Birding Notes

In the morning on the last day of June, a Yellow-throated Vireo sang in the treetops around the edge of the woods behind our neighbor’s house and ours, the first time I’ve heard one in several weeks – and I’ve missed them this summer, so it was a particular pleasure to hear.

The mellow four-phrase song sounded rich and full, a riper version of the Red-eyed Vireo’s crisp refrain.

With its bright yellow throat and yellow spectacles around the eyes, greenish-gray head and back, and white wing bars, a Yellow-throated Vireo is one of our more colorful summer birds, rather sturdy in shape.

Much later, as a long, cloudy twilight faded, lots of lightning bugs flashed low over the grass and up into the lower branches of trees, and two bats circled over open areas, against a murky orange and pink sky. Cicadas still sang, and a few katydids were beginning.

On the NBC Nightly News two nights ago (June 28) Brian Williams interviewed Plaquemines Parish president and Louisiana native Billy Nungessor. What Mr. Nungessor said about the destruction in the marshes, and his description of the silence in the marsh made the effects of the Gulf Oil disaster feel painfully real and close.

“This is the real fight, this is the real war, out here,” he said. “We may never clean this marsh up, we may never get the rookeries, we may never get the wildlife, the oyster beds, the breeding grounds back. You go out to an area where this oil has destroyed the marsh, and you go out there and turn the engine off in your boat, and you don’t hear a bug, a cricket. It’s dead.”

Imagining that silence in the sweeping marshes of the coast is heartbreaking and frightening in a way that feels like being hit in the stomach. It seems undeniable that we are losing a vast and beautiful network of life and thousands, millions of living plants and animals at a stunning rate, more of them every day as this cloud of poison grows and spreads.

This morning was a great morning for Red-shouldered Hawks here! After months of seeing and hearing these woodland raptors very infrequently, suddenly today there were three in different parts of the woods around our neighborhood, two juveniles and one mature.

Around 7:45 it was already very warm, with a sunny blue sky but not yet the oppressive heat that would come later in the day. In shady spots the air still felt a hint of freshness. A Wood Thrush sang along one of the creeks, and near that spot, the first Red-shouldered Hawk was perched on a large dead stub of a sweet gum tree, surrounded by green foliage. With its back toward me and the sun climbing behind the trees, I couldn’t see much more than its silhouette, but it cried a clear kee-yer several times.

Further on, as I walked past a different part of the woods, I heard a call something like a rough, gargled djeeeurrr, repeated. A juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk was perched on a very low branch and making this call. When I stopped to listen and watch, it flew a short distance away, to another spot a little deeper in the woods, and called again.

Only a few minutes further along, another juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk flew low through the trees from one spot to another, passing by me fairly close with its wings outspread, and up onto a branch where I could see it well for a few minutes.

Somehow the hawks seem to fill these woods with a different, more exhilarating spirit – a bigger and more expansive air. The warblers, vireos and flycatchers all are beautiful in their own ways and each one adds its own character to the mix, but a woodland hawk gives the place a whole new dimension.

When I stepped outside this morning, I stood on the front porch for a few minutes before starting out to walk. What caught my eye was the circular rim of a perfectly round, exquisite spider web suspended among water oak branches to my right so that it was lit by the early sunlight. About two or three inches of the outside rim were completed, so it looked like a saucer, and the spider – too small for me to see except by her movements – was making her way around, constructing the new web, working from the outside in. I could see the silk strands being tugged by the spider as she moved.

It was almost certainly the web of a Spined Micrathena, a very common woodland spider here. The female is about a half-inch long, with black legs and a whitish abdomen surrounded by black spines. She spins a new web each morning, suspending it between shrubs or trees, and takes it down each night, though the anchoring silk strands that form a frame for the web may stay in place for days or weeks. When the day’s web is complete, the female hangs in the center and waits for prey to be caught, usually small flying insects like mosquitoes and gnats.

I’ve walked through the webs of Spined Micrathena many times because they’re often suspended at just about face level in the woods and are not easily visible, especially if you’re the first person to walk along a trail in the morning. So I’ve often seen the little whitish spider at closer than comfortable range – like on the end of my nose – and combed the sticky strands out of my hair. But I don’t remember ever noticing or appreciating the elegance of a fresh, new, unblemished web like this one. It just happened to be hanging in the right sunlit spot, a filmy round, delicately complex orb taking shape.

About 9:45 this morning – a hot, sunny, perfect day for the Summer Solstice, with a burning blue, empty, cloudless sky – a slender-winged bird came flying toward me from the southwest, with strong, deep wing-beats. As it got closer and passed, it turned swiftly to one side and flashed white and black – a Swallow-tailed Kite, a large, graceful raptor that we rarely see here, with dramatic white and black coloring and a deeply-forked tail. It flew steadily on, disappearing over the trees in the northeast. Although Swallow-tailed Kites usually soar and glide, riding the air, rarely flapping their wings, this one was using its wings in slow, deep, steady motion.

About five minutes later, another slender, dark raptor with long wings and a shallow, fan-shaped tail, circled low over the treetops and then settled into the top of an oak. From there, its white head gleamed in the sun – a Mississippi Kite. It stayed only for a minute or two before flying again and disappearing behind a tree line. Mississippi Kites are not as large and less flashy than the Swallow-tailed, but falcon-like, buoyant and acrobatic in flight, with dark gray plumage and round white heads. They also are uncommon here, so to see both kite species on one day was a nice surprise – and a perfect celebration to mark the Summer Solstice.

I stayed outside, walking through the neighborhood and watching the skies for more than an hour, and didn’t see the Kites again, but a Cooper’s Hawk soared and circled above me slowly for several minutes, and two juvenile Red-tailed Hawks perched close to each other on a wire and a utility pole overlooking the old field and the highway beyond. They have recently begun to perch out here, more in the open, after two or three weeks of staying mostly back in a stand of pines near a pond, screaming often for attention from the adults.

A Wood Thrush sang from a low, deeply-shaded part of the woods near a creek, and another sang from patchy woods on higher ground. Their liquid, lyrical songs are among the loveliest parts of a summer morning, and it feels lucky to have them here because they’ve been less and less common in the past few years. Most other birds were rather quiet, few tanagers or vireos. A Great-crested Flycatcher called whreep, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers speee, one Red-eyed Vireo repeated its four-phrase refrain, and an Indigo Bunting sang in the field. Mockingbirds and Brown Thrashers continue to sing here and there, and Acadian Flycatchers call wheet-SIT from near the creeks. The rise and fall of cicadas’ songs continues all day, and grasshoppers snap and crackle, wasps buzz and chimney swifts twitter overhead. Chipping Sparrows sing long, thin trills, Bluebirds flash their startling vivid blue, and Phoebes hunt quietly from low perches in the shade.

As May comes to an end and spring blends into summer, the early morning chorus here begins in the dark before dawn, a little after 5:00, with the song of a Northern Cardinal, answered by another Cardinal, their clear, bright notes a musical preview of sunrise. A few minutes pass before an Eastern Phoebe begins to sing – often in the branches of the oaks right outside our bedroom windows – then a Carolina Wren, Summer Tanager, Northern Parula, and a Louisiana Waterthrush that comes up from the banks of the creek early each morning for just a few minutes to sing in the woods on the edge of our back yard. Occasionally a Black-and-white Warbler also comes by with its high weesa-weesa-weesa song.

Not long before 6:00, a Scarlet Tanager sings, joined by a Red-eyed Vireo and Pine Warbler in the woods and Eastern Bluebird, American Robin, Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Chickadee, Chipping Sparrow, Eastern Towhee and Northern Mockingbird in the shrubs and trees around the house. A Great Crested Flycatcher, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers call, and the chorus reaches its fullest, most exuberant expression, which lasts for only about 15 minutes before subsiding, still well before sunrise, into more scattered, though continuing, songs here and there all day.

Unfortunately, we no longer hear a Chuck-will’s-widow singing in the night and early morning hours, and summer doesn’t seem the same without it. Some neighbors have told me they miss it, too, and we assume that clearing and development of land in the surrounding area has changed the habitat it needs. It’s not quite warm enough yet for katydids, so the nights are rather quiet, though crickets and frogs are chirping.

But we do still often hear the calls of Barred Owls – two were calling from not far away just last night – and it’s always a pleasure to hear their unexpected low, chest-rumbling who-cooks-for-you hoots, usually in deep twilight or around three or four in the morning, and sometimes even in the middle of a day.

At least two Scarlet Tanagers sing in the woods around the neighborhood. One makes the rounds of the trees across the street from our house and down into the woods around a creek there. I can see him best when he sings from a large red oak at the corner, though it’s amazing how well such a brilliantly colorful bird can blend in with the leaves. He rarely, if ever, sings from the very top of a tree, but usually just below the top, a small drop of blazing red with ink-black wings among the green leaves.

His song is flat and almost harsh, six or seven phrases flung out assertively, similar to the song of a Robin or a Summer Tanager, but without the Robin’s more musical, thrush-like, cheerful quality, and unlike the lilting hoarse phrases of a Summer Tanager.

A second Scarlet Tanager sings in the woods around a different part of the neighborhood. He’s almost always singing when I walk by in the morning, and often I find him among the leaves of a certain tall tulip poplar, just below the top.

After many days of hot May sunshine and plenty of rain toward the end of the month, the old field that runs along a dead-end road between our subdivision and highway 441 is a lush mess of grasses, kudzu, privet, blackberry and honeysuckle vines, wild grape, purple thistle, rough wild roses, pokeweed, chinaberry trees and dozens of other weeds and weedy trees, and a dense and spreading small woodland of pines, sweet gums and oaks. Bird songs there, especially early in the morning, have to compete with the highway’s busy, loud traffic.

This year for the first time in a decade, there’s no Blue Grosbeak singing in the field. I saw a male there once in the spring, but apparently it didn’t stay.

But there is an Indigo Bunting that chants from a perch on kudzu-covered bushes in the middle of the field, and two or three White-eyed Vireos, Eastern Towhees, Mockingbirds, Brown Thrashers and Cardinals in abundance, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher – and Brown-headed Cowbird. A pair of Red-tailed Hawks can be seen around here almost every morning, often perched on utility poles overlooking the highway, sometimes sharing a pole, and soaring later in the day.

And for the first time in three or four years, there’s a Yellow-breasted Chat in the field. That’s a happy surprise. Several times I’ve thought I heard its harsh chet-chet-chet-chet calls, but couldn’t find it for sure, and I just thought it was wishful thinking on my part. But two days ago, Saturday morning, I heard the call, this time repeated again and again as the bird moved quickly from bush to bush, and finally I saw a quick flash of deep gold-yellow as it flew. I haven’t gotten a good close look yet, but its call is familiar and distinct. I don’t know if it’s nesting in the field or if it’s there every day, or maybe it’s nesting in woods nearby and just visiting the field now and then.

In the band of woods that encircles our neighborhood, running along two creeks that converge, the songs or calls of Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Acadian Flycatcher, Wood Thrush, Louisiana Waterthrush, Northern Parula and Black-and-white Warbler also can be heard. There seem to be at least four Acadian Flycatchers widely spaced out along the creeks, calling sharp WHEET-sits and at least two Louisiana Waterthrush, two or three Northern Parula, one Black-and-white Warbler and two Wood Thrush. One of the Wood Thrush sings in the deepest part of the woods along a creek, and the other sings from a very unlikely area somewhere beyond the trash-littered remains of an old oak grove across the dead-end road from the field and behind another subdivision. It seems unusually open and rather dry habitat for a Wood Thrush. But there it is, morning after morning, sending up ethereal fluted music to float through the battered trees, barely audible against the noise of traffic.

In our own back yard, there seem to be babies everywhere – Bluebirds, Chipping Sparrows, Titmice, Chickadees, Robins, Brown Thrashers – all begging to be fed. A Bluebird pair seems already to be starting on a second nest. There’s the song of a Red-eyed Vireo and the songs and pik-a-tuk calls of a pair of Summer Tanagers, the WHEET-sit calls of Acadian Flycatcher from the creek, the squeaky-dee chatter of Brown-headed Nuthatches in the pines, the rattles and whirrs of Red-bellied and Downy Woodpeckers, and sometimes the racheting call of a Yellow-billed Cuckoo or the traveling cuk-cuk-cuk of a Pileated Woodpecker. At least two Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, a male and female, are regular and frequent visitors to the feeder hanging from the deck.

Three times recently I’ve seen a Cooper’s Hawk around the edge of the woods beyond our back yard. Once it tried to catch a small bird in the white oaks next to the house and failed, then swooped to a perch on a pine stub where it sat for several minutes in full view, where I could see the ruddy-streaked breast and long banded tail and proud profile.

We don’t see or even hear Red-shouldered Hawks as often as we used to, so I don’t think there’s a pair nesting nearby in the neighborhood this season. But fairly often I do hear their kee-yer calls from somewhere in the woods to the east, so at least there are some not too far away.