Blue Grosbeak Singing Over a Busy Highway
Late this morning four Black Vultures circled and climbed in a hot blue, cloudless sky, the only soaring birds in sight. Eastern Bluebirds hunted from low branches in shady yards, with House Finches, Chipping Sparrows, American Robins and an Eastern Phoebe here and there. Mourning Doves cooed. Few birds were singing – Northern Mockingbird, Brown Thrasher, Northern Cardinal – and a Scarlet Tanager in the sweet gum and tulip poplar treetops of the wooded area where it usually can be found.
The temperature was rising toward a late afternoon high of 100 degrees, on the first day of an amazing heat wave here. The forecast for the next three days is for a high of 106 tomorrow, 107 on Saturday, and 104 on Sunday. So early mornings will be the only reasonable time to be outside. The extreme heat means a difficult time for birds as well as for trees and all vegetation and wildlife. I try to keep a bird bath in the front yard and two in the back yard rinsed out and refilled a couple of times a day, hoping that will at least help some. They’ve all stayed pretty busy, even before this latest blast of heat.
About a mile away from our house, the old field just outside our subdivision looks drab and dry and withered already, with no obvious source of water for the many birds and other wildlife that live there – though there are creeks and a pond not too far away. The traffic noise from Highway 441, on the other side of the field, seemed particularly loud and rough this morning, but a White-eyed Vireo sang undaunted from somewhere down in the thickets. And I could hear the song of a Blue Grosbeak from the far north end of the field. As I walked in that direction, toward the dead-end of the road, an Indigo Bunting chanted along the opposite side in an old oak grove, unfortunately often trashed and rutted with abuse, but still the home of a dozen or more big, grand old oaks.
The Blue Grosbeak seemed to be singing from across the highway beyond the field, so I scanned the trees – and to my surprise, found it, a small dark shape that looked more gray than blue in the hazy distance, in the top of a tall, scruffy, thin-leafed tree that rose above the pines around it. It faced out over the highway from a spot that looked far from inviting, but the richly warbled song of this little bird somehow rose above the constant noise of big trucks, SUVs, pickups and cars. Though I was too far away to see the shimmering, intense blue of its plumage, the distinctive shape of the Blue Grosbeak was clear – the slightly crested head and glint of its silver beak in the sun, the way it switched its long tail, and the burnt sienna of its wing bars – and I could see it lift its head and sing.