Still the Latest Sunrise
Not until Thursday will it begin to get lighter in the mornings. For now, the sun is stuck at a 7:36 rise, as it has been since December 28. The solstice was only the shortest day because the earliest sunset was at 4:45 PM between the 3rd and 12th of December; now, it’s at 5:02.
For the birds, this matters in the aggregate, but the amount of light on a given morning varies within these parameters. Only on New Year’s Day was it clear, an actual sunrise for us hill folk, and the dawn birds were abundant that day. Since then it’s been varieties of cloudy and rainy, with late wake-up times and sparser numbers.
The sun’s waking angle now is 119 degrees southeast. It will appear to move left in a few days, and I am looking forward to the stretch of time when it rises between Brush Mountain and Bald Eagle Mountain, the earliest its rays will hit my balcony, sliding under the interstate. After that, its northward trip will hide it behind Sunny Side; as the days get longer, the ridge gets higher.
What Difference Does A Week Make?
In a week, what’s changed? Not the American Robin, for sure. I have not been able to get up ahead of his song, even at 6 AM. This is the kind of attitude that will bring us sleepless nights by April, the replacement for a local saxophonist who played the same riff over and over, hour after hour, on the street corner last year, until he was chased away.
The Cooper’s Hawk is getting more familiar. Paola asks me if I think it recognizes me? I would be honored if it does; I’m a pretty obvious part of its winter hunting grounds. Today, it’s chasing chickadees up Bald Eagle Creek at 7:22, then reversing direction and landing in the nearest black willow at 7:28, maybe 100 feet away at the creek-river confluence. Peers at me, waggles tail; I look down to take a note and look up: it’s vanished. Titmice and chickadees now silent.
Something different happens with the Common Ravens every day. Today, the tannery raven moans and croaks for well on half an hour but doesn’t leave its roost area after awakening. At 7:40, another flies languidly in from the left, down off the mountain and across the Gap. It somehow spins as it flies, clockwise. Three times. I’ve never seen this type of flight before, but then I’ve never seen half the things this species does, it seems. A minute later, its ballet partner is close behind, no sideways rolls. The three are now out of sight, croaking but at different pitches. All I can guess is that a choice piece of venison is smeared across I-99, but it’s only a guess.
The biggest anomaly today is a lone Canada Goose. At 7:19 it crosses over my head, honking, heading east into the Gap. Right at the toe of Sapsucker Ridge it plummets. I wonder if this is the same individual I found Friday afternoon sitting by itself at the hidden pond? The main local flock, which I am presuming sleeps at the Tyrone Reservoirs, almost never appears at dawn this time of year. But I am catching hints of a single; not only at the pond, but also, right before New Year’s, one popped up swimming at the confluence below my feet, which is usually reserved for a Mallard splinter group.
A respectable, average 16 species by the end of this Sunday’s quiet but cloudy sit at 7:55. Last Sunday’s was 24 species. Time is light.
Number Fifty
We’ve got shopping in Altoona, but before we leave I hoof it to the hidden pond to see if my theory about the lone Canada will hold water. Nope. Still, though, this is a story I’ll be following intently; I’m sure I saw it go down to some nearby pond. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
I’m glad I checked this out, though: in among the 53 Mallards and lone American Wigeon is a spectacular male Wood Duck. A fitting 50th species for the Plummer’s Hollow 200. Since I first saw the drake of this species at this very pond, when I was a child, I’ve not changed my opinion that this is the most elegant of North American birds. It’s also the only waterfowl that actually nests on our property, on some tree up the ridge a microsecond’s dive away. This pond will be a favored spot for a pair in a couple months, then a family, but I’ve never recorded the species in January.
Tengri
The shopping done, I can’t resist an afternoon sit as the sky grows huge, mares’ tails’ giving way to crystal. A perfect late afternoon, long rays lighting up the sycamores for iridescent male European Starlings. Maybe THAT’S why they gather at the treetops this time of year, gurgling. After 3 PM the action is Rock Pigeons in tiny flocks, the most seemingly purposeless of fliers, but those that highlight most the sky dome. House Sparrows and House Finches just zip back and forth across it, but don’t linger; they’re more like our own planes. Pigeons seem more a part of it.
Tengri, I’m told, sky god of the Steppe, was associated with a white goose. I’d like to think that, with a slight breeze and an infinite ceiling, the sky will give something like that for me. The immature Bald Eagle isn’t it: low to the river, it’s heading downstream after fish, not interested in any long-distance travel this time of year. A Golden Eagle would be a perfect tribute to the Mongolian Steppe, but they’re still down on the Monongahela somewhere; they’ll not start trickling back through here for another month.
Scanning the sky. I’ve encountered a whole invisible world, birds you don’t find first with the naked eye. At close to 4 I have it: floating whitish shapes emerging above the towers, something following the ridgeline south. They’re high above the Gap when I can ID them: Ring-billed Gulls, a drift of 13. From Lake Erie to the Chesapeake? Something like that. The way they glide they’re catching the sunlight from below; I run in to grab my camera but they disappear; by the time I find them again they are drifting out of sight down Brush Mountain. A first for January (I love how many times I get to say that these days!).
I’ve been hallucinating waterfowl in the confluence foam this afternoon but it’s always just foam and turbulence, growing less with every day’s distance from the flood. Soon, the ripples will turn into rocks again, and maybe the heron will come back. Two Mallard ducks and three drakes swim briefly into view.
The rare Cohiba I started with out here at 42 degrees was OK, but burned down too fast. Cold morning’s coffee now: waste not, want not. I wrap before sundown, after the rays are gone and the starlings dwindle and hush.