More Staring Out the Window

At 12:10 the white-eyed vireo returns and

 moves to the arbor vitae, where he's spied something edible.

He gives the dead part of the shrub a hard look

and launches himself.

He nabs a small black caterpillar or beetle larva.

and strikes a final lovely pose at 12:12:01.

12:14. I check the brown thrashers to find them throwing big chunks of matted lawn clippings around, thrashing the asparagus and rhubarb bed.

I like the way brown thrasher and mockingbird siblings pal around long after they've fledged. They remind me of Phoebe and Liam, going everywhere as a unit all summer long.

The bolder, older one flies to the Bird Spa and takes a quick drink at 12:17.

The Spa is crowded. At 12:18, a Carolina chickadee attempts to bathe with two tufted titmice. It doesn't work out for the chickadee, but it does catch some nice spray.

At 12:20, a nondescript sparrow gets me briefly intrigued. I hope for a moment it's a Lincoln's, but that face, pallid as it is, looks all too familiar: juvenile song sparrow. Still, I'm glad to see it, because ours raised a brood of three in some ornamental grass over our septic system and were gone before the June rains were over. After singing every day all the late winter and spring, the birds simply quit the place. And not only that: all the song sparrows on our road did the same thing. I'm only just now seeing migrants coming through on post-breeding dispersal. If anyone knows where my SE Ohio song sparrows go after they raise their first clutch, please enlighten me!

This newly minted song sparrow is is sunbathing too. Everybody's doin' it.

  I'm just gathering myself from identifying the sparrow when a juvenile orchard oriole drops in to the perch by the Spa. If it lands on the bath, it will be species #70 to drink or bathe there. C'mon!! Do it!!

Practically every bird I've seen today is a juvenile. Only fitting that a Juvenal's duskywing should show up at 12:21 and get itself photographed. It's been 2 hours and 20 minutes since I picked up the camera, and I haven't put it down for more than five minutes. And I'm not done yet!

The madness continues on Sunday. Actually, it hasn't let up yet. For those of you interested in ageing and sexing birds by their feathers, scroll down and see the corrections in my last post (I Get Nothing Done...) Turns out that both of those hooded warblers were this year's babies--even the fully hooded male. Whew! You learn something every day. I hope Bob Mulvihill will keep looking and correcting--that's how we learn.

 My computer is gagging on all the photos, and I'm having the time of my life with this late summer migration. Good news is I've managed to beat my South Africa articles mostly into submission. And gathered a whole bunch of cool new images of fall migrants in the process.

photo by Sara Stratton. Yes, I'm working. The antler hanging over my lamp, a gift from my farmer/hunter/neighborbuddy Jeff, is for back scratching. The Buddha is for luck and prosperity. Come ON, Buddha. Kick it into gear. We have the luck thing going...

Garden Center Birds

The people at Thomson's Garden Center know us, because we spell our name wrong, with a P, and because we're the bird people. So while we were prowling around the roses and begonias three staff members came up to make sure we'd seen their special birds.

First was a robin who'd built her nest on a stack of trellises. It was clear that nobody was going to be taking any trellises until she was done raising her babies.


Resolute is one word I'd use on her--trying to melt into a background that isn't there, staunchly sitting her eggs as the weekend garden center traffic swirls all around her.

But the best was yet to come. "Go look at the bee balm," one employee said, and I headed for its tall paired leaves.

Nobody was going to be buying any bee balm for awhile, either. Cats prowl all around the garden center, but somehow none of them had keyed into this ingenious nesting place. The staff didn't know what kind of bird had built the nest, only that it was little and brown.

A glance upward confirmed Mom's identity as a song sparrow, and we told the cashier and she wrote it down so she could remember it. What mattered was not that they could name the birds, but that they all cared enough to protect the nests.

It wouldn't be long before the song sparrows left; they're about 6 days old here, and would only stay in the nest another five or so.


Inside, another point of local pride: gazing balls made right here in Marietta by the Silver Globe Manufacturing Company. The tiny factory is a real trip--gazing balls all over the old cement block roof, and a huge pile of busted gazing balls out back. The workers climb up on top of it and eat their lunch, in between hand-blowing glass balls--a southern Ohio and West Virginia tradition, that somehow has not yet been outsourced to China. Well, you'll find lots of cheap foreign gazing balls, but the original and best ones are made by Silver Globe. They're always coming out with new colors. Here's Thomson's display. Makes your eyes roll back in your head.



I was proud of our hometown garden center, even if they spell their name wrong.