Late this afternoon, the bright whistled notes of a Louisiana Waterthrush rose from down in the woods around the creek, the first one I\u2019ve heard here this season. Its song \u2013 three or four clear whistled notes followed by a tumble of silvery chirping phrases \u2013 always feels to me like a flourish announcing the arrival of spring. It feels like the renewal of a promise when a Waterthrush returns, a sign that the woods and the creek are doing okay.<\/p>\n
Though a Louisiana Waterthrush is a wood warbler \u2013 and definitely stays in the woods, close to the creek most of the time \u2013 it looks more like a thrush, with its smooth brown back, brown-streaked breast and white stripe over the eye, and a long, slender pointed bill. It bobs its tail as it walks along the banks or the rocks of a stream on bright pink legs. It\u2019s an active, animated, expressive bird, lots of fun to watch and easy to find \u2013 but much of the time I\u2019m just happy to hear its song and know that it\u2019s there.<\/p>\n
Later, not long before sunset, I heard the deep, foggy hoots of two Great Horned Owls again. During the past week I\u2019ve heard them most evenings, usually just before or just after sunset. Last December, I also heard them almost every evening for three or four weeks \u2013 then not again until now. It\u2019s possible I just haven\u2019t been getting outside at the time of day when they are calling, so I don\u2019t know for sure if they have been here since December, or if they come and go. It\u2019s been a busy several months \u2013 so they could have been calling, and I just wasn\u2019t hearing them. The hoots seem to come from the woods that cover the steep slope down to the creek behind many of the homes in our neighborhood \u2013 or they might come from trees along a power cut not far away. Sometimes they sound very close, but it\u2019s hard to tell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Late this afternoon, the bright whistled notes of a Louisiana Waterthrush rose from down in the woods around the creek, the first one I\u2019ve heard here this season. Its song \u2013 three or four clear whistled notes followed by a tumble of silvery chirping phrases \u2013 always feels to me like a flourish announcing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1607"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1609,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions\/1609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}