the modest birder(7) High Summer or The Silence of the Songbirds

This 2nd part of my title is actually the title of a book that, some 40 years after Rachel Carson takes up the theme of Silent Spring. This blog is a play on words reflecting the gradual dying away of the songs that were challenging my impaired hearing in May and June. But it wasn't only the disappearance of their sounds, the birds themselves were leaving and by the 3d week in August. Because of a very social summer with lengthy visits of my partners immediate family (her 89 year old father stayed for 2 months) we did not go anywhere; my hours in the armchair produced only an occasional foraging family of Chickadees or Titmice.

This gradual departure from their breeding area here occurs every summer and thus should not bother me, particularly as this spring more birds and species were around that in previous years. Yet it may be a metaphor for the decline of songbirds in general. Thus when Charles, my birding buddy first introduced me to the Belleplain State Forest in N.J. in the '90s, we could be sure that on its famous dirt road of hearing and seeing several Ovenbirds, at least 2 each of Yellow Throated, Prothonetary, Hooded, Lousiana Waterthrush, Pine and Wormeating Warblers, while there was an abundance of Woodthrushes, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and Towhees. Those numbers seem like remarkable now and on recent visits in April and May it seems like luck if we hear a Wormeating or Hooded Warbler. A Prothonetary is still a sure bet and so are 2 singing Pine Warblers, but this spring we did not hear an Ovenbird on three different visits, nor did we hear one in the 2 woods in Delaware that were "sure" spots before. We also remarked on the fairly steady number of Red-eyed Vireos while the White-eyed were declining. The silences were gradual, i.e. from 3 singing birds in one year it went to two or even one the next and then there were none. On one recent visit we met a member of the Cape May Observatory staff in Belleplain and she explained the silence by the fact that we were in early May when the birds were nesting and no longer singing all morning. Not only were our "own" birds still singing every day but quite a few were singing the same week in Delaware. Moreover we had been in Belleplain at the beginning and end of April and did not hear the numbers we had been used to. Why there were more species in "our" woods I can't explain unless nearby habitats have been altered and the establishment of the Perkiomen and Schuylkill Rivers as Scenic Rivers provides a refuge. But that doesn't account for the "emptying" woods of Belleplain or Delaware which have not been disturbed. Could it be that their songbirds migrated at a time when they were hit by a hurricane, while "our" Pennsylvania birds missed such storms? Since hope springs eternal, if the declines are weather related, recovery over a few years may be possible as was the case of the Monarch butterfly after the devastating frosts in their wintering quarters several years ago. Interestingly enough the current issue of the Nature Conservancy's periodical cites a report on the status of the bird population with a graph that shows a steady increase for wetland habitats and a decline for all others including forest birds. The alteration in habitats both in the breeding and wintering regions is an important factor but dangers during migration also play an important role.

This has been the rainiest Spring and Summer (so far, with 8" in August alone that were nicely spread over the month without any 90 degree days) that I can remember, especially after the years of very dry (not to say droughts) July through September years since we moved here in 1999. It made for great vegetable harvests (even with the visits of a groundhog until it was hit by a car in early August) and a rabbit (that produced at least on baby which was munching on the parsley this morning). We had more tomatoes from 12 plants than any other year when we might have 15+ plants, and they are bigger an juicier for excellent tomates a la provencale. We spent many hours weeding and clipping as everything kept on growing, for example I already made pesto 2 times and enough for 9 small containers for the freezer. The native red honeysuckle and the European cream colored one produced more flowers which kept the Hummingbird(s?) coming back. Higher temperatures aside, this looked like a Dutch summer; even the Holsteins on the neighboring farm could graze all summer and during the rain they created a nostalgic image from my childhood by standing together under the trees.

The rains may have increased the food supply. The creek hardly ever was dry and throughout little puddles remained. This could account for the continued presence of Phoebes and Pewees around the creek area where there a several snags in a relatively open area. Last week there was even one migrant that looked like a Least or Acadian Flycatcher. That open area also allows me to see the occasional flitting woodpecker (mostly Red-bellieds). Unfortunately, where in dry summers the leaves began to wither and even fall off, the leaf clusters now are still so large and compact that a flitting bird disappears as soon as it lands; as all of them look greyish brown there's little chance of identifying them. Even a calling Baltimore Oriole managed to hide for minutes at a time.

On a July 2 birding trip to Delaware - even that in an armchair as Charles has a very comfortable "compact" SVU - we heard brief calls of a Towhee, 2 Red-eyed Vireos and 2 short songs of a Woodthrush, but my diary notes the sweet sound of the latter's song down our creek in the silence of a car-less evening through the 10th. The only bird that sings regularly and throughout the day are mostly one but sometimes two Carolina Wrens and one is singing right now. But the oddity has been a towhee that sang each evening at dusk close to the house from the end of July until August 12, after that there was a week of its occasional calling. On an August 6 Delaware trip there were a rather surprising number of birds singing, all of them intermittingly with a Blue Grossbeak most insistent. A Red-eyed Vireo was feeding a fully fledged Cowbird. The "surprise" may be because in August we are usually in Maine. The others were a Chipping, Song and Swamp Sparrow. Actually a Song has also been singing here, mostly one strophe at great intervals through August 15 and the same is true for a Yellow Warbler that comes up along the creek from the Perkiomen. A week later a Red-Eyed Vireo sang once in a while near the creek for two days, obviously an early migrant.

In addition to foraging Chickadees there was some visible activity from two Chipping Sparrows, one of which gleaned the branches warbler style and every so often sallied forth like a flycatcher. Most astounding was the similar behavior of a Hummingbird that after feeding on a European honeysuckle and hawking gnats while hovering near the tips of the cedars landed in the leafless tip of a hickory twig from which it sallied forth also like a flycatcher to return to the same perch. It actually turned its head in several directions before going after an insect and one time returned with a lacy insect in its long beak. I don't know whether it was a female of an immature (I haven't seen a male since the beginning of July). That Hummingbird also foraged on the aphids on the roses, circling around just below the flowers. This technique was also practiced by several Goldfinches although they mostly fed on the ants that walked in the hearts of the gloriosa daisies and black-eyed susans.

During our August stays in Maine early migrants began to show up in the wood edge next to our balcony and sometimes there was real activity above the lounge chairs on the rocks of the my daughter's rental cottage located on the Sheepscot River. In the 1970s, when we rented a cottage on the west-side of the Damariscotta River, whose property included an old ice pond of several acres, I was in my early years of (U.S.) "warbling" and had to rely on my own identifications by means of the Peterson. I saw more species than breed in Maine or Canada, but I did know that in the last week of August and the first of September, lots of warblers and other songbirds were on the move and I did recognize adults, worn though their plumage might have been. In fact, last year as we reach the river's edge by way of the trail on the other side of the ice pond several confusing fall warblers were foraging above the cliffs in the over hanging branches, one a Black-throated Blue. Some of this migration went on while a resident Yellow Warbler, a Savannah Sparrow and a Cardinal were still singing around our rental place as if it was May.

This summer I noticed an early migration in our own woods on August 21. As I was sitting in my armchair drinking my coffee I suddenly became aware that the flower border needed weeding badly. At about 9am, while I was weeding, a nuthatch was rummaging in an oak to my left. I didn't pay attention because the week before a family of White-breasted had been foraging all around the house and another day I was fooled by a few Blue Jays who were making similar guteral noises as they were feeding in the opper stories. But I looked up when a Flicker called closer to the road. The first thing I saw was that the nuthatch was a Red-breasted and thus I paid attention to the other birds appearing from the creek and across the road, the typical route of Fall migrants. It had been a hot and humid week and several evenings there had been a passing thunder storm to our South, including a serious one with 1/2" of rain in 30 minutes the night before. The Flicker heralded a small mixed flock of song birds, most of which were Chickadees and Titmice but there were obviously several warblers, only two of which stayed on bare spots where the storm had downed twigs and leaves. One, it stayed in view the longest, looked at first like a Black and White but it did not behave like one; instead it gleaned the under side of leaves, even sallying up to reach them. For about a minute it even sat still before it rushed on to catch up with the flock that had moved into the sunlight. I spent longer with my warbler book than I had with this flock to be reasonably sure that this bird was a Baybreasted rather than a Blackpol or a Black and White.

Today, the 8/31, two immature Hummingbirds were hovering about the red geraniums that, Alas. had been hybridized into sterility and probably have no honey. I brought their seeds from France in 1983 because their vermilion red was striking and different from any red available on American plants. I have been propagating them from cuttings ever since; this year I had some twenty plants and saved 15 for our own garden where they make lively splashes to the confusion of Hummers and butterflies alike.

From the middle of August on there was a flock of some 20 Robins that arrived each afternoon and stayed around scurrying from the ground into the bushes and sometimes up into the trees. After about one hour or more they left. Most of them were juveniles and some looked "unkempt" like newly independent fledglings. The end of August is marked by an annual invasion of Grackles. Like the Robins, they come from the South (the Schuylkill?) and forage, rather noisily in the top of the trees, primarily in the hickories. It's the underside of the leaves they are interested in and they reach from their perch, not infrequently loosing their balance. Whatever they are after appears attached to the leaves for they probe often forcefully enough to tear off a leaf. Yesterday evening there were at least 50 birds. Normally they hang around evenings, but occasionally they appear at other times. They always move on towards the Perkiomen. By the second week of September they tend to be gone.