For the past several days, maybe two weeks or so \u2013 the height of the migration season here \u2013 I\u2019ve been feeling frustrated because it\u2019s seemed that many of the migrants I usually hear around our house have not come close. I\u2019ve heard them and caught glimpses of some \u2013 but they\u2019ve mostly been down in the woods or in the distance. I haven\u2019t yet seen a Summer Tanager, for instance, though they arrived a couple of weeks ago and they\u2019ve been singing and calling in the woods every day. The same thing was true of Red-eyed Vireos \u2013 I could hear them in the woods, but not around the yard.<\/p>\n
This morning a Red-eyed Vireo singing very clearly in the trees on the edge of our yard felt like a gift. It was a mostly cloudy, warm, humid morning, with rain in the forecast, but with sun still breaking through now and then \u2013 an April showers kind of day. The sky in the west was a dark, bruised blue. One female Ruby-throated Hummingbird sat on the feeder as I stepped out onto the back deck, and a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher called spee-spee<\/span> in the oaks. <\/p>\n The Red-eyed Vireo\u2019s song was its classic Here am I, where are you? Over here, up in the tree<\/span> . . . sung over and over. At first it was too well hidden in the new foliage of the treetops to see, but I watched, and finally saw it flit from one cluster of leaves to another, where I could see the thick green leaves of the water oak tremble as it moved, and then finally, it came out into the open \u2013 a sleek, slender bird with a brownish-olive back, and cream-white breast and belly, and a sharp white stripe over the eye. It moved steadily through the leaves, gleaning insects, and singing as it moved. <\/p>\n In the background as I watched it, a Parula Warbler and an Acadian Flycatcher sang, and a Great-crested Fycatcher called whreeep<\/span> and brrrrrt<\/span><\/span>. A Scarlet Tanager sang from way down in the woods. <\/p>\n I guess I\u2019ve just been impatient, as usual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the past several days, maybe two weeks or so \u2013 the height of the migration season here \u2013 I\u2019ve been feeling frustrated because it\u2019s seemed that many of the migrants I usually hear around our house have not come close. I\u2019ve heard them and caught glimpses of some \u2013 but they\u2019ve mostly been down […]<\/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\/166"}],"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=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}