these high-energy, rainbow-colored birds that spend a few months up here and the rest of the year in places as far away as the Andes and even the Amazon? Or at least Port Matilda.
Not all warblers come from overseas, of course. The earliest arrivals, by late March, Pine Warblers, winter at lower elevations along the Atlantic Coast, and throughout the South. Plenty more species come up from Florida, the Caribbean, and the Yucatan.
One, however, the Yellow-rumped Warbler, sometimes never leaves. While the core of the species winters in huge numbers in places like central Mexico, some stay on in the north, as far up as the north side of the St. Lawrence River in Canada into northeast Quebec on occasion.
Around here, they can be found in small numbers in the thickest bottomland tangles along lakes and rivers. But in the hotspot, we have never had a record after the end of December, until late March. That ended today.
At 4:38 PM, the bird in question flies in from up one of the Bald Eagle Creeks somewhere (perhaps Port Matilda?). That, anyway, is my best guess. It could be wintering just up the creek, for all I know—the only thing that is certain is that we have never had one in winter in the downriver corridor, out through the Gap.
It hesitates a few seconds on the top of the closest red maple, makes its characteristic ‘checks,’ tail held at a slight upward angle. The call doesn’t register at first, but once I realize this is something unusual, I glass it to confirm ID. It then flits to the farthest-right sycamore for a few more seconds, and then continues up the Juniata River corridor out of sight. I’ll be quite surprised if I see one again for another six weeks.
Plummer’s Hollow 200 #68. (Despite this surprise, we’ve slipped quite a bit in the rankings as other PA hotspots are logging tons of early waterfowl. I don’t expect to get into the top 20 for the state until early June, since waterfowl are so fiendishly difficult to get here. But hopefully we can pick several new ones up on the nocturnal microphone in late March and early April when they are at their peak.)