Birding Notes

When I first stepped outside this afternoon around 4:15, the trees around our house seemed quiet, with no hint of what was to come. The sky had recently cleared after a cloudy, gray morning and two days of rain, and it was warm, sunny and breezy. The woods still looked green, though many leaves had washed down in the rain. At first, I heard only the wind in the trees, a few Blue Jays, Titmice and Chickadees, and the rattle of a Red-bellied Woodpecker.

A Hairy Woodpecker announced its arrival among a stand of dead and dying pines and set to work. A Pine Warbler sang, and then I heard the call of a Summer Tanager somewhere nearby, but out of sight. Its soft, repeated pik-a-tuk was the first sign of what would turn out to be one of the most amazing hours of birding I’ve ever experienced.

Some movement in the branches of an oak turned out to be a Tennessee Warbler, giving occasional faint tssit calls. A small, quick-moving bird with a smooth, almost velvety olive back and wings, a white breast and belly, and a delicate, pale streak above its eye, it stayed in constant motion, mostly hidden among the foliage as it gleaned insects and spiders from under the leaves, often turning upside down, and occasionally emerging long enough for me to see it well – before it disappeared into the depths of a large dogwood tree.

As I turned away, a much larger, slender bird with a long tail flew into the top part of a tall young oak. It was mostly hidden among the leaves, but as it moved up higher, I could see a pale breast and a haughty profile with a large, curved bill – then it flew right into a branch in the white oak beside the deck where I was standing, and perched in full view – a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. It was silent, but gave me an unusually close-up view of its sleek shape, creamy white throat and breast, smooth brown back, and the dramatic underside of its long tail, black with big white spots. I could even see whiskers or bristles around the yellow bill, though I can find no reference to them in species accounts and descriptions.

Another small, compact bird in one of the oaks turned out to be a Chestnut-sided Warbler. With a greenish head and back, two yellowish wing bars, and a white eye ring, it was one of the easiest migrants to see, staying relatively low in the branches and often coming into full view as it darted from spot to spot. From that point on, the trees suddenly seemed to be filled with warblers and vireos, and for the next hour and a half or so, I couldn’t move fast enough to see them all: Yellow-throated Vireo, Blue-headed Vireo, and Bay-breasted, Yellow-throated, Magnolia, and Black-throated Green Warblers – and last, but most exciting for me, a vivid, close-up view of a Golden-winged Warbler. All were very active, many brightly colorful, and most were so intent on foraging that I was able to watch them for several minutes.

The Yellow-throated Warblers were perhaps the showiest of the group, frequently hawking insects from the ends of high branches in the oaks. Their heads were constantly turned up, showing off long necks, long thin bills, and flaming yellow throats, set off by ink-black markings around the face and eyes and down the sides. The Bay-breasted Warblers, in contrast, looked sturdy and rather stolid, moving much more deliberately through the branches to catch caterpillars, and then sitting quietly to eat each one. The ones I saw were males in handsome fall plumage, with greenish head and back, white wingbars, a yellowish face and subtle dark streak through the eye, a faint but distinctive pattern of streaks on the back, and a wash of reddish-brown on the flanks.

A Black-throated Green Warbler perched in the top of an oak as if posing, with its yellow face glowing in sunlight, and the black of its throat and upper breast bleeding down its sides in thick streaks. Caterpillars seemed to be the main attraction for both the Yellow-throated Vireo and Blue-headed Vireo, but also some flying insects. The Yellow-throated Vireo more often stayed screened in the foliage, and I only caught quick glances of its yellow throat, yellow spectacles, blue-gray wings with delicate bars, and white belly. The Blue-headed Vireo moved more often out into the open and stayed lower in the trees, moving from branch to branch, unmistakable with its slate-blue head and striking white spectacles.

Meanwhile, Magnolia Warblers fluttered like butterflies, flashing yellow rumps and white tail-bands, recognizable even from directly below, with their yellow breasts, and tails that are white underneath and tipped with a thick, dark charcoal band. There were so many birds that I felt as if I couldn’t move fast enough to see them all – but at the same time, it was hard to tear myself away from watching each one.

Just when I thought surely it couldn’t get any better, I saw a very brightly patterned bird curled around the leaves at the end of a low branch in a water oak. I’m sure my mouth fell open in disbelief as I noted each of the field marks – gray back, rich yellow-gold crown, white face, black mask and throat, and thick, gleaming gold bar on the wing – it was a Golden-winged Warbler, a life bird for me, and a songbird whose populations are in serious decline. It looked small and round and neat, a little ball of intense patterns of color, moving in an almost chickadee-like way as it probed and gleaned insects from the leaves, and it stayed in full view for several minutes.

Then suddenly, it was over. When the Golden-winged Warbler flew, I looked around, and watched two Yellow-throated Warblers hawking insects again. But when they disappeared, I could find no more. One minute they were there – the next, they were gone.

On a warm, cloudy, muggy morning, a lively female American Redstart brought a spark of color to the back deck, fanning her tail and flashing its bright yellow sides as she fluttered around the red blooms of geraniums, competing with two Tufted Titmice. She’s the first migrating warbler I’ve seen this season – though I haven’t been able to be out as often as usual lately, so I’ve almost certainly missed some earlier warblers passing through. Still, she looked like a pretty and promising opening flourish for the fall migration season.

Also this morning, I heard both the song and the calls of a Summer Tanager several times, a Pine Warbler singing as it made its way all around the edges of the woods, and several Carolina Wrens singing different songs back and forth to each other. An Eastern Wood Pewee continues to hunt from trees around the back yard and to give its soft, fall puh-WEE call. Three Brown-headed Nuthatches went from feeders to pine trees and back again, squeaking often. Two Phoebes called tsup, tsup, and a pair of Hairy Woodpeckers, a juvenile Red-bellied Woodpecker, and a pair of Downy Woodpeckers all worked steadily in several recently-dead or dying pines near the edge of our woods.

By afternoon, the sky had cleared, with only high, thin white clouds against the blue. Cicadas, grasshoppers and other insects sang loudly. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, male, female and juveniles, chased each other around the feeder, every now and then managing to actually stop for some nectar. A few Chimney Swifts passed overhead. I heard the scream of a soaring Red-tailed Hawk, and the rattle of a Red-bellied Woodpecker, and watched as a female Summer Tanager perched on an oak branch to eat a big fat caterpillar.

This afternoon, in hot, sunny weather, with a soft blue sky, small white clouds and a welcome strong warm breeze, a female Summer Tanager spent an hour or more foraging in the oaks and pines at the edge of the woods in our back yard, and feeding a begging juvenile Summer Tanager. The mother Tanager hunted steadily and fed the juvenile often.

I first saw her as a flash of warm yellow in the branches of a white oak, then she flew into a pine and spent most of her time in the pines. All-over yellow, with olive-drab wings and a long, thick tanager’s bill, she wasn’t particularly striking in appearance, but as I watched her, I admired her skill in hunting. Sometimes she gleaned insects or spiders from leaves – I watched her eat one caterpillar – but most of the time she caught flying insects in the air. Some might have been bees or wasps, which Summer Tanagers particularly like. Certainly there are plenty of all kinds of flying insects around right now!

At one point, she made a swift turn in the air and caught a moth-like flying insect, and took it to a branch, where she shook it against the branch before eating it. Another time, she caught a large-winged insect in mid-air and carried it to a branch, where I could see that it was a praying mantis. She seemed to strip off the wings and to rub the mantis against the branch, and this time the juvenile flew up beside her, quivered its wings, begging, and she fed the mantis to it.

Meanwhile, I heard an unfamiliar call. A kind of a whimpering wee-ooor-whee, low and soft, and after a while discovered that the call was being made by the juvenile Summer Tanager. I could see it quivering its wings among the leaves as it made the call. I watched the female feed the juvenile several times – she was working hard. Most of the time I saw the juvenile only from the back. It appeared light olive-brown, with only a hint of yellow, and sort of mottled in color.

It was a great day to be out. Two Eastern Wood Pewees continue to call their fall puh-wee repeatedly and one often hunts from the branches of pines at the edge of the woods. A pair of Hairy Woodpeckers continue to work steadily on some newly-dead pines just inside the woods. A handsome juvenile Red-bellied Woodpecker, two mature Red-bellied Woodpeckers, and a pair of Downy Woodpeckers also worked on the pines. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are at their most active, visiting the feeder constantly, checking out all the flowers around, and chasing each other all around the yard, zooming, chattering, making little clicking noises when they make contact, and occasionally managing to stop at the feeder for some nectar for a few quiet seconds.

This morning about 10:30, under a partly cloudy sky, a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk flew to a pine branch on the eastern edge of our yard. It sat there for three or four minutes, then flew across the edge of the woods very low and fast, weaving through the trees, and perched on a low branch just inside the woods where it was in full view, facing in my direction, for about five minutes. I could clearly see its fine, slender, compact shape, rich dark brown head and brown back, and dark brown streaks on a white breast. Its eyes were pale yellow, and it showed a large area of snowy-white under the tail. It turned its head often, looking around, and when it did, very faint streaking showed in the back of the neck.

The best part was that several times it called in a rich, mellow, very distinctive voice, sort of eeee-o. The calls were strong and clear, but were not at all screams. They had a smooth, mewing quality, surprisingly full and expressive – very different from the kek-kek-kek kind of calls I’ve heard from Cooper’s Hawks at other times. Each call was separate and given distinctly – not strung together or fast – but they were repeated several times.

The species accounts I found indicate that an eeeee-o call is given by juveniles begging for food. I didn’t see any adults – but one could easily have been somewhere in the woods nearby. The yellow eye is also mentioned in species accounts as typical of a young bird.

For most of the time as I watched it, the tail of the hawk was hidden by leaves, but finally it turned completely around on the branch so that I got a full back view, and could see the long tail, banded in gray and darker gray-brown, tipped in white and only very slightly rounded. Then the hawk leaned over from the branch and flew, staying close to the ground, across a small grassy clearing in a neighbor’s yard and into the woods again and out of sight.

The Cooper’s Hawk is a woodland raptor, roughly the size of a crow though very different in shape and appearance. Its rounded wings and long tail allow it to fly swiftly through trees in pursuit of smaller birds, rodents and other prey. It’s secretive and relatively seldom-seen, so I always feel lucky to see one – and to hear it call was especially impressive.

The song of a Blue Grosbeak, the mews of Gray Catbirds, and a Black Vulture sunning itself on a pole were highlights from a rather quiet late morning walk. It was cloudy, warm and humid, with very little bird activity. The Blue Grosbeak sang from a scraggly pecan tree on the edge of a vacant lot, across the road from the Old Field.

Big white and purple morning glories spill across the weeds in a roadside ditch now, and vines of tiny, deep red-orange morning glories twist through the ditch and up into thickets of ragweed, blackberries, kudzu, privet, poke weed, dead thistles, and grasses. Sleepy Orange and Cloudless Sulphur butterflies fly in and out of the weeds, purple stiff verbena blooms along the roadside, along with a few ragged dandelions, and there’s the too-sweet, grape-like scent of kudzu blooms in the air.

Mourning Doves and Mockingbirds sat on the wires this morning, the Mockingbirds quietly chasing each other in and out of the shrubs. Two Gray Catbirds mewed, but stayed hidden. Brown Thrashers called harsh thwacks. Chimney Swifts swooped overhead. Two Black Vultures perched on separate poles, one spreading its wings out and turning in the direction of the cloud-covered sun.

This morning began cloudy and warm, and with the song of an Eastern Wood-Pewee. I was sitting at the breakfast table, and when I heard it, went out onto the deck. It was in the branches of the big White Oak beside the deck, and I couldn’t see it, but it continued to sing. It sang its “fall song,” of just the puh-weee part, over and over, but once it added a sweet, descending wheee-oo.

This is the first time I’ve heard its song in several weeks. Although Eastern Wood-Pewees used to sing throughout the summer in our neighborhood, sitting in the branches of pecan trees over shady yards, their lazy, summery whistles are now uncommon, and I think this one is probably stopping by here as it begins to travel south for the winter. For the past year or two, we have had an Eastern Wood-Pewee visitor each spring and each fall, and usually they stay for a few days. So – I’m happy to hear its song.

This morning as I walked in light, showery rain, an Osprey sailed over me flying east to west, banking just long enough for me to see the pale body, dark markings on the long, slender wings, and the dark mask across the down-turned head. It seemed like an apparition in the gray, blurry light, especially because very few other birds were out, and the day was defined mostly by cool wind and dark clouds.

We came home to hot, sunny, humid weather early this week, but thanks to tropical storm Fay, now moving west across north Florida and already influencing our weather, today is cloudy, windy and a little cooler. Birds seem very quiet around the yard and in the neighborhood, though I still heard the calls of an Acadian Flycatcher in the woods on Tuesday. The Bluebird house is empty. Inside it, I found only the nest and one perfect aqua-blue egg that had never hatched. I’ve seen no sign of juveniles or parent Bluebirds since we returned, but hope maybe to see them soon. It’s amazing how much happens in one week. How much things can change, though I’ve been busy and haven’t yet had time to find out much about what’s different, or what’s happening now. Cicadas and grasshoppers still sing vigorously during the day, and it was especially nice to come back to the songs of Katydids at night – our consolation for the warm, humid southern summer nights.

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are busy around the feeder, and all around the yard, chasing each other and checking out anything red or pink or orange. Earlier in the week when it was sunny, the butterfly bush out back and the yellow lantana around the mailbox were both full of butterflies – Tiger Swallowtail, Black Swallowtail, Red-spotted Purple, Gulf Fritillary, Cloudless Sulphur, Fiery Skipper, and two lovely, lacy American Painted Ladies. Late Monday afternoon, a Hummingbird Moth was feeding in the lantana – a fascinating, rather plump-bodied moth with a broad, brushy tail and clear, reddish wings that whirr as it visits the flowers, so that it looks almost more like a tiny bird than a moth, and even makes a whirring sound similar to a hummingbird. This is the first one we’ve noticed here in a couple of years. They feed on flowers during the daytime and in twilight.

On a late morning walk, I watched the sky for Kites, but saw no soaring birds at all, except for one Turkey Vulture and one Black Vulture, and heard almost no birds except for Blue Jays and Goldfinches. But at one spot where there’s a thicket of pines, oaks, privet and vines across the road from the edge of a woodland that leads down to a creek, several Blue-gray Gnatcatchers were calling and flitting here and there among the leaves, flashing their long, silvery, white-edged tails, and one Red-eyed Vireo was calling its complaining Nyanh! from somewhere hidden among the foliage. I stopped for several minutes to watch, as Chimney Swifts chattered and swept overhead, and two Carolina Wrens sang nearby.

While we were out of town, our four-year-old granddaughter, Tallulah, spotted a Barred Owl sitting on the rail of our back deck early Saturday evening. Her father, Darby, took this picture through the window screen. The Owl flew before he could get a photo from outside – but they saw it well enough to identify. It stayed nearby in trees on the edge of the woods for the rest of Saturday evening, where Darby, Tallulah and our daughter-in-law, Jenny, saw it in two or three different spots.

I’ve been watching for it ever since we got back. So far it hasn’t come back to the deck or the nearby trees, and we haven’t heard it calling. But I’m still hoping. And I’m proud of Tallulah’s sharp eyes and interest in birds! She was the one who saw it first, and she knew immediately it was an owl.

The ghostly-white and pale pink stems pushed up through dark, damp soil and leaf litter on the roadside, among weeds, mushrooms, and the roots of trees. Waxy-white, tulip-shaped flowers on the top of each translucent stem bent over like bowed heads as they emerged from the dirt then, as they matured, straightened up and eventually opened their petals to reveal pink fruits in the center, shaped like tiny amphorae.

At first we thought these strange-looking formations were fungi, but then learned they were Indian Pipes – saprophytic flowering plants that contain no chlorophyll and get their nourishment through a fungal relationship associated with the roots of other plants, especially trees. They’re also sometimes known as Ghost Flowers or Corpse Plants.

We found several different clusters of Indian Pipes along the road that circles around Dublin Lake in New Hampshire. Some were just beginning to push their nodding, ghostly heads up through the soil; others were standing on taller stems, with flowers still drooping over. One cluster – shown in these photos – stood about 10 inches tall, with the flowers erect, and white or pale-pink petals open to reveal the pink fruits.