Celebrity Sightings – Red-eyed Vireo, Pine Warbler, Monarch Butterflies
Late on a sunny, quiet morning the green leaves of a small box elder tree rustled with movement, and the sleek face and shape of a Red-eyed Vireo came into view, lit by a ray of sunlight. For three or four minutes, I watched as it moved through the box elder and then into a nearby dogwood, still thick with dusty-red leaves, going in and out of shadow and sunlight, gleaning insects. It was graceful in appearance, with a long, lean figure, smooth, gray-green back and wings, cream-white breast and belly, dark-gray crown edged in black, a white stripe over the eye, and a thin dark line through the eye. The view was not clear enough to see the red of the eye, but I watched as long as I could see the bird, maybe the last Red-eyed Vireo I’ll see until next spring, since they’re all on their way further south, most already gone, leaving for the winter.
The morning was cool, crisp and calm, with a deep blue sky, only a few wispy clouds low in the east, and a few leaves showering down from pecan and sweet gum trees now and then. At first it seemed as if very few birds at all were around, but they were there, unobtrusive and quiet, and I’m sure I missed many more than I saw.
After a few minutes the vireo flew out of the dogwood, across the road and into more trees on the edge of the woods – where a plump Pine Warbler quietly moved through the foliage, also gleaning insects. The warm yellow of its head, face and breast caught the light; its wings looked drab dark gray with blurry white wing bars. It plucked a big fat caterpillar from a leaf and swallowed it in three or four neat, quick snaps.
Further up the hill, in another wooded area, another Pine Warbler sang a loose, musical trill. A Northern Flicker called a beckoning flicka-flicka from a bare branch in the top of a pecan tree. In the grassy yard below, several Eastern Bluebirds, Chipping Sparrows, House Finches, Mourning Doves and at least one more Northern Flicker searched for food in the grass, almost invisible except for their movements. An Eastern Phoebe, faintly yellow on the belly and sides, hunted from low branches on the edge of a driveway.
A Brown Thrasher flushed out from below a row of shrubs and up to the limb of a pecan tree not far above me. There it sat very still, surrounded in leaves and shadows, watching with round amber eye, a picture-perfect view of its red-brown plumage, dark-streaked breast, long tail, and fierce long, curved bill.
A bright orange and black-veined butterfly fluttered past and up toward the treetops, and into the clear blue sky – the first Monarch butterfly I’ve seen this season.
It was a good day for butterflies – within an hour I saw several more Monarchs, mostly in wooded areas and around yards. Over and around the old field flew clear-yellow Cloudless Sulphurs, Sleepy Orange, and a burning orange Gulf Fritillary flashing the big silver spots under its wings – its brilliance never fails to make me catch my breath. They flew over a rough field, power cut and roadside all in brown and fading colors. Spilling up and out from the roadside ditch, the purple, pale pink, blue, magenta and white morning glories remain radiant, as well as hundreds of tiny deep-red morning glories, winding over tangled grasses, foxtails, kudzu, goldenrod; a very few white, yellow and pale purple asters; pokeweed, withering blackberry vines and other weeds. Bitterweed raised its drooping, dark-yellow blooms along the roadside with deep-purple, low-growing stiff verbena and a scattering of sunny dandelions.
A Buckeye Butterfly fluttered from plant to plant along the roadside – soft, deep brown with bands of orange and white, and scalloped white near the wing edges, and several large dark eye spots. It paused often with wings spread, long enough for me to focus through binoculars for a few moments – then flew up high. As I tried to follow it with binoculars – a hopeless thing – I saw what appeared to be a small, compact raptor, soaring very high, silvery and ethereal. It was so far away I wouldn’t have seen it at all without binoculars, so it was just by chance, and even with them it was impossible to identify – broad wings, short tail, but hawk-like, not a vulture. But much too far away to do any more than guess, and wonder.