Highlights
FOY Louisiana Waterthrush (Tues)
Pine Siskins at the feeder (Wed)
Rain of Hermit Thrushes (Thurs)
FOY Red-shouldered Hawk (Thurs)
FOY Eastern Meadowlark (Sat)
Sharp-shinned Hawk courtship above the spruce grove (Sat)
Eight double-crested Cormorants (Sat)
Foy Pine Warbler, Palm Warbler, and Yellow-throated Warbler (Sat)
All-time high counts of Brown Creeper, Golden-crowned Kinglet, and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
First 50-species checklist (Sat)
Log
Apr 1 (Mon). AM: 7 spp. (balcony, 25 min.)
Apr 2 (Tues). AM: 21 spp. (2-mi. hike, 1 hr. 40 min.)
Apr 3 (Wed). AM: 37 spp. (1-mi. hike, 1 hr. 15 min.)
Apr 4 (Thurs). AM: 33 spp. (3-mi. hike and drive, 1 hr. 15 min.)
Apr 5 (Fri). AM: 22 spp. (balcony, 1 hr. 42 min.)
Apr 6 (Sat). AM: 54 spp. (5-mi. hike, 5 hr.). PM: 14 spp. (balcony, 40 min.)
Apr 7 (Sun). AM: 34 spp. (balcony, 1 hr. 30 min.)
The first week of April saw one of the highest water marks on the Little Juniata River in the last half century, after several days of rain dumped up to six inches. The torrent that overflowed briefly onto the highway through the Gap also squeezed new waterfalls out of the Juniata Formation cliffs across from the bridge, which itself only cleared the torrent by a foot or two. Thankfully, the old structure held; up in the Hollow, more waterfalls sprang out in unusual locations, gravel washed away, and trees crashed down onto the road, but disaster was averted.
How-Are-You?
The southerly air flow on Sunday night leads to a heavy flight of Long-tailed Ducks, Great Blue Herons, Ring-billed and Herring gulls, and as yet unidentified waterfowl over the hotspot, with the last of the rush a few Hermit Thrushes before the deluge begins in the wee hours. At their peak, after midnight, Long-tailed Duck flocks go over every few minutes.
Monday begins a two-day stretch of downpours, little deterrence to the tough, local crowd of House Sparrows and American Robins, with European Starlings and American Crows flying about in even the heaviest rain.
On Tuesday, despite the rain, I slog down the tracks for an accounting, with the birds obligingly active. Conditions go from pouring to drizzling to spitting as the first part of the cyclone tapers out, and the temperature hovers in the 40s. A pair of Wood Ducks almost lands on the pond but, presumably because of my presence, decides better of it and heads off downriver. The spring peeper chorus alternates with Hermit Thrushes, and by 7:10 AM, Common Grackles are commuting in small numbers through the Gap to early morning congregations.
In the lowest part of Plummer’s Hollow Run below the tracks, a Louisiana Waterthrush calls in a desultory fashion, chips alternating with drips. I believe I heard him on Sunday as well; now, with banks overflowing, he’s in for a wild couple of days. Whenever this storm finally passes, I’ll be looking forward to territorial singing competitions in the Hollow.
On Wednesday well before dawn, I drive gingerly over the bridge, an octogenarian that dates from after the Flood of 1936, when something like an unmoored oil tank took out its predecessor.
My earliest memory is from the summer of 1972, when I was in my twos. I only remembered it again a few years ago after watching a flood on the Mississippi River not far from my home in the Yazoo Delta. I was standing with my Dad where I’m standing today, staring at Hurricane Agnes’s floodwaters lapping at the bottom of the metal grating. It was, I believe, no longer safe to drive across. Over the way, a small, mute crowd of sodden forge folk stared back. I remember asking my Dad why they were there, and he told me that they were waiting to see if the bridge would fail. This filled my two-year-old mind with deep foreboding, which is where the memory ends.
Years later, in the 1990s, my then-adoptive country of Honduras was struck by several horrendous flash flood events, including one that swept through the low parts of the capital and trapped my taxi in dirty, rising water, another that swept away a van full of Peace Corps employees, and finally, the devastation of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 that defined a generation and was the setting for my doctoral research into human adaptation. The Honduran floods didn’t stop after that, either, as individual friends and entire villages vanished from time to time from the implacable forces of gravity, water, mud. The alternative, hydroelectric dams to hold them back, turned out to be even more damaging. Meanwhile, stateside, I took a tenure-track job at a small college in the heart of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, at the mercy of the Big Muddy and a host of lesser yazoo streams, just upriver from Greenville and near where the levee broke in 1927.
Though the mainline levee never ruptured despite floods that put entire varzea-like forests underwater, the entire coast a few hours south was wiped nearly clean by Hurricane Katrina in 2006. And understand, I’ve never been a water person; to call my flailing about in a current “swimming” would be a vast exaggeration. The deep foreboding is still present.
So here I am on the 3rd of April 2024 and it’s happening again. Thankfully, the various pipes under the road and tracks are keeping the stream flowing where it is supposed to, and the bridge looks none the worse for wear (in its twilight years, should it be taken out in a flood, it won’t be replaced). I wonder about the hermits in their growing garbage hamlet nearby as water begins to pool along the narrowest stretch of the highway.
From the tracks, I hear a Winter Wren singing—a new one, I suppose, or perhaps something that’s lingered from the colder months.
Back in town, the water rises slowly toward the disaster point, when it will overflow and flood the downtown. But as the day progresses and the rain eases, news comes of road closings across the region. Luckily, we’re not that far from the headwaters of the Little Juniata and Bald Eagle Creek, so unless we get more torrential rain, we will probably be OK. And so it goes—once again, the flood control system here holds, a miniature version of the great works we rely upon in Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, but following the same principles.
At a certain point today, Mom has six Pine Siskins at the feeder.
Ooze
On Thursday early, I slosh the car up the Hollow, past freshly-cut oaks and over masses of gravel in the wrong places. Hermit Thrushes fly up every few hundred yards, nearly tame, as always. They’ve been waiting at least since Monday to move on northward, I suppose. The slopes are suppurating.
Briefly, the rising sun penetrates thick fog.
Bird activity is predictably frenetic, with a constant background yammering and squeaking of White-breasted Nuthatches and the repetitive yells of Northern Flickers flopping about the yard and field. Hermit Thrush song echoes from the undergrowth up by the powerline.
By the afternoon, the back end of this massive, nameless storm system is finally moving in, and as the air clears, raptors and Common Ravens hit the updrafts under the puffy cumulus. At long last, I spot a Red-shouldered Hawk, the first I’ve seen in the hotspot this year. With snow on the way, the temperature turns cold, but for now, it’s spitting rain at 42 degrees and flocks of goldfinches are moving ahead of more bad weather.
Friday
Luckily, the waters have receded considerably by dawn, as the air is clammy, wet, and 36, spitting out a combination of rain, sleet, graupel, and snow. The regulars don’t seem deterred by this, though the closest robin alternates his singing phrase with a loud, hiccup-y choop! that I don’t remember hearing before.
Throughout the day it alternates sun and moisture—snow one minute, rain the next. At a certain point, a 4.8-magnitude earthquake to the east seems to presage the total solar eclipse coming on 4/8, and American apocalypse culture ratchets up yet another notch.
A Trickle of Warblers
By Saturday morning, I am predictably stir-crazy, and anxious to see what new, undocumented migrants have shown up. Though the air’s a chilly 36, the rapid 2.5-mile hike from home to the top of the powerline leaves me drenched in sweat. An icy wind raking Laurel Ridge at 6:30 AM has me donning my layers as quickly as I took them off, but I am rewarded by the faint strains of FOY Eastern Meadowlarks among the chorus wafting up from the valley. By 7 AM it’s snowing a little, but I’ve already recorded 30 species without budging from the spot.
Just after leaving the powerline cut I come across a fast-moving flock of Golden-crowned Kinglets and Brown Creepers in the oak canopy, moving north with the wind, accompanied by a few local Black-capped Chickadees. Throughout the morning, flock after flock of creeper and kinglet help me break the eBird records for both species in the hotspot county—67 for the golden-crowns and a dozen creepers. This is due, I would guess, to having gotten bottled up by the storm, and there are doubtless numerous others moving through as well.
At the spruce grove, the sun finally peeks out, and a slight bit of pishing pulls out an energetic and flustered Sharp-shinned Hawk that perches on a near branch, calling for several minutes. It’s fascinated by me, but also involved with another, calling from the far side of the grove. As it flies about, Mourning Doves and then a Barred Owl flush from the spruce tops, and then an American Crow flies in to investigate. A male Wild Turkey gobbles against a backdrop of Field Sparrow sound effects. I try to grab some video, shaky in the freezing wind, and finally give up to spend the next couple of minutes saving my hands from frostbite.
As I descend the neck of the field around 8 AM, the sharpie pair, apparently nesting in the spruce grove, cavorts together over the ridges, almost dove-like, one or the other chattering in the winds. Goldfinches and siskins are hurled over this way and that, calling.
Near the house, the Dark-eyed Juncos are still massed, trilling and twittering, and a piebald one in molt catches my eye as it perches in a rose bush.
While watching a sharpie speed along Sapsucker Ridge, a synchronized, slow-moving clump of eight Double-crested Cormorants emerges from beyond the powerline, considers crossing east for a few seconds, then disappears west again toward Grazierville.
I head down to the tangles along Bird Count Trail, catching the tail end of the Fox Sparrow migration, and more kinglets and creepers. Our other nesting accipiters, Cooper’s Hawks, have made this area their domain, and are moving about on the hunt, so passerine activity has been considerably dampened.
Along Ten Springs Trail in the heart of the hollow, I barely hear a faint chip high in the treetops across from me, and spot the yellow-green plumage of a Pine Warbler among the kinglets. I can’t elicit its trilled song and just miss a photo; it moves quickly on to the north with its horde. Upslope, a Palm Warbler calls, invisible beyond the tangles, while the day’s fifth Yellow-bellied Sapsucker—a hotspot, though not a county, record—mews.
Back along the road in the deep hollow, around a quarter to ten, it’s silent but for the rushing stream, until a few chips give way to an explosive waterthrush song. One is perched facing me on a mossy log crossing the current, but he’s not really concerned about my presence. Right now, it’s all about grabbing the best territory, because another is a few dozen yards downstream, flying about and singing as well.
Along the tracks, the drip of early warblers continues. I hear another waterthrush, another Pine, and off across terra nullius, the first Yellow-throated Warbler. It’s a good haul for early April, function, no doubt, of a fallout of sorts occurring from the storm.
Around 10:30 AM, a flyover House Finch marks the day’s #50, the first time this year to reach this milestone; the list ends at 54.
The End
On Sunday, it dawns clear for the very last day before the Apoclipse. It’s a dry 33, but the cold doesn’t keep down the birds, and by 6:17 AM many are already on the move, including Tree Swallows. A Black-capped Chickadee is close to the balcony and repetitive, singing fee-bee on two pitches—low then high; low, then high. A Fish Crow, normally a laggard, makes a very early round at 6:35.
I’ve already recorded 30 species by 7 AM. This has included a dislodged Sharp-shinned Hawk over town, perhaps a migrant who slept over, and a calling Hermit Thrush, a rare detection from the balcony. At 6:52 a Louisiana Waterthrush called, and now, at 7:11, a flicker is flying around over the rooftops. Two Mourning Doves chase each other within inches of the peak of the roof, and then a pair of chickadees rush by within inches of my face. Feels like April!
At 7:36, the local Common Raven deigns to show its face, in silence. The sun’s rays edge over the curvature of Bald Eagle Mountain, through the bare trees, at 7:40, and the sky is still glass, though a thick cloud bank can be seen off to the north.