With Blue Grosbeaks and Evening Grosbeaks visiting feeders in the region, it seems like a good idea to brave the mid-thirties for an early morning jaunt around First Field.
In the deepest hollow above a large tangle of downed trees, right around 6 AM, I stop the car to listen into the gloom. Three songs are prominent: Winter Wren, Louisiana Waterthrush, Wood Thrush. The earliest deep woods chorus is still missing two prominent members, the Acadian Flycatcher and Eastern Wood-Pewee. The Acadian will be nesting throughout the hollow, not far from the stream, while the pewee will be lodged farther up the slopes, particularly in the drier chestnut oak and mountain laurel thickets of Laurel Ridge. Like cardinals and towhees in the field edges, and robins in town, the pewee, for several months at least, will be the very earliest of the dawn chorus to start up. Indeed, sometime they sing every 15 or 20 minutes throughout the night.
I pause again in the upper hollow, where an Ovenbird, a Worm-eating Warbler, a Blue-headed Vireo, and two Red-eyed Vireos are sounding off. An odd clucking sound can be heard from the canopy: some 75 feet above me, a massive shape is fidgeting against the dark gray sky in the uppermost branches of an oak, and a second is a few feet away, in another tree. Wild Turkeys, looking for all the world like Crested Guans, similar-sized arboreal denizens of the Latin American rain forests. These two seem out of place as they crash-glide off across the treetops, down-hollow.
Nashville, Tennessee
Another chorus is happening in and around the field and buildings, despite the raw and truly horrendous weather (for May). Almost nothing is flying about, but every local species is singing nonetheless, and according to the NFC spectrum, the Eastern Towhees and Northern Cardinals have been at it since around 5 AM. Even a Whip-Poor-Will did a few bars, though it’s long been silent by the time I arrive.
The cold rain doesn’t turn into a downpour, but it doesn’t let up, either. Field Sparrows are everywhere, in pairs; not a night has gone by since late March, even in the most awful weather and between storms, that males have been silent. In the weedy patches among the fringing black locusts, pairs of Chipping Sparrows flit about. A House Wren does its bubbly song, over and over again, from the same patch of field edge it lives in every year. The Brown Thrasher is still sitting up high, going through its repertoire.
The upper, western edge of the field grades into a black cherry and wild grape-dominated forest on the slopes of Sapsucker Ridge, diverse and sheltered, filled with privet and barberry as well as a range of native shrubs. This particularly life zone is the richest on the mountain for warblers, both residents and migrants, and they’re generally easy to see. Around the powerline right-of-way are favored edges that host some of the best mixed flocks in Plummer’s Hollow, or at least the easiest to see, as they move back and forth across the powerline gap.
Ruby-crowned Kinglets are still everywhere, while Hooded Warblers, Black-and-white Warblers, Black-throated Green Warblers, and American Redstarts are singing on territory. The local male Black-throated Blue Warbler isn’t shy, coming within a few feet of me, buzzing, and now a female is here as well, though she hangs back in the trees a bit. Then a passage migrant sounds from the treetops: first Tennessee Warbler of 2023 (PH200 #145). Something’s moving these days, anyway.
Whatever is coming down now has a bit of snow in it, hardly a typical backdrop for such a tropical species. And another new song is coming from a brushy edge not far away, sounding vaguely like a Yellow Warbler. It’s the season’s first Nashville Warbler (PH200 #146), but hardly the last. This area is prime Nashville habitat in both spring and fall, so I expect to record dozens more this year; one October day in 2020, 21 showed up, the highest count ever for the property. A day prior was the record high for Tennessee Warbler (16).
As I head back to the car, confident that no grosbeaks are about, it starts to clear up, but it won’t last: this weather pattern is locked into place for a couple more days, which will give me enough time to catch up on NFCs. Later, scanning the spectrum, I find the last new species from April, one or possibly two Northern Waterthrushes, emitting their diagnostic NFCs in the company of White-throated Sparrows, currently the most abundant night flier, at least of those that vocalize. During a brief stop at terra nullius, I find the thick brush filled with these sparrows, active and calling. It could be that they are just waking up, but this time of year, it is also likely that some have recently arrived from all-night flights, and are stocking up before resting. This crowd has probably been static for a few days, though, waiting for more favorable weather to push northward again. By the end of the week, when May warmth finally sets in, they’ll be off, to be replaced by the next set of stopovers.