After the Storms – Dark-eyed Juncos in Sunlit Pines
Overnight a foggy, misty rain became a showering rain, and then about 3:00 am, close, frequent lightning, thunder, wind and heavy rain arrived and continued for several hours – the worst thunderstorms we’ve had here in a long time. Even after the lightning and thunder had passed, a hard, steady, heavy rain continued to pour down all morning and into the early afternoon.
Sometime around mid-afternoon the rain stopped, and within an hour or two, the clouds had all gone, leaving behind a weakly shining sun in a pale, washed-out blue sky, as if even it were water-logged. The all-night, all-morning deluge left our world here drenched, soggy, and streaming with water everywhere – in roadside ditches, gullies, and down sloping yards water flowed. Pools of water stood in flat depressions. Bushes and evergreens sagged with the weight of wet leaves. Both the creeks down in the woods rushed loudly with torrents of water.
As I walked along the road with the edge of the woods on one side, I heard the high, whispery twittering calls of Dark-eyed Juncos and stopped to look, and to see what else might be with them. Several Juncos were in the trees, both hardwoods and pines, along with a few Chickadees, Titmice, Carolina Wrens and a Downy Woodpecker.
Two Dark-eyed Juncos perched high up in the green needles of a sunlit pine. The light touched the soft, powder-gray of their plumage with tiny glints of color, and with their round heads, pink bills, white bellies and twittering chatter, they looked and sounded gentle and peaceful, a welcome scene after the hours of violent storms and torrential rain.
Otherwise, there were only a few birds out and about – Eastern Bluebird, Eastern Towhee, House Finch, a scattering of American Robins, a White-breasted Nuthatch, Northern Flicker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, one Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, White-throated Sparrows, Eastern Phoebe – and a stunning Red-shouldered Hawk that flew low over housetops and into a line of trees, looking deep rose-brown in the lowering sun.
As the sun began to set, a waxing gibbous moon shined bright straight overhead, and several large flocks of blackbirds began to fly over, mostly Common Grackles, but also others that I couldn’t identify for sure. One flock after another streamed over, calling as they flew, all heading north, maybe 1,000 blackbirds in all – a conservative estimate, I think.
This was the most blackbirds I’ve seen this winter, and these were just flying over, not stopping. So far this year I have not seen the large blackbird flocks that have been regular visitors here in our neighborhood the past few years, often congregating and moving through yards and trees. So the winter seems pretty quiet here without them.