the modest birder (6): May days: reflections

5/15/09. Because two of my Dutch nieces and husbands came to visit and in between my own children (48 and 44) came or are coming to visit, I kept the feeders going, although I didn't refill the nijer tube once it was empty. The idea was to have them see the birds that are breeding nearby in the woods close up. It was only partially successful, because the insect eaters didn't bother as they could eat their fill in the woods and the Goldfinches gave up a few days after the nijer was gone; they too were gleaning the leaves (and by the end of the month a male was singing). I noticed that Catbirds came to feed on the millet on the ground, which was the first time I saw them eating seeds. The only steady visitors were 2 pairs of Cardinals, one Song, one Chipping and one Field Sparrow at a time (the partner presumable on the nest) and once in a while a solitary Chickadee or Titmouse. The male Song Sparrow sings from the wires above the road (replacing the Bluebird that was there in April and the 1st week of May) or from a drooping branch of my crab apple and seems to breed in the bushes next to my neighbor's woodpile. The Field sparrow sings on the edge of the still unmowed field across the road, the Chipping Sparrow disappears into the yard to the South, probably for the brush up the creek. It breeds far enough away for the song to be out of (my) hearing.

5-31-09. My kids just left after a weekend of hard work in around the place, primarily in distributing several cubic yards of mulch. It's amazing how much and quickly relatively young legs can dispose of a large pile up and down the slopes.

The ubiquitous multiflora roses have been competing with the blackberries in the hedgerows. The roses are a real "pest" but call a pest a rose and never smelled a pest as sweet. At one corner on the way to the post office, chicory was in full bloom. My own roses are showing color at the points of their buds and I noticed the Chickadees gorging on the aphids on the Souvenir de Malmaison (one of which, in full bloom, I cut for a bouquet of blue lupines for my daughter's room. We both have a thing for Maine's lupines from whose seeds I grow mine). The yellow lady slippers are pretty glorious this year as are the European primroses (3 kinds). Also in bloom throughout the month are pale yellow upright potentillas (P.recta - an alien), which I first found at 15 or so in the Netherlands and had identified by the Curator of Thijsse's Hof (named after the Dutch nature writer, my boyhood hero), who told me it was a Canadian invasive whose seeds came with the grain imports. I didn't ever seen it again until it popped up last year together with St. Janswort, a European import, both of them undoubtedly a "side effect" of the sifted topsoil I spread.

I'm having a real issue with the description (verbal rendering) of bird song in the different guides. One of the favorite lines is: "song much like a robin's" which is used for several thrushes, the Rose-breasted and Blackheaded Grossbeaks (the latter's maybe confused with that of the Hepatic Tanager where they overlap) and the Scarlet and Summer Tanagers. This May, e.g. on the 16th, as I was enjoying my kid's doing some heavy gardening chores, there was a real chorus around 11 am, much of it in the woods and thick brush up and down the creek. I could distinguish at least 8 different songs: Towhee, Song Sparrow, Catbird, House Wren, Titmouse, Cardinal, Robin and several "robin-like" songs. One was clearer and higher with less of the Robin's repeated "tsilping" and as a few minutes later I saw a female Rose-breasted that was likely the male singing. Another, even less "robin-like" and both sharper and louder I heard again a week later in the woods at Bombay Hook and could see the singer, a Scarlet Tanager (which is a transient here in some years [but on June 16 and June 30 a male was foraging within clear sight of my armchair in the middle stories of the hickories]); that song actually reminds of some of the opening notes of the much varied song of the European Nightingale that we heard coming down the chimney of the old fireplace in the Spring of '91 in Rosia, Tuscany as well as the many Junes in Volx in the Provence.

Earlier in the week, a Yellow-billed Cuckoo was enjoying the tent-caterpillars that are everywhere, even though I got rid of about ten nests that were in reach. Not even the several pairs of Orioles are making a dent it seems, though the abundance of food seems to be celebrated in their frequent and clear song. As I sat on the bench and looked directly up I noticed what looked like a female Oriole from below but then it acted as a flycatcher and when it landed in a different profile I saw the head of a Great-crested Flycatcher; there were two of them it appeared and the next day both of them used the same perch in a hickory although one hawk between that perch and the dogwood near the house and the other between the perch and an oak down the slope. Their efforts were well rewarded.

The Cardinals present(ed) a puzzle. Two pairs appeared together and often at the same time in which case one male chased the other and one female chased her competitor(?). But they are clearly not yet having eggs or hatchlings to worry about. Some mornings there are several males singing. The third pair apparently does have a nest, for the male is singing down to the creek on the other side of the road while the two pairs are carrying on near the feeders [after June 6 these pairs either moved on or have started to breed, for occasionally I see a single Cardinal foraging in one area or another. By June 16 2 males are singing regularly from opposite sides of the woods].

The other puzzle I have is that none of my three birdhouses is being used, even though there is a pair of Chickadees, one of Titmice and since the middle of the month also a (the) pair of House Wrens. A Chickadee inspected the flowerpot on the porch at the end of April and so did the Wren when it arrived. All three species are steady singers and visitors, but the Wren appears to have settled for the wood piles of my neighbor and the Chickadees disappear up the creek; the Titmice are all over the place although the male sings mostly down the creek [on June 20 the pair was in an out of a birdhouse on a white oak near the road].

All month a pair of Rubythroats has been around, at first mostly a female and later mostly a male. On both sides of the front door I have a native red honeysuckle and on the porch I have a European cream colored one (which is blooming now, the red one having finished last week). In the woods there's the invasive Japanese honeysuckle that started to bloom on the 27th. But the Hummers visited the columbines (blue, brownish pink, dark violet as well as the native) by preference it seemed. They also fluttered around the red azaleas, though never for long. When my kids were moving the mulch I watch the female hovering at the end of the twigs of a ten foot juniper, probably eating midgets that were also pestering me. Most remarkably -as well as amusingly - the female appeared one morning as I was hand-watering the herb terrace with a high spray. The sun came from behind me creating a pretty clear rainbow which the Hummer must have seen from the other side as it hovered on the edge of the spray as long as I kept it in the air and it moved with the rainbow when I changed the direction of the water. Since then it rained enough so I did not have to water and there was not enough sun while I was around to repeat the experiment (which I had first tried out last year throught the dry spells in June). I don't know where they nest, they behave as occasional, if regular, visitors and although I carefully inspected the naked branches during the winter with my binoculars I never found a nest. I don't actually know how wide their feeding range is.

On May 3 a Siskin and a White-throat still around, on 5/8-11 an immat. White-Winged Crossbill.

Siskin still on the 10th and 17th. The Crossbill presented me with a real identification challenge. The first two times I only had a fleeting view of it, a brownish bird with a muted orange body flitting from a juniper on the herb terrace to the white pines in the hedgerow that forms the southern border. Sibley wasn't very helpful as I checked all the illustration of birds that were smaller than a Robin and larger than a Titmouse, about the size of a Bluebird (one was hawking from a bare branch between the first two sightings). The Nat. Geogr. Complete Birds has a photograph of an orangy female Bluebird shot in Carolina and I opted for that bird when a 3d time it appeared and I noticed two distinct white wing bars as the bird worked through the juniper. Then it looked most like the Complete Birds' picture of an immature White-winged Crossbill. This appeared most likely, for not only was our resident female Bluebird not like the Carolina one, but the mystery bird never behaved like a Bluebird which prefer perches of bare branches to hawk from low in the grass. It also was not quite the same size and it had a more elegant "jizz." Moreover there had been and still were Crossbills seen all around in a circle of about a 15 mile radius and as close a 7 miles.

By the 2nd week of the month the trees, even the ashes, had completely leafed out and enclosed the gardens. The houses of the 3 neighbors were barely visible and the last flowering of the dogwoods that had provided a half-circle of brilliant light from my armchair was hidden. The flitting birds were obscured as soon as the landed and only their sounds helped locate them. "Fortunately" the droughts of the last few summers have left many dead branches in the higher stories from which the Pewees and Great Crested can catch their prey and the Phoebes have their twigs lower down. The "holes" in the trees also allow me to observe the different woodpeckers (2 pairs of Downies, 1 smaller than the other), an occasional Hairy (both male and female) and the Red-bellies (3 at least); a pair of Flickers hangs around down the creek across the road where the male makes a frequent loud racket and one morning they were chasing each other around the base of one of our hickories. By the end of the month everything looked like summer, all of the spring tints of green gone: an ideal hunting habitat for a male Cooper's that swooped down on the ground feeding mourning doves and Robins (without much success). And also for a large Crow that sneaked through the low brush where it remained unobserved; it disappeared for a moment and then fled before a racket of Robins and Cardinals in pursuit; the Crow carrying a fuzzy hatchling in its much too large beak.

First arrival dates for May:

Catbirds (1)

Baltimore Oriole (1)

Black-billed Cuckoo (5) they were around on all the bird-alerts, transient

Woodthrush (6, singing)

Rose-breasted Grosbeak, female (6, male on 4/29)

Black and White Warbler (7) transient

Black-throated Blue W. (7, on singing on 5/16) transient

Ruby-throated Hummingbird (8)

Pee-wee (8)

Purple Martins (8) over field across the road

Chestnut-sided W. (18)

Swifts (19) over farm field

Golden-Winged (Brewster's) W. (20) transient

Warbling Vireo (20) transient

Blackpoll W. (20) transient

Yellow-rumped W. (since middle April, but one singing 5/23)

Yellow-billed Cuckoo (26) transient