After more days of rain and lightning storms, with only occasional Indigo Buntings and Chipping Sparrows crossing the night sky over my antenna, we have sunken into the sodden, buggy, humid, muddy depths of summer.
Angry and Agitated
On Monday, in a break between bouts of weather, I do a 10-minute count from the porch, the bare minimum. Fern flushes, as usual, perching anxiously, or perhaps fearfully, on a near wire. She has been sitting on five eggs since Friday. She is joined by Fernando and two juveniles, both begging, tails wagging. He flies off with his offspring, or someone’s offspring, in hot pursuit. He looks harried.
A Warbling Vireo drones on; a Gray Catbird crackles and meows. In the parking lot, a group of five House Sparrows putters about, all juveniles and females. An adult male sits watch on the wire directly above.
A loud and angry American Robin explodes from the trees along the river. It’s never clear what panics them. I’ve been thinking a lot about how easy it is for us to understand when birds are fearful or angry, among the entire range of emotions they feel. How timid we are, however, 150-plus years after Darwin published his landmark book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, to attempt to detect the more supposedly ‘human’ emotions like happiness, greed, and hope. We are probably still in thrall to the behavioral sciences, reducing animals to machinery and chemicals that think little and feel less. We only ‘anthropomorphize’ when we discuss our pets or when it’s ‘fight or flight,’ rage or dread. How human of us.
I often wonder if much of the enigma of the dawn chorus is that is has to do with emotions such as hope and glee, but expressed in ways we can’t really fathom.
The Ones Who Didn’t Show
At dawn on Tuesday, no Common Raven is heard or ever appears, and only once does a distant Blue Jay, and later an American Crow, call faintly. The Fish Crows are about, but nowhere near the balcony this early. No Canada Geese in days, no Belted Kingfisher, no Great Blue or Green herons. Indeed, no birds larger than ducks fly over—no Bald Eagle in a week, no vultures, no hawks.
That ubiquitous winter ‘TCN’ trio—Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch—aren’t heard at all, nor seen. A single Downy Woodpecker calls briefly and then flies off, barely registering. No Red-winged Blackbird or Brown-headed Cowbird overhead; no Chipping Sparrow, although they nest quite close by. No Baltimore Oriole—I believe they have fledged and the family is about, but I guess there’s no more need to sing at dawn. And the Yellow Warbler is weeks gone now, though it will show up again next month as one of the earliest southbound migrants.
After the Storms
The clouds have no more rain at 5 AM today; it’s 59 and the mountains are draped in fog. Bats large and small are about in numbers until after 5:30, sharing the misty sky with Mourning Doves and then American Robins, and at the end, with the first Chimney Swifts.
The early chorus today is only robins, catbirds, an Eastern Phoebe, cooing doves, and a lone Northern Cardinal. Around the half hour, a Northern Flicker calls from upriver somewhere; it’s been hanging around the last few days.
Song Sparrow and Warbling Vireo, heard but never seen. Before six, dozens of swifts gulp at the bug clouds right over the confluence. Families are about now and their numbers grow daily.
What happened to the Barn Swallow family? Only an adult male and female perch on the wire, though eventually, four or five are darting about overhead.
One of the local young robins, still mute, alights several times on a close wire, facing me and flicking its tail. Behind me, the nearest chimney is singing starling, but the songster never comes into view. Cloudy patches of blue-like sky begin to appear.
Grackle/Starling Explosion
At precisely 5:49, a village of Common Grackles explodes from the shrubbery of Grackleville. Some 25 crawl into to every inch of the dead ash in front while other groups go elsewhere. Feeding frenzy. European Starlings emerge suddenly at the same time, families of six and eight, zooming over my head into town, hissing and screaming. From here on, the air is filled with birds: Rock Pigeons, elegant, on high; Chimney Swifts, graceful; robins, starlings, grackles, House Finches, Cedar Waxwings, American Goldfinches, Mourning Doves, and ever so often, groups of Mallards. At one point in the action, a female or juvenile Common Merganser banks over the interstate and heads toward the Gap.
A dawn after heavy storms during Fall migration can kick up rarities like the migrant Red Crossbill I saw last September, but this time of year, nothing out of the ordinary is about. Plenty of preening is taking place, I would guess: Fern and family sit among the wires for a while, each bird working actively to dry off.
Not long after six, as activity begins to ebb, a long, white Perdue semi creaks by, ‘committed to quality since 1920.’ A flock of some 60 starlings disappears into the clouds over Sapsucker Ridge; they and the grackles are flocking in ever larger numbers by the day.
Finally, the Carolina Wrens start to get worked up. At least two are about and perhaps a family, at the confluence and along the creek: teakettle-ing, trilling, and tutting for a few minutes before quieting again. It’s second-brood time (or third?). Up on the mountain a few days ago, Dave found a Carolina Wren nest on his porch, constructed in the few hours of a morning; it had fallen off by the next day.
The nearest American Redstart and a Red-eyed Vireo sing a bit, but not for long. By the time the sun starts to make some progress over Bald Eagle Mountain, there are interludes of absolute quiet from the birds, though broken quickly by the chittering of swifts and some robin noise or other.
Around seven, clouds swirling around the towers, the Chimney Swifts head northward as a mass, and I let the ever-anxious Fern get back to work.