A Song Sparrow Named AlphaBits

 Longtime readers of this blog will remember Luke, the leucistic song sparrow first photographed in this Appalachian Ohio yard on October 7, 2012. He was spectacular, and beloved, as all my special woodland friends are.

He'd show up for the Big Sit in mid-October, thrill our friends, hang around for a little while, then disappear until around Easter, when he'd set up territory in the side and back yard. Oh how I loved that little sparrow.

I'd photograph him through the bedroom window, singing in the crape myrtle by the fishpond. This is Easter, 2013. 

With his snow-white cap, throat, primaries and tail feathers, and his pale pink bill and legs, he was a showstopper. Leucistic birds are sometimes called "partial albinos." They have a patchy expression of albinism. Sometimes they're dilute and pale overall, but more often they have scattered white patches like Luke did.

 I felt so blessed to call him my friend and neighbor. How lucky can you get, to have a bird like this singing in your yard for three years?

 

This is my last photo of him, taken January 7, 2015. Luke didn't reappear in the spring of 2016. I was, of course, bereft. Again. I find myself bereft all too often. This is the lot of women who fall for wild things. However, if I have faith and wait, some other marvelous creature comes along to fill my critter-loving heart back up. Or, more properly, I fixate on another victim. ;)

 

What a cutie Luke was. I think he knew how special he was. Toward the end of his stay on Indigo Hill, I could call, Luuuuke!! and he'd pop up in the prairie meadow, as if he knew I needed to see him.

Last summer I noticed that one of my resident song sparrow's songs was very distinctive. Now, a song sparrow has a whole collection of songs that he mixes and matches throughout his day. They are all similar in pattern but not in pitch or notes. This song type was a doozy!

I loved hearing this bird all throughout the spring and summer of 2017. He left in the fall and I heard him no more. I was trying very hard to sleep in earlier this month when my subconscious took note that Alpha Bits had returned and was singing his distinctive little song outside my bedroom window--at 5:45 AM! I awoke and sat straight up with a big smile on my face. AlphaBits!! You're back!

Here's how he sounds. This video was taken at dawn, March 24, 2018. You can't see him, but you can sure hear him!



          

This bird sings the first six notes of The Alphabet Song. A B C D E F ... It's so melodic, it's uncanny. No wonder we call them song sparrows!

I have a bunch of audio recordings of AlphaBits from 2017 and already from this spring. It took a little while longer to get a halfway decent photo of Alpha Bits. I never managed to in 2017--he's very shy and he doesn't tend to sit high up and exposed while singing. But I got lucky later that same morning that I made the beautiful dawn video. These shots were taken through my bedroom window screen on March 24, 2018. So they're lousy. I've since taken the screen out and washed the windows. I've been trying to catch him ever since. He's singing, but not where I can photograph him. Soon enough, my pretty. I'll get you, and your little song, too!

He's not Luke, but he's beautiful all the same.

I love more than anything connecting with the special birds and animals who share my habitat. I love knowing that I have the same song sparrow as was here the year before. I am constantly looking and listening for the distinguishing features of each creature I meet.

Sometimes, the distinguishing feature is only in the song.

 

But that is enough. All of this is more than enough.

ZICK ALERT: TODAY, Thursday, March 29: I'll be telling the story of the WV snowy owl who dominated my blog just before last Christmas. I've distilled more than 1500 words and 160 photos into a gripping narrative. There's a lot of who'd'a thunk it stuff about snowy owls, too, courtesy Project SNOWstorm and a special guest photographer. 7 pm, Campus Martius Museum, 2nd and Washington Streets, Marietta, Ohio, March 28, 2018. I rarely get to speak locally so I'm very excited to see who shows up! Thank you!!

Ruby

When you live in a place long enough, and you're lucky enough to be able to work at home and stare out the windows at the birds for part of each day, you can get to know them as individuals. It helps when a bird has distinctive markings--maybe missing feathers on the hindcrown, like one male indigo bunting who nested here for many years. Perhaps there's a drooping wing, like that of the bluebird we called Mr. Troyer. He nested in our yard for eight years, and I still miss him. There's a long story behind him, but that's one for the next book.
Speaking of distinctive markings, this is Snowflake (who I began calling Queen Frostine), a leucistic female dark-eyed junco who has been with us for three winters, growing whiter each year. She's a Zick Dough freak, and I'd love to think that we've just sent her to Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire or Ontario with an ample pad of fat for the flight, and a good start for the breeding season ahead. The last juncoes left on April 17 as they do every year. You can imagine how excited we'll be should Queen Frostine show up again next winter. She's our friend.

Ruby is a beautiful female red-bellied woodpecker. This is her third year with us (that I know of). Year to year, she's displayed a consistent mark: two tiny red bindis in her otherwise gray forecrown. She's also got really red nares just above the bill, which is a sign of her maturity, as is the faint wash of red along her malar (jaw) area).
Those two simple feathers, and the fact that I happened to notice them, elevate her status from that of Just Another Redbelly to a Named Bird, a friend. It's a human conceit, of course, that she's special because I've named her, but it helps me to feel a bond with her from year to year, and it makes me more interested in watching her behavior. There's value in that, if only for me as the observer. She's certainly interested in my behavior; she waits each morning in the willow or on the chimney for me to pop out with the Zick Dough. Recipe here. She's probably noticed that I have more gray streaks in my forecrown this year than last, and a bunch more than three years ago. Ruby, we'll talk.

Sometimes she's dainty about helping herself to dough
and sometimes she grabs the biggest glob she can find to bear off and cache.
I never tire of watching Ruby, of noticing what, besides those two little red feathers, makes her an individual.
Wouldn't you think she'd spread her wings for the leap down to the railing? I think she wants to avoid knocking the dough to the ground with the backwash from her wings, that's what I think.

I like Ruby; I like knowing that she knows me and looks forward to seeing me, too. She's not a pet, but neither is she just another bird to me. She's my neighbor, my friend.