Highlights
A Peregrine Falcon continues to preside
American Robins vocalize from 4 AM to 6 PM
Turkey Vultures return
Swamp Sparrows in two places, and a Northern Harrier visits
The year’s total species count reaches 70
Log
Feb 5 (Mon). AM: 18 spp. (balcony, 50 min). PM: 5 spp. (balcony, 10 min)
Feb 6 (Tues). AM: 15 spp. (balcony, 1hr)
Feb 7 (Wed). AM: 15 spp. (balcony, 1 hr). PM: 4 spp. (balcony, 4 min)
Feb 8 (Thurs). AM: 23 spp. (1.5-mile hike, 1.5 hrs)
Feb 9 (Fri). AM: 19 spp. (balcony, 1.5 hrs). PM: 14 spp. (balcony, 20 min)
Feb 10 (Sat). AM: 17 spp. (balcony, 1.25 hrs). PM: 15 spp. (balcony, 40 min)
Feb 11 (Sun). AM: 22 spp. (2-mile hike, 2 hrs).
The sixth week of 2024 is a string of beautiful days that begin in the teens and end in the 40s, 50s, and on Saturday, the low 60s. The balcony grows louder every morning, with robins already singing and yelling by not long after 4 AM, Song Sparrows by a few minutes after 6, and the whole thing coming to a close, by Sunday night, past 6 PM. It’s as light as October already, and louder than it’s been since last June.
Birds around town are chasing each other close, pair by pair: Rock Pigeons, American Crows, Common Ravens, Red-tailed Hawks, House Finches, European Starlings, and the robins: they’re already on territory, fighting and chasing and poking into last year’s nests.
February is fascinating, and hopeful, if you give it a chance.
Monday is clear and 22, and the crescent moon rides just over Sapsucker Ridge, embedded in a sky of indescribable hue. Robins are up and about by 6 AM, their earliest time this year, and starlings have arrived and are zooming about by 7. Later, a robin lands on a nearby utility wire, and then a power pole, exclaiming.
Rock Pigeons, breeding now, are nowhere to be seen until the sun comes up right after 7:30. If the predators are still lurking about, their caution is certainly warranted, but nothing happens today. As on all sunny dawns, the robins, starlings, and House Sparrows gather in noisy flocks on tops of the highest trees where the first rays hit: a sycamore to my right, and a poplar to my left. The starlings fly back and forth to the avenue trees, prying away dried fruit and taking it up to the treetops to gobble.
At 5 PM, when I help Paola carry her things from the car, a line of erupting sparrows, finches, and starlings overhead trail away from a Peregrine Falcon cruising over town, heading north and eventually disappearing past the paper mill.
On Tuesday, the temperature sinks to 17, but the birds are little deterred. Some ten species are now detectable before 7 AM, including a Northern Cardinal who carols off and on, and Song Sparrows in two locations, also singing.
Later, one House Finch chases another across the sky, looping around, singing furiously.
Like nearly every recent morning, a juvenile Bald Eagle flaps slowly eastward into the Gap. But another formerly predictable dawn raptor has gone AWOL. I have to wonder if the virtual absence of Cooper’s Hawks in town this year is connected to the appearance of the peregrine. I haven’t even seen one in the air since Jan 20.
The Return
Wednesday prolongs the string of clear and frigid dawns, quite a surprise for an Appalachian February. With weather nearly identical to yesterday, the avifauna go through nearly the same motions as yesterday—which, if you’ve been following this space for a while, you will know is the exception, not the rule. Unlike humans, birds adapt constantly to changing conditions, not locked into rigid timekeeping or fixed transit routes.
But the beauty is becoming monotonous, for settled, calm weather produces few surprises. At 7:37 AM, a House Finch lands on a nearby wire, doing that querulous call as it stares at me intently. It cocks its head and goes on looking, undeterred by the long lens. After a little bit, its presumptive mate, or mate-to-be, shows up, and off they go. The ferns have all died—we couldn’t keep them alive indoors or outdoors—but still, I get the impression, despite the early date, that the finches are already checking out possible nesting sites and, by extension, me.
Today, it warms enough to create updrafts, and every break I get, I head to the laundry room to scan for vultures. So far this week, it’s been too cold and calm. Then, at just after 4, as I’m helping Paola get her things from the car in 48-degree weather with a slight breeze, the first Turkey Vulture appears from the east, over the top of Bald Eagle Mountain, and soars west over town.
The Odd Couple & Beer Can Benny
I suppose it had to happen eventually. The Northern Pintail, definitely a female, has found itself stuck in a winter flock of aggressive Mallards, already paired up. Somehow, a diminutive Green-winged Teal also hangs about, but more her size is a male (I’m assuming) American Wigeon. On Thursday, they’re together at the pond, swimming together and flying together, both very skittish even though they should know me by now.
It’s been a few days since I’ve seen the pond or the river, but without unsettled weather, there is a low probability of anything new. At least I finally hear a Swamp Sparrow, one of the more inconspicuous members of the winter avifauna, and the first for the year. (On Sunday, Eric Oliver finds one calling from the swampy growth around the spring house, another of its favorite haunts.)
This morning, I’m walking back into town, so I hope to get an idea of what’s in the bushes between Plummer’s Hollow crossing and I-99. Unfortunately, a train moving at a glacial pace, with some 300 cars, takes up most of the walk, and the only bird activity I can see is a pair of American Crows along Sapsucker, chasing, diving, and twirling about. Of the myriad markings on the old cars, one stands out, a tag by the one-and-only ‘Beer Can Benny.’
Rock Pigeon are absent this morning, and as I approach town, I can see why. It looks like the Peregrine is perched on the shorter comms tower. Back at the balcony after 8, the long lens confirms the ID. Birds are all about town, in the trees, but nothing is lifting up high. For the first time that I can remember, Dark-eyed Juncos come as close as the roof of the nearest garage, twittering about for seeds or something else.
Dawn of the Robins
Not longer after 4 AM on Friday, as I’m deep into last year’s NFC recordings, I’m jolted by a loud and repetitive noise from outside. Somehow, a robin is already singing. I realize it’s been going on already for awhile.
By the time the checklist kicks off at 6:40, several robins have been going nonstop for over two hours. By 7, one is in the parking lot below my feet, right in the border zone of two territories, the municipal parking lot and our lot. It—he?—eventually jumps up on one of the yellow metal poles blocking off a propane tank, pumping its tail, and later, flies over to an old nest under garage eaves, where I don’t see it reemerge. In February??
And so the robins take over the morning. No longer are they leaving town in spiraling flocks, or paralleling the eastern horizon by the hundreds. They seem to be actively divvying up all available space, and are even casting covetous glances at the balcony from time to time: how else to explain one, or another, perching on a nearby wire, hollering at me?
The warm-up finally comes in the afternoon, and with shade temperatures in the upper 50s, updrafts and heightened activity. As I’ve come to expect, the raptors appear as if by magic, high overhead and circling, after having been scarce to absent all week: Red-tailed Hawk, Cooper’s Hawk (first since January), Turkey Vulture #2, and finally, a Merlin. With the peregrine nowhere to be seen, it soars up over Bald Eagle Mountain, then turns south and follows the migrant corridor across the Gap and down Brush Mountain, out of sight.
Last Sunday, Eric Oliver watched a Northern Harrier up by the spruce grove, a visitor from Sinking Valley, on the hunt for voles. This leaves only two missing raptors for 2024—Broad-winged Hawk, which will return in April, and Red-shouldered Hawk, which sticks to the lowlands in the winter, but does occasionalyl pop up on these updraft-y days.
A bit later, I hear the chips of a Yellow-rumped Warbler, somewhere along the river, upstream.
The Warmest Day
Saturday is a shopping day and a hike elsewhere, but the balcony still gets its due. Despite the robins singing by 4 AM, the overall activity is a bit underwhelming today. The star, without a doubt, is a singing Winter Wren that starts somewhere out beyond the confluence well before 7 AM. It gradually moves closer until it is right behind the low garage that blocks my view of Bald Eagle Creek.
I’ve heard Winter Wrens calling and singing all winter down by the cliffs, but this is the first time one has sung here, and I have to wonder whether it’s on the prowl for a mate. Whatever is going on, it doesn’t quiet down for at least half an hour.
After shopping and a hike to the crest of a sacred mountain that overlooks Valle Alegre, before work, I grab 40 minutes to scan the dark undersides of the building cumuli for raptors. The temperature is in the low 60s, and with a snowstorm looming and cold weather returning, it’s best to make a bit of hay.
This afternoon belongs to the Peregrine Falcon. Much as it would like to land on the taller comms tower, the wind is too strong, and it settles for its preferred perch on an easier landing spot behind, on the shorter tower. Every so often it launches into the sky, circling, and then occasionally, deep-diving at 100 miles an hour, then climbing up, circling, perching. The activity seems more for enjoyment than for hunting, and the pigeons seems to know it, as they fly about in pairs overhead, undeterred. At one point, the falcon does a long, shallow dive at three pigeon who are endeavoring to cross out through the Gap, but misses, and returns to circling rather low over my head.
Turkey Vultures are also out and about, tilting down the ridges and circling over the point of Sapsucker. In the far distance beyond the Gap, three Black Vultures kettle. A trio of Bald Eagles is also about—two adults and a juvenile, flying together up and down the ridges.
A few minutes before I head to work, I hear the screeches of the Hollywood Eagle. A pair of Red-tailed Hawks is courting over the point, a half-mile away.
Return to Gray
The week ends gray on gray, calm, seemingly much colder than the lower 40s that register on the thermometer. First off, it’s the neck of First Field. It’s been a while since I’ve had time to sit anywhere up on the mountain at dawn. My idea is that the blackberry-barberry patch must still attract a fair amount of activity, but I start to get cold feet.
Literally: the robins have been singing in town since 4 AM, but up here, it’s dead silent all the way to 6:40, and I forgot my hot broth. I’m about to give up and go sit closer to the houses, when a whisper from close at hand gives me pause. I sit back down, and then the deluge. White-throated Sparrow and Dark-eyed Junco shapes plummet down from the spruce grove above, while others zip up from the brambles to the birch trees. White-throats call and sing, and juncos fly about in small flocks, emitting their odd assortment of video game sound effects. Along the woods edge, an Eastern Towhee reeps loudly and insistently, some dozen times in all. Northern Cardinals sing from three directions, a White-crowned Sparrow flies over, and Golden-crowned Kinglets call. A Song Sparrow clanks.
All this happens in dead, leaden half-light, between 6:45 and 7. After that, it settles down to quiet again, except for the crows, who seem impervious to weather. How depressing it all might seem to someone who first goes out at 7:05 AM. I’m on a tight schedule today, so I head off for a quick circuit of the field as the woodpeckers wake up. Hairies, Downies, Red-bellieds, and Pileateds are all drumming, peek-ing, and cackling, with the latter’s drumroll still the wildest sound these woods can produce, I think.
At the catalpa corner, the noise of many sparrows blends together, with the random Field still about, and an American Tree Sparrow overhead. Back at the barn, a flock of five Trees gathers in a bush for a bit, more than I’ve seen together in years. Over toward the woods, a Mourning Doves coos loud, deep notes, a sound I definitely am not hearing in Tyrone.
Later, Dave mentions that he hears a Cooper’s Hawk making what he takes to be territorial noises up on the ridge.
There’s time for a quick walk to the pound in the mid-morning silence, but just six Mallards are there, restless and agitated.
After 5 PM it finally clears up, and not only robins but even a cardinal are still calling at 6 PM. We’ll see how all this spring activity fares with the return of real winter next week.