the modest birder (9) Five Octobers

Of the "Autumn migration" months, October brings the most activity to our woods with several mini "fall outs" of birds that stopped when they encounter inclement weather (a frequent occurrence this time) and hang around to forage while waiting for a better day or birds that came to the end of a night's trajectory when they see an uninviting geographic feature before them. Well known are the fall outs at Cape May, NJ, where the migrants stop before facing the water crossing; we may benefit from the sea of lights that is the greater Philadelphia area for birds that followed the glimmering lines of the Perkiomen and Schuylkill River watersheds.

As I checked my diaries since 2005, I found that the variety of visitors appears greatest in this month. Quite a few return but there are also some "one offs." For example, among the "firsts" on the yard-list is a male Goshawk (10-10-08) which I worried over for some time as it is not only an unusual migrant at the several hawk watches but typically a November bird. Yet I have seen many of them at both Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania and at Cape May where one was hunting at the edge of the woods across a pond and then landed in plain sight on a bare branch of a nearby tree. In the early 1970s when we were in a cottage on the Damariscotta River in Maine a pair bred on an Island across the cove and I once saw it catch a Kingfisher. For several days I observed the parents at the nest which held two young almost ready to fledge. The Goshawk is also a European bird which I knew from the autumn dunes along the coast and having seen them hunt over the heath in our then only National Park in the center of the country. I made up my mind with the help of 2 Cooper's Hawks, one a male, the other a female that came by in the next few days. The male Cooper's is rather smaller than a Goshawk which may be the size of a female Cooper's (among this family of Hawks - the Accipiters - females are significantly bigger and browner than the males that as adults have a blueish back and light body). The profile of a sitting accipiter is different from other hawks, they have squarer shoulders and sleek bodies with a long many banded tail. The other "vagrant" was a Long-eared Owl that was calling on the morning of the 10th in '06 when I was leaving at 5.30 for a birding trip to Delaware; it stayed for three days. It was located in a narrow hemlock that had grown along an old oak's trunk; it now reaches about 2/3s up. Interestingly enough the hairdresser that still cuts my hair after having offered to take me on when she was an upstairs neighbor some 30 years ago, told me in the same week about an owl in her tall arborvitae hedge on a park like street in the middle of Phoenixville. Eager to find a new owl - she had seen it on the edge of her goldfish pond - I checked it out to find it was another Long-eared. Other one time events were a flock of Snow geese (10-7-07) that flew towards the Schuylkill where it forms an elongated lake above a dam, a Northern Harrier over the field across the road (together with two Black Vultures (10-2-06), a Kingfisher over the rain swollen creek (which makes a small pond above the dam a previous owner put in so his kids could skate) on 10-30-03 and among "firsts" are a Broad-winged Hawk (10-6-08), a Golden-crowned Kinglet on 10-7-99), a Winter Wren on 10-23-08, and a Warbling Vireo on 10-2-08).

Most "waves" are announced by one or more flickers and like other woodpeckers, including the occasional Sapsucker and smaller passerines they do not stick around even though several, for ex. Brown Creepers, White-breasted Nuthatches and a Sapsucker or two are among our regular winter residents. But those seem not to arrive until the end of the month and most likely in early November. The most typical winter birds like Juncos and White-throated Sparrows arrived on Oct. 28 in 2005 and 2007 and I haven't seen them this year so far (10/25) although they have been seen in Cape May on a regular basis for about 2 weeks and I saw several White-throats there myself (together with some White-crowneds and a Clay-colored).

For some reason the October birds begin to forage in our woods around noon and unlike the September migrants the do not move up the creek high in the tree line across the road and from there into the edge of our trees, instead they spread out everywhere and descend lower with not a few continuing farther up the creek, but, like the September flocks they are gone in about an hour. Recently I have been able to see them better as the stormy and rainy weather has brought down many leaves and from time to time they come close to the house so I can observe them without binoculars. The largest flocks that I have seen tend to be at the end of the month; there were about 30 on Oct. 22, 2005 after 2 rainy days; about 40, not including some 50 crows, on Oct. 28, 2007 that included Cedar Waxwings 5 Cardinals and at least 3 Bluebirds and on 10-31-08 (temp. 29-59) after a cool, cloudy and windy week there were about 50 birds among which several Yellow Rump and 1 Black and White Warblers, a Hermit Thrush, 2 Hairy Woodpeckers, a Brown Creeper, as well a fly overs of a Sharp-shinned Hawk, a Kestrel and an Osprey. But 2008 had some earlier fall-outs as well. On the 3d, after 2 days of clouds and drizzle there were 2 "wavelets" of some 50+ birds all together with 5 Bluebirds, 2 Phoebes, 5+ Yellow Rumps, 6+ Black-throated Greens, several Prairies, 1 Palm, 1 or 2 Blackpolls, 1 Magnolia and 1 Tennessee, making it our best warbler day ever. On Oct. 9, a cloudy and mild day after some early morning drizzle (thus not a typical weather pattern) there were some 20 birds in the morning and some 15 more later in the afternoon (most of which were tree huggers).

This year so far the best day has been the Fourteenth after two grayish days (the 11th might have been good too after 2 drizzly days but we left before daybreak for Cape May where it was a great migration day with 9 different warblers (incl. maybe 1,000 Yellow Rumps, sometimes 25+ on one small tree). The 14th may have been good because there was snow to the North of Pennsylvania the day before. I made an effort to be as precise as possible and identified at least 58 birds of 23 species. Some, like the Bluebirds, Robins or Downies kept disappearing into the neighbors' trees and because I saw some of them come back I only wrote down the number of a species when I saw them at one time. The outstanding birds were a White-eyed Vireo, a Golden-crowned Kinglet and a Tennessee Warbler.

Several days there have been small groups of Robins going back and forth between out 7 dogwoods and the dogwoods across the creek (where there is also a row of native viburnums). They are pretty rough while eating the berries, shaking the branches as if a squirrel is at work, but they appear to select only the ripest berries from each of the little bunches. In past years (when we had fewer berries) I did not notice this and then there would be a flock of maybe 30 at the end of October that completely stripped all our dogwoods in less than a morning. Even now (10/25) 2 of the oldest trees still have more fruit than they had in past autumns. The reason why I watched this so closely is that this year the dogwoods began to turn color at the end of September and very slowly so that the vibrant red fruit stood out in the early morning sun against dark greens, greens with russet spots, and now against a reddish brown; the dogwood in front of our bedroom, seen from my armchair in the living room is offset by the yellow ochres of a hickory, the feathery light green of a white pine and the remarkable sienna's of a Japanese maple. In the afternoon the colors, back lighted by the descending sun, are even more spectacular, approaching the gaudy. And right now yellows are also appearing in the leaves, which is odd as all the other dogwoods that have not yet lost their leaves are rather uniformly red, almost carmine, perhaps because they grow mostly in the shadow of taller trees. Sadly enough, for some reason, nearly all the dogwoods do not have next years' flowers in bud. Was there too much rain or can't they set buds at the same time as they are producing as many berries as this year? It would be bad news for next fall's migrants.

Today, 10-31-09, gusts from the South are bringing blizzards of leaves from the woods, they rush almost horizontally through the baring branches until the wind dies, as suddenly as it came up, and the carpet on the ground is hiding the new growth of the stubborn seedlings that I whacked last month, obviously in vain. I had already noticed that the knobs, formed barely underground after years of whacking and many of which I had lobbed off, were sending up new growth from lower down. There are only crows, chased by the wind against the gray skies. And Canada Geese that fly back and forth from the adjacent farm to nearby cornfields. Their numbers have been increasing almost daily and by now it appears that there are more than 100 in and around the farm pond, the average wintering number.

It is remarkable how soon the colors disappeared, even in the leaves that are still hanging on. We have had some 5" of rain in the last 10 days, most of it in drizzles or soft rain but once or twice an inch in a few hours; it made the leaves saturated with color last Sunday and Monday when there was some sun, but during the next rains all brilliance was lost, even in the newly fallen leaves that I picked up as I used to do with my daughter when she was the age of her youngest child. Several of the hickories have leaves that are withered and a sullen brown, those near the creek are of a copper that badly needs polishing. Only the red oaks, always the last to color - and to shed - are still doing justice to their name. The dogwood in front of our bedroom is also loosing its leaves and, surprisingly, the remaining ones have turned lighter so that the rubied berries shine brightly in the rain. Unexpectedly, in the perspective opened by the leafless trees a large catalpa is revealed farther up the creek, a dome of green and yellow chartreuse.

The leaves gone it would be easy to see the birds, if there were any. Tomorrow may be a good day as the storm is said to depart. But tomorrow is November.


I read this in the first week of November 2014 because I was struck by the lack of birds in both Sept. and Oct. (no warblers!) and remembered better months in the past. Sandy, my birding buddy, remarked on the absence of passerines in his yard when we found hardly any at the normally good spots on a trip to Delaware. Sept. was hot and dry and even October brought less than the normal rain. Maybe that accounted for the lack of birds. I just put up the feeders and the usual suspects are around so perhaps the rest of the year will make up for the previous 2 months.