Birding Notes

While we were on Kiawah in mid March, Ospreys seemed to be right in the middle of claiming and defending territories, often disputing claim to nest sites. So they were vocal and active, and we saw and heard them often.

This is one of five Osprey nests we saw, all easily visible from trails, bike paths or a road. This particular nest was in an area not far from a large home under construction, surrounded by woods and marsh, and the Osprey pair were coming and going, working on their nest despite a great deal of construction noise.

Late in the afternoon on a sunny, warm day, a flock of Red Knots flew to a sandbar emerging as the tide went out, along the beach on Kiawah. They flew in a close, dense flock, moving as one, not directly, but fast and turning often, one way, then another, flashing white, then rosy brown, rising and falling, rippling and dipping, in fluid, symphonic motion that’s a joy to watch. It’s almost like watching thoughts or dreams in flight, showing brightness, shadows, certainty and doubt, fluctuating, settling, and rising again.

They approached from over the water, flew to the sandbar, touched briefly down – and flew back up – touched down – and flew up again, and finally settled on the sand, filtering down like leaves falling out of a wind. I’m not good at estimating numbers, but there were several hundred in the flock – a small flock compared to the huge gatherings of thousands of Red Knots observed in other places, especially in the Delaware Bay area each spring.

Red Knots are plump, rather large sandpipers with dark straight bills. Most of these were still in drab, grayish winter plumage, but a few showed a ruddy rash of red on the upper breast, starting to change into the robin-red breast, throat and face of spring. Maybe because this was near the end of day, they were not feeding as intently as usual. Several began bathing – stepping off the sandbar into shallow wavelets and dipping into the water, shaking, then stepping back onto the sand and preening.

A tapestry in motion, the hundreds of birds were almost dizzying to watch, with both birds and water around them moving. Shallow waves kept lapping in, gently breaking, rippling and flowing, and the knots themselves were in constant motion, some feeding, some bathing, some preening, some walking, some rising restlessly on wings, then settling back down, not flying, but never still.

Four or five Willets fed on the edges of the flock, while two Ring-billed Gulls stood stolidly among them, looking aloof and a little annoyed at all the bustling around them. I’m sure that’s not at all how they felt – who knows? – but that’s how they looked. And off the sandbar, at the edge of the waves near where I stood, a Ruddy Turnstone searched for food.

Red Knots are of particular concern because their population numbers appear to be decreasing dramatically. Known for making one of the longest annual migrations of any bird, Red Knots fly more than 9,000 miles from the Arctic to southern South America – almost 20,000 miles round trip each year. During these migrations, they concentrate in very large, dense flocks and depend heavily on food in traditional stopover areas, such as the Delaware Bay, where they feed on the eggs of horseshoe crabs during spring migration. Over-harvesting of horseshoe crabs is thought to be responsible, in part, for a severe decline in Red Knot populations, though there are also other threats to their survival.

“If recent trends continue, the eastern Red Knot will, by 2020, follow the Passenger Pigeon into the mists of memory,” writes ecologist and author Carl Safina, in his remarkable book, The View from Lazy Point, which I was reading in the evenings during our trip to Kiawah.*

Knowing that Red Knots are in this kind of peril makes seeing a flock like this even more amazing and special, and I watched them for a very long time before turning to go.

Walking back down the beach toward home, I passed several Sanderlings, a few Dunlins, four Semipalmated Plovers and one handsome Black-bellied Plover. Brown Pelicans and Forster’s Terns flew over the water.

Then – I came to one lone, solitary Red Knot, feeding at the edge of the surf, and I stopped to look at it closely and wonder if I was wrong about what it was – why would one Red Knot be alone? Why was it not with a flock? But it was undeniably a Red Knot, off on its own, a small puzzle – though it’s not the first time I’ve seen one alone like this, and maybe it’s really not unusual at all.

*Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point, 2011, page 139.

Late in the afternoon on a breezy day that had been mostly sunny, our last day on Kiawah, a part of the beach was shrouded in fog. The tide was high, and beginning to turn as I stepped off the boardwalk and headed east, into a sharp, cool wind. Forster’s Terns hovered, flashed white in the fog, and plunged into the water. Many Forster’s Terns. They were lined up, widely spaced, like airplanes waiting to land, just beyond the breaking waves, all along the edge of the surf where it was still deep enough for fish – and beyond that line was another and another – as far as I could see, more terns than I’ve ever seen at one time before. And although they were all in constant, flurried motion, altogether they formed an image, a whole, that seemed suspended in time. Facing into the wind, they hovered and plunged, over and over, seeming to keep a certain equal, constant amount of space among them. My whole view of the ocean was a foggy, mystical gray, dotted with the glistening white wings of terns over choppy waves.

As I walked, the fog lifted or maybe it drifted back down the beach, blown away by the wind, leaving sunshine and a big open blue sky again, and it became even more clear how very many terns there were, mostly Forster’s, beginning with a line along the edge of the waves, and more and more further out. I could easily count three dozen or more at a time – but have no estimate of how many there might have been in all.

A Forster’s Tern in flight is crisp, quick, very animated. Although I trust the Sibley Guide to Birds and its description that they are less graceful than Common Terns, I don’t have them both to compare – and in the winter months here, the Forster’s is, for me, a familiar delight. Its pale gray upper wings are edged with white that gleams and looks silvery. Like all terns, they are graceful flyers, with slender, pointed wings and long, trailing, deeply forked white-edged tails.

Several Laughing Gulls came flying together, sailing fast and low over the waves, almost skimming the water, flying toward the east. They were followed by another group of Laughing Gulls and another and another, maybe six, seven or eight together each time. A few Double-crested Cormorants swam in the water among the fishing terns, riding the swells of the waves, and disappearing under the surface when they dived. A scattering of Ring-billed Gulls and larger Herring Gulls stood on the sand. Sanderlings scurried along the rippled edge of the waves, and one small group of Sanderlings stood still, some preening, some resting on one leg – it seemed unusual to see the busy little sandpipers at rest. Four Semipalmated Plovers scurried around in the sand further away from the water.

I came to a group of a dozen or more Forster’s Terns standing on the beach, on the sand just at the edge of the tide, with the water sometimes rippling up over their feet and making them shift a little. They seemed to be gathering as the tide went out. More flew in as I watched, one or two at a time and the group gradually got larger. They stood facing into the wind, toward the east. Some preened. In spring plumage, Forster’s are medium-sized terns, mostly white with black caps, short orange legs and pointed orange bills with black tips. These terns were a mixture. A few still showed the black mask of winter plumage, though most had full or partial caps – some had a sort of speckled black nape. Some had orange and black bills, while others still looked all winter-black.

I watched them for several minutes as more and more flew in and settled into place among the group, and meanwhile, offshore, many other Forster’s Terns continued to sparkle as they hovered and plunged into the water.

Just before leaving, I took one last look at the terns standing on the beach, scanning my binoculars slowly over them – and came to four birds that looked huge among the others. Somehow I had missed their arrival. Four Royal Terns stood there, each with a long, thick golden orange bill, full jet-black cap that crests toward the back, snow-white plumage and short black legs. They looked like royalty indeed, big and solid and strong, the Forster’s suddenly diminutive in appearance around them.

On a sunny, windy, chilly day, the rose-red blush of a male Purple Finch glowed among bare gray limbs. He was perched on a feeder in the front yard, with a brown and white streaked female on the same feeder just below him. The female’s bold white and brown face pattern – especially the big white stripe that arcs over the eye – and the short dark streaks on her breast were distinctive.

And the male’s color really is almost indescribable, hypnotic. A soft raspberry-red that spreads over head and back and throat and down the upper breast, with very little streaking on the sides at all, mostly smooth. The red feathers on the top of his head were slightly ruffled up.

The male leaned down and the female turned her head upward – but what I thought was going to be some kind of affectionate exchange turned into a snap and short lunge by the female – and he flew off to somewhere among the branches overhead, out of sight. The female stayed on the feeder for several minutes, eating and chasing away goldfinches and titmice that tried to join her. Then I noticed a second female Purple Finch on the other feeder in the yard. This is unusual – I have rarely seen them here. We have an abundance of House Finches in the neighborhood, year-round, but when a Purple Finch shows up, it’s a special occasion.

Later I saw a male and female Purple Finch again, this time perched close together in branches over the feeder, which was busy with goldfinches, titmice, chickadees, Chipping Sparrows, a Yellow-rumped Warbler and two Brown-headed Nuthatches coming and going.

On another March day, earlier this week, by the time I got outside it was late, and the sun was low and almost hidden by yellow-gray clouds moving in from the west. Rain was expected for later that night and all the next day. The air felt warm and restless.

Around the feeders in our front yard were a pair of Pine Warblers, a pair of Downy Woodpeckers, a pair of Northern Cardinals, and two Carolina Chickadees that may or may not have been a male and female, but looked as if they were together. A gathering of couples. Several Chipping Sparrows also crowded the feeders, one White-throated Sparrow and a few Dark-eyed Juncos hunted on the ground, and dozens of American Robins were scattered all over the yard, in the grass and shrubs and trees. A Pine Warbler sang.

It had been a busy day, and my mind was often distracted as I walked, but now and then something called me back to the present. A Red-shouldered Hawk cried kee-yer repeatedly from somewhere beyond the woods toward the north, hidden by the trees.

The ti-ti-ti calls of two Golden-crowned Kinglets flitted around in the bare limbs of oaks and tulip poplars along one stretch of road where I almost always hear them recently. They were high in the trees, but I caught a glimpse of a black and white striped face, and a tiny flash of yellow crown. A Yellow-bellied Sapsucker mewed as it flew into a pecan tree nearby, at the top of a hill, and a break in the clouds let the sun come out, so the Sapsucker’s throat glowed like a ruby.

Just outside our neighborhood, through the noise of evening traffic on the highway below the old field, I could barely hear the calls of Eastern Towhees and the tseets of a few White-throated Sparrows, but not much else. Across the road from the field, I stopped at a corner to pay my respects at the spot where a large, almost black, thick-trunked oak had stood for many years. One of several large oaks – whose history I wish I knew – still standing in a neglected stretch of undeveloped land on the fringes of two subdivisions, this one had grown closest to the road. It looked like a tough, embattled old tree, with a sprawling, irregular cavity in its trunk and many other scars. Its largest limbs had already been cut back severely, so they looked like awkward stumps. It may have been diseased and dying, though last summer it still had leaves, and a Blue Grosbeak often perched in its branches to sing. I had recently noticed a red ribbon tied around its trunk, so I hadn’t been surprised to see a tree service truck and crew that morning, cutting it down. The only sign left of the old tree now was a soft, loose brown covering of wood chips where it used to grow.

I turned back toward home, and only a few steps down the road heard the rasping calls and one myeeur of a Gray Catbird – in almost exactly the same area of thicket and weeds where I saw one in late February, so maybe it’s the same. It hopped up into view – a long and slender bird, slate gray with a slim black cap – then flew further up to a low branch in another big old oak and perched there with its tail held high.

The sun went down, and clouds covered the sky, bringing an early twilight. When I got to the top of the last hill before turning back onto the road that leads to our house, I stopped and looked back down the hill. A smoke-gray shadow of a bird in the fading light, with spread wings and a long narrow tail, glided smoothly and fast, straight down over the road, and disappeared into the dense dark depths of a very big magnolia tree that stands in the middle of a large grass yard, as featureless and well-kept as a golf course.

Though I couldn’t see it well, I’m fairly sure it was a Cooper’s Hawk. Over the past few winters I’ve seen one slip into this tree at twilight several times. Disappearing like magic – like a falling star in the night – you’d never know it was there. Though the yard around it is open, the tree itself is thick with overlapping leaves, and across the road are many trees and shrubs, and woods beyond.

March arrived with warm spring-like, changeable weather – sunny days, followed by days of soaking gray rain, then back to sunshine, blue sky, big white clouds and blustery wind. It’s not weather you can trust, but right now it’s looking like it might be a very early spring. Daffodils, forsythia, redbuds, and clouds of white-blooming trees in the fields, dandelions, bluets and henbit all have spread color over the landscape, and red maples, dogwoods, water oaks and some other hardwood trees are showing the flush of new growth about to appear.

And the mornings begin with birdsong – almost all of the singers year-round resident birds. The first each morning is usually the clear, bright, liquid song of a Northern Cardinal; followed by the jubilee-jubilee-jubilee of a Carolina Wren; the lyrical trill of a Pine Warbler, and the dry, husky song of an Eastern Phoebe. They come one by one, almost seeming to take turns, each coming to the trees outside our windows to sing for a while, then passing on. Then Carolina Chickadees add fee-bee, fee-bay; Tufted Titmice, peter-peter-peter or wreeep-wreeep. And Eastern Bluebirds warble their blurry chorry-chorry.

All of this music is welcome and a spirit-lifting way to start the day – but some of my favorite sounds of this time of year are still the quieter, less noticeable, more subtle calls of winter birds, still here. The Pine Siskins’ strange, breezy zhreeeeee from the treetops, often mixed with the glimmering mews of American Goldfinches. The quick, light, sibilant ti-ti-ti calls of Golden-crowned Kinglets, and the jidit-jidit chatter of Ruby-crowned Kinglets. The honeyed, mellow mew of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. The tseet of White-throated Sparrows, hidden in the thickets. The airy jingle of Dark-eyed Juncos. The dry check of Yellow-rumped Warblers, scattered like speckles all over the trees and shrubs. A high, thin spray of calls from a flock of Cedar Waxwings. The soft, expressive chrup of a Hermit Thrush.

Add to these the whinny, rattle, quuurrr and peenk of Downy, Red-bellied and Hairy Woodpeckers, the squeaky-dee of Brown-headed Nuthatches, the kleer! of a Northern Flicker, the che-whee of Eastern Towhees scratching up leaves beneath the bushes, the occasional cuk-cuk-cuk of a Pileated Woodpecker, and a Red-shouldered Hawk’s soaring kee-yer, and the clamorous, creaky commotion of a flock of Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds passing through – all against a background quiet of bare-limbed trees and the silence of the insects – and there’s still a lot of winter left, and more to come.

Several Brown Thrashers now have begun to sing, but my favorite is still the first one I heard in mid February, singing cautiously from a low branch in a tangle of privet and other weeds around a number of tall water oaks. It’s been interesting to watch him gradually get bolder.

He has stayed in the same area, singing just about every time I’ve gone by, regardless of the time of day, and for several days he continued to sing from a low, almost hidden perch, rather quiet and slow, pausing often. Once, still in mid February, I stopped to watch as four Brown Thrashers moved actively around this spot, all making low, buzzy, agitated calls. They seemed to be contesting the territory. I assume one of them was the singer I’ve been watching – and I’m pretty sure he managed to hold onto the territory, because he has continued to sing from almost exactly the same spots.

The past few days he sounds more confident and louder. As I stopped to watch this morning, he began to move up in the tree, while singing, making his way higher and higher until he stopped just below the top of the tallest of the water oaks, still somewhat screened among the reddish-brown buds on the tips of the branches. From there, he sang and sang, tail tucked downward, head raised – but still watchful.

It looks like kind of a sad, rough territory, a scrubby mass of trees sprawling around yards and the road, surrounded by a messy growth of shrubs, weeds, briars and last year’s vines. But a graceful cape of filmy bluets floats out across the grass around one of the trees on the roadside edge.