Waiting for Ice
No point sitting down today: ice is coming. It’s still 27 with a high cloud ceiling and the Song Sparrow’s oblivious, belting out its first notes at 6:35. Otherwise, a whole lot of silence, punctuated now and then by the croaking of the junkyard raven, which flies out and across my field of vision at 6:42, heading upstream. Every day, it does something different at first light: how does it decide which way to go?
There’s a faintly scarlet sky up to the north, and then a bit of sunrise through the Gap, but it quickly lapses back to layered gray covering up the patches of blue. Today is no darker than other days, but the birds seem scarce. Perhaps they can sense the coming storm.
The first House Finch chirps over at 6:52—as always, it’s well before the next one some 15 minutes later.
The raven is back, croaking heartily, at 6:56. As it flies from left to right over my parking lot, I can see that it’s missing part of an outer primary feather on its left wing. It makes its way to the roof of the old hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue up by the junkyard, and spends awhile in surveillance mode, honking now and again.
Only 11 species by 7 AM, quite a bit lower than the usual nowadays. Finally, the Song Sparrow sings again. A pair of starlings arrives soon after, circling and pipping over the sycamores. The standard starling pattern nowadays: the vanguard arrives, circles and pips for a few minutes, then a few more arrive, and eventually, up to 30 appear. They split their time between the tallest sycamores at my 1 PM, between the river and the interstate, and the tall poplar at my 11 AM on the far side of Bald Eagle Creek, also grouping up on various freeway lights. They sing and otherwise communicate incessantly until well past 8, eventually dispersing through the town or elsewhere.
Agitation
At six past the hour, the raven leaves the hotel roof and flaps back into town, over my head. I’ve not seen it this active—or agitated—in weeks. A few minutes later, a pair of Canada Geese arrive honking over downtown from the northwest, acting disoriented. This, or something else, sets the American Robins to loud alarm calls from the nearby trees where they’ve recently posted up. At the same time, the nearest Carolina Wren begins to down-trill insistently, a White-breasted Nuthatch vocalizes, and a Tufted Titmouse does its typically 3-part call in five or six parts, numerous times and very loud. Whether all this is due to the geese stirring things up, or some other stimulant exists, I never find out. The commotion dies down after a minute or two.
Mergansers on the Move
At 7:12, ten Common Mergansers, all males, follow their customary route out of the Gap, hugging the side of Sapsucker Ridge a bit below the crest and disappearing southwestward. A few minutes later, two more, one of which I believe is a female, exit heading the same direction. It certainly appears their numbers are on the uptick: I haven’t seen more than six since the first of January, when I saw nine. Before that, I saw much higher numbers only in September 2022: 18 on the 29th, 12 on the 15th, and the hotspot record of 23 on the 2nd. (I wasn’t doing sits on my balcony until late March last year, so I don’t have a basis of comparison for a year ago.)
By 7:20, the full local flock of starlings is dividing its time between the sycamores and the poplar, but no Common Grackle, as yet. The House Sparrows are about, very loud and active in the air. I don’t write much about them because their preferred haunts are a few blocks from here and they spend a lot of time hugging the ground and low bushes, but later in the year, they will pass much of the day along the river and I’ll get a better sense of what they’re up to.
At the half hour, a single male grackle integrates seamlessly with the starlings, erupting in tandem with the group in its incessant movements off the tree and back in response to the slightest stimulus from below.
At 7:28, the Downy Woodpecker, still the latest vocalizer, makes the list 18. Ten minutes later, a Great Blue Heron come through Gap high up, heading southwest. We now have a hotspot record for this species for every month in February.
At 7:40, the first ice pellet melts on my phone screen.