Birding Notes

Very late this afternoon I walked through the neighborhood under a china blue sky crowded with clouds of many shapes and shades, the aftermath of heavy storms the night before – graceful white wisps of cirrus clouds, rafts of small, high, cottony puffs, streams of long somber gray, a few low, filmy dusky-peach clouds like pastel smoke, and a line of gilded and curled cloud castles low in the southwest. The sun was still well above the horizon but sinking fast, and as it did, the clouds all blushed and glowed and faded in different ways in a quiet, flowing play of light. The fleeting, everyday miracles of sunset.

The air felt cold and breezy, and for most of the way birds were even more quiet than usual at this hour, with just a few calls here and there. The song of a Carolina Wren. The soft clucks of a passing flock of Blackbirds. The chatter of a Carolina Chickadee. The blurry warble of an Eastern Bluebird. The rich chur-whee of an Eastern Towhee. The peeps of Northern Cardinals.

As I walked up a gradual hill near a pond, mostly watching the show in the sky, a scattering of American Robins clucked and chuckled here and there, moving from grass to trees and shrubs. Suddenly a small, sleek hawk the color of a storm cloud burst out of trees on one side of the road, and swooped fast and low across the road only a short way ahead of me, so close it seemed impossible. It crossed a yard and flew like a missile into a large magnolia tree – and a burst of smaller birds came out of the tree like a small explosion. I think there were only three or four birds that flew out – but it looked like more because the impact of the hawk had been so dramatic. The hawk itself also came back out of the tree very quickly, almost as if it had bounced. It flew up, over the magnolia, and stopped on a high branch of a nearby bare-limbed pecan tree, where it sat. I could only imagine it shaking its head and maybe smoothing its ruffled feathers. 

Wow. I did not have binoculars with me, so could not see it well, but I was pretty sure of what it was, and when I heard a bright kek call once, and again – I was even more certain. A Cooper’s Hawk. A medium-size raptor with a blue-gray back and dense reddish barring on the breast, and a long tail. It specializes in hunting smaller birds. Cooper’s Hawks don’t use the kek call often, so I was a little surprised to hear this, but it was very clear and repeated three separate times, all soon after it had settled in the bare-limbed tree. 

This one stayed sitting in the tree for several minutes more, but all I could see of it was a dark silhouette against a pale, fading sky. It seemed to be sitting pretty still, but it might have been holding a small bird in its talons. When I finally walked on toward home, it was still there. 

February’s gift to us this year has been a string of suddenly warm, spring-like days, and we’ve been having lunch on the porch most of this week. Today it was cloudy with no hint of rain, just softly gray, and mostly rather quiet. We lingered for a while after eating, and the quiet chup calls of a Hermit Thrush began to emerge from trees on the southeast edge of the yard – not quite close enough to see it, but I could imagine it well.

The Hermit Thrush is one of my favorite winter birds, and this winter we’ve been lucky enough to have one staying with us for the season. It often comes out to forage on the leaf-covered ground in the back yard not far from the house – a pale brown bird with a spotted breast and throat, and a reddish tail. Its shape is similar to that of a robin, and it usually stands with its head tilted upward in a watchful way. When alarmed, it might fly up to a low branch and sit there, flicking its wings and raising and lowering its tail, and calling its unobtrusive chup. 

A few minutes later, when we were just about to go inside, there was another rather loud, almost rough-edged call that I did not recognize at all. It was something like wreee, a rising note with a metallic quality. I tried the Merlin app on my phone – and, to my surprise, it immediately identified the call as a Hermit Thrush. 

I always think of a Hermit Thrush as being so graceful and lovely in every way, it was hard to associate it with this call. Its song is famously ethereal, and the winter chup sounds quiet and low. But this afternoon I did a little research, and discovered, indeed, a recording of a Hermit Thrush call just like the new one I’d heard. It’s described in slightly different ways by different sources, but usually something like a nasal, rising weeh or vreeh. It seems to be heard mostly in winter, but it’s not completely clear what the purpose of the call is.Sometimes I forget how often I am “watching” birds by listening to their songs and calls – and not always seeing them at all. And yet hearing is, in a way, another way of seeing. So learning a call that’s new and different is always interesting, and it adds a new touch to even the most familiar landscape – and a new dimension to even the best bird friends. 

This morning I slept lazily late. The clock said 8:00 am when I opened my eyes. The morning was softly cloudy and gray, and I had already slept well past the early morning bird chorus and sunrise. I closed my eyes again and pulled up the covers, feeling so deeply at peace that I didn’t want to move. Sometimes these waking moments – when there’s no appointment and no pressure, and when worries seem briefly far away – can hold the sweetest and most peaceful moments of the day. 

My eyes still closed, the pillows soft and the covers cool, I heard the brightly shining song of a Carolina Wren outside my open window. A Red-bellied Woodpecker purred its musical, springtime quurrr. In the background a Tufted Titmouse sang its plainer peter-peter-peter. An Eastern Phoebe lisped its sibilant song. A House Finch added a pretty tune from somewhere in the distance. A Downy Woodpecker rattled in a silvery cascade of notes.

The crackling, chucking calls of what sounded like a pretty large flock of blackbirds began like a rumor in the south and became louder and louder as the flock approached like a big gossiping cloud, and flowed over our house and yard. They seemed mostly to be Common Grackles – their creaking calls stand out – but maybe other blackbirds, too. I turned my head, but didn’t open my eyes or get up yet. Just listened. It sounded like the flock was settling in trees and on the ground around the house, but not for long. The birds kept flowing in wave after wave, and within a few minutes they had all moved on. And left a quiet, cool, cloudy morning in their wake.