Yellow-breasted Chats are Back!

 Mayday! Mayday! The birds are all here and I'm overwhelmed. Why can't they spread it out a bit? Today, we welcomed indigo buntings, magnolia, Tennessee, chestnut-sided, blue-winged and Nashville warblers; black-billed cuckoos, rose-breasted grosbeaks and scarlet tanagers; a pair of belted kingfishers, wood thrushes and red-eyed and yellow-throated and white-eyed vireos, to name just some. Ones in boldface arrived today.

Oh, and yellow-breasted chats. See, just one of those would have been plenty. 

But too much of everything is just enough. I need a miracle, every day.

The yellow-breasted chats woke me up on May 1 as it got light, arguing and yelling from the tangle to the east and the tangle to the west. the former owner of our house was from the north of England. "Those are the rudest birds!" he said. "They fly over making the most awful noises!" Yes, indeed.

Chats have bred in our yard all but one of the 21 years we've lived here. For reasons unknown they deserted us in 2010, to come back in 2011. Now I hold my figurative breath until I know they're staying.

I look at our yard and overgrown orchard and know the changes are happening, that they're more chickadee habitat than bluebird habitat now, more redstart than prairie warbler habitat. Some birds go, and others replace them, and I guess I have to be OK with that, but please, please, chats! Don't leave us.

When chats sing they shoot their necks out and that glorious sunflower-yellow throat pulses and belches with a shot of stunning color.

Klook. Shep shep shep shep. Whoit? Geh geh geh geh geh. TSH TSH TSH TSH TSH TSH TSH TSH!

Yeh yeh yeh yeh yeh! Klook. Whoit? 

And so it goes.

And it's even better by moonlight, because when they sing at night you know they're sleeping here too.

There are ten million things I should be doing right now. Packing for the New River Birding and Nature Festival this week, where I'll be speaking and singing with The Rain Crows and leading field trips starting Friday May 5.  (thank you Kathy in Delray!!) Oops! That's tomorrow! I'm packing hundreds of pounds of books on the back of my carrier on my tiny Subaru. Sometimes I miss the Exploder.

Scrambling up more books to sell.

Planting the gladiolas and tuberoses which are sitting in muck buckets in the garden.

Potting the overgrown and sad bonsais who are languishing in their winter pit, 20 days late.

Running to town to do ten errands in two hours.

But I can't ignore the chats. They demand my attention and they get my unbridled adoration.

Well, almost all of it. Mether, are you coming? You have been with that birdie for a long time. And you and I are both soaked. You have a lot of things to do.

I know, Chet Baker. I'm coming. But there's this wood thrush singing...