Autumn’s Ash-Gray Bird
The song of an Eastern Phoebe began the day at sunrise. An Eastern Towhee called chur-weee, Northern Cardinals peeped, a Red-bellied Woodpecker chuck-chucked, and before too long a Northern Mockingbird began to sing from the top of a young red maple on the edge of our yard, its thick green leaves just beginning to show patches of dark rose-red. Out back, two Ruby-throated Hummingbirds had already begun frequent visits to the feeder, at this time of day not wasting too much time in battles. They seemed almost to take turns – though it wasn’t too much later in the morning before that changed.
The Phoebe’s early song began a day that seemed defined by Phoebes, an abundance of them, all through the neighborhood. I’m not sure there are more of them than usual – we have a good number of Phoebes here year-round. It may be just that they – like Carolina Wrens – have become more vocal and more active lately, while other birds have become more quiet. Some of the Phoebes sang; others called tsup as they flew from spot to spot in the trees, or hunted from low branches, flying down to the ground and back up; and some came together in agitated encounters, erupting in chatter calls.
When I stepped out onto the front porch around ten, a Phoebe perched in the Savannah holly just to the right of the porch. It seemed undisturbed by my arrival and stayed quietly sitting on a branch of the scrawny tree, which has very few leaves because it’s in a spot where it doesn’t get enough sunlight, but it’s loaded with clusters of orange berries. The Phoebe looked soft and pretty, a study in tones of ash-gray, with darker head, pale breast and a faint wash of yellow on the belly.
The shadowy appearance and sibilant songs and calls of the Phoebes – and also their tartly bobbing tails and spirited behavior – reflect the season’s mood, subdued but brisk. The muted colors; pearl-gray, layered clouds; the rustling dry leaves, a hint of wood-smoke in the air, and the crisp, sharp scent of fruit.
Late in the morning, in a sunny, deep blue, cloudless sky, one Turkey Vulture circled low, slowly rising. Several Black Vultures soared and circled much higher, and among them, an Accipiter soared on broad, outspread wings, its long narrow tail looking dark, with a distinct white area glowing between the base of the tail and the body – a Cooper’s Hawk, I think, though it was really too high to tell for sure.