Somehow on Saturday before 6 it’s humid and in the mid-60s; I’ve already worked up a sweat walking along the tracks. Heavy crickets and a moonlit train, breezy.
Doesn’t seem like owl weather, but nonetheless, with sweat pouring down I need a break at the big treefall in the Hollow. This is right up around the second curve, good acoustics—the same place I watched an Eastern Wood-Pewee on the nest nearly six months ago.
I ease down into the foldable chair and chomp on my breakfast sandwich, then power up the portable speaker. The “tink-tink-tink” repetitions of a sharpening saw are lost in the gloom, as always, with no response. More chomping.
In recent days, I’ve been listening to an odd series of calls that seem to come from the old dump area near the antenna. They’re not quite the “kew” calls of the saw-whet owl, and are occasionally interspersed with mewing and grunting that would seem to indicate porcupine. They have been going off every evening between 8 and 9.
I play some “kew” calls. More silence. Then I play the wail call, which sounds like this. Half a second later, an exact copy wails from behind and above me, just once. A few seconds after that, a dark shape glides over a patch of sky between tree canopies some 100 feet up: Who cooks for you? Northern Saw-whet Owl first, then Barred Owl. Neither stirs again.
On October 20, 1980, near this very spot, we saw our first Saw-whet in Plummer’s Hollow near this very spot when we were driving up the road at night, returning from some event. At the time it seemed to be an extraordinarily rare species. Now, with netting and banding going on all over the state, it has become apparent that the owl is more secretive than rare. For 2023, it’s Plummer’s Hollow 200 #199.
The woods are humming with insects. On top, it’s windy and still cloudy. The first White-throated Sparrow opens the floodgates at 7:03 AM, and in a few minutes, the entire northwestern corner of First Field is seething with ‘Oh, sweet Canada, Canada, Canada!’ at every volume and frequency, ad infinitum, interspersed with a variety of calls. The other species can be heard in the interstices—Fox, Song, Chipping, Field sparrows, Carolina Wrens, Northern Cardinals, and the rest of the dwindling crowd of high fall migrants and permanent residents.
American Crows are all about, cawing and clacking. They are apparently quite excited about someone’s gut pile. After a circuit of the field and yards, I head off to Greenbriar and Bird Count trails where the wild grapes are luring in the vanguard of the American Robins and detaining the Cedar Waxwings. A single Purple Finch sings from some high tangle. In a large mixed flock, both Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned kinglets are everywhere and some Brown Creepers can be heard, but Dark-eyed Juncos are now the predominant species higher up in the canopy. Lower down, it’s solid White-throats by the hundreds.
Bare patches of earth have been scratched open all along the trails. Farther along on Ten Springs Trail, four Wild Turkeys show little fear of me as they file across, heading upslope.
Back down at the Saw-whet spot, I notice a large white pine upslope, directly behind where I saw sitting, cover with cones. Perhaps the owl is roosting there.
As Dark as It Gets
Sunday brings a deluge as we’re trying to get to a New Jersey wedding. Despite the rain, Winter Wrens are popping about the Hollow. By Monday morning it’s all over, and the temperature has dropped 30 degrees to the freezing line.
These are the latest dawns of the year. At 7:15 AM the Song Sparrow sings a few times, and then a White-throated Sparrow and a Carolina Wren make a little noise before the minimalist chorus stops. Fifteen minutes go by until the wren starts up again. A Great Blue Heron stabs at fish in the confluence. One of the local Red Squirrels begins chittering.
Nothing in the crisp air, then a Yellow-rumped Warbler sweeps down into a silver maple along the river, chipping wildly.
The first crow doesn’t call until 7:41, and a few go overhead eventually, but it looks like the main flock has moved on. The Yellow-rump rushes off downriver, to be replaced by another, equally energetic.
My 8 AM start times are rigid this week, so I probably miss some of the later risers. At 7:55, however, I see a flock of some 20 Red-winged Blackbirds, the first I’ve seen in months over Tyrone, with a handful of Brown-headed Cowbirds mixed in. House Finches are now flying all about and singing.