28 Minutes of September

 The morning started beautifully, at 8:17 AM with this spring's rose-breasted grosbeak, trying to sing. He'd gotten strawberry jam all down his front. Just kidding--he's coming into his first adult plumage, but it's gonna take a couple years. I love seeing them when they're just showing the first hints of their sex.

I went inside reluctantly, but I was due to be on a public radio fundraiser for WOSU with my dear friend Ann Fisher,  and I wasn't about to miss that! I am deeply honored to be asked to help with a fundraiser. Ann asks such wonderful, unexpected questions, and I adore her and hold her in highest regard. I feel like this narrow sort of nature savant, where she's a brilliant generalist who knows something about everything. I know I'm kind of a break from the news, and I like serving in that capacity.

Well, I'd no sooner hooked up the Zoom audio connection with the Columbus OH radio station than a little wave of fall migrants came sweeping into my yard. I'm inside sitting at my drawing table, all tethered by headphones plugged into my laptop, and all this is happening outside! 

11:09 am: A young female Blackburnian warbler peers quizzically through the birch twigs. 

There's warbler action everywhere. I see a little magnolia go flitting through, but I don't get my lens on another bird until 11:14 when a young bay-breasted warbler lands on the feeder post.

You can see the traces of bay on his flanks, which tells us it's a male. How beautiful!

Bay-breast is sometimes hard to tell from blackpoll in fall, but you can almost always see a bit of bay on the flanks. The bay-breast has lead-gray feet and legs, while a blackpoll has yellow-orange feet. And baybreasts have sweeter, plainer faces and cleaner striping on the back than do blackpolls, which always look a tetch mean to me. Blackpolls have a stern line through the eye, bay-breasts less so.

At 11:19, the bay-breast fluttered over to a birch, where it made a lovely sight.

At 11:27, a beautiful young Blackburnian warbler appeared. I got a bunch of blurry photos, but this one was at least acceptable. It's a classic Audubon pose, showing every field mark--the very wide white wingbars, the pale backpack straps, and the strong, long eyeline. This is probably a young female, as it has no hint of orange in its yellow face. It's a girls' club today!

At 11:28, an eastern wood-peewee caught a little moth. How do I know it's a peewee and not an eastern phoebe? It's showing strong cinnamon wingbars, which a hatch-year phoebe would display as well. I know by the steepness of its forehead, and the slenderness of its body. Weird, but true. An eastern phoebe would look more flat-headed, with a larger head proportionate to its body.

Keep in mind that as I'm taking all these photos, I'm trying to sound cogent and informed about whatever Ann asks about. Ha ha! By now, Ann knows to ignore the sound of my shutter clicking as we talk. Science Chimp's gotta do what she's gotta do.

And it only got better! Here comes a  female black and white warbler, at 11:30! One of my very favorites!

Black and white warblers creep all over trunks and limbs, like a nuthatch does. They're looking for spiders, crickets, moths, larvae; anything that hides in bark crevices.

Here are the wings that will take her to a Costa Rican shade coffee plantation. And look, please, at the beautiful undertail and rump feathers, herringbone black and white. I always try to get a look at those perfect chevrons. 

We know this is a female by the clear white throat. A male would have black striping there. See that long, long bill, for probing in the bark? Black and whites also have a very long and strong hallux, or hind toe, for hanging head-down! Just like a nuthatch.

Only two minutes later, at 10:32, along comes a Cape May warbler. You're going to have to trust me on this ID. There are so many things that factor in here, but one of them is that we get floods of Cape Mays in the fall, and I just know them.   But how, you ask?

Well, there is no other fall warbler except perhaps a young female Pine, that has this precise shade of olive-drab. A young female Cape May and a young female Pine are the drabbest fall warblers there are. 

The strong but blurry streaking on the chest and flanks is another good field mark for Setophaga tigrina, the Cape May, the little striped tiger.

And finally it displays for the camera its best field mark in any plumage--the lime green rump.

This photo was taken at 10:32, and the warbler wave was over. 

Almost. A young bay-breasted warbler came right up to the studio window to say hello

and ask if I'd seen its most beautiful wings? Look at those long, tapered jobs--the wings of a long-distance migrant, who is headed to Central America. This bird is built to fly, and fly he will. 

Even I am agog at all that happened in my Ohio yard in those 28 minutes, and I'm grateful to be able to share it with you just a couple of hours after it happened.

It is a comfort, as America lies sick and burning, battered by discord as it is by hurricanes and thick smoke, to know that beautiful birds are still hatching, fledging, and now on the move, headed for the tropics, still living out their small but important lives. The smoke from California and Oregon has finally made its way to Ohio, to steal September's blue, and turn the sun into a smudgy thumbprint. Ann Fisher invited me on the show to give her listeners a nature break, and I'm here to tell you that the fall warbler migration is in full swing, today, right now. Get out there and take it in! It'll save you.

If you'd like to listen, the show is archived at https://tinyurl.com/zickonWOSU

If you'd like to give to WOSU, a $20 monthly sustaining donation will get you a subscription to Bird Watcher's Digest AND a fleece neck gaiter, too! 

Get out there and watch some warblers, will ya?

Along the Inland Sea

 Writing from a hotel in Columbus, where I'm waiting to go on WOSU to do an hour of fun fundraising with my sweet dear friend Ann Fisher, who constantly amazes me with her grasp of diverse issues and ability to interview anyone in depth, fearlessly, smoothly and kindly. If you want to listen/watch, it's at this link.  If you've got good Net, which I don't, you can watch! Eee! Good thing I dressed in my best torn up top. At 18:14 I read a commentary about Fergus, the bird-eating bullfrog. Makes me realize how very much I miss radio, miss performing commentaries on All Things Considered. Ah well. We raised around $2,000 in an active hour of wheedling. I adore Ann Fisher and it's clear Columbus does too.

On my way into campus last night, a spirit tapped me on the shoulder and told me to scan the building tops. "There's something up there for you," he whispered. Sitting at the light, I looked up far to my left, thought I saw a remote camera. Or was it a juvenile peregrine, perched above the L in LIVE IT? B. A deep charcoal black dream of a bird, calmly preening where only I could see it. This is why we listen to the little voice, why we carry binoculars in the car, everywhere we go. Yes, it made my day. I parked at my hotel and ran the half-mile back to properly ogle it. Looked big. Probably a hen, born this year. In Columbus? Who could say? There is a nesting pair in town, but it's also time for dispersing juveniles to be finding new places to live, heading south. She seemed a little surprised that I noticed her, but it didn't stop her sorting through her fluffy pantaloons. Best I could do with my iPhone steadied on a trash can. Yes, sometimes I yearn for my telephoto, but I tend not to take it to cities. I ought to. Wildlife is everywhere, if you're watching.

But with this post we're back in Ithaca, where my friend Joyce, whom I met during Joy of Birding at Hog Island Audubon Camp, has kindly offered to take me on a guided tour of Montezuma NWR, up north at the head of Cayuga Lake. I jumped at the chance to spend a day birding on my busy trip.

We stopped by Ithaca's fabulous Green Star Co-op, where you can get everything from lentils and bran to vegan tuna toenails in bulk, and picked up some sammitches. I chose Vegetarian Tuna, not realizing that it had never so much as been waved in front of a fish. Maybe I thought that meant it was made from vegetarian tunas, who ate kelp or something. I guess I don't know what I was thinking. I had Montezuma brain. Turns out I had bought textured vegetable protein bathed in some kind of vegonnaise, masquerading as tuna. Got a couple of bites into it. Texture convincing. No tang o' the sea. I scratched my head and looked at the label again.

 

Hmmm. Something about vegetables being made to pretend to be other food. Nuhhh. I ate it anyway, and resolved to be a little more label-conscious next time. It wasn't so bad. Zick. You fool.

 

The day was so beautiful I settled back, burping vegan Tu-Nuh, and dove into the trees and sky.

Vineyards abounded.

 

You don't see sheep farms in Ohio.

The sheep looked like scattered boulders out there, and the sky looked like North Dakota.The wind roared like that too. I fell into a momentary reverie of prairie.

 

That's what I love about travel--the way it neatly excises you from whatever trench you're in and refreshes your outlook with a vista, a color wash, a bracing gust in your ear.

I felt blessed to be on this road on this day with Joyce, the woods coming into peak color.

We sped north to Montezuma, rolling along the edge of this huge inland sea.

And the grapevines turned yellow from the bottom up.

Chet Baker: Now We Are Seven!

Chet Baker turns seven today. I can think of no better birthday present for his fans than this video of him in action.



I am the person whose right big toe appears in the lower left frame. Who is trying to laugh, snort and wheeze quietly behind the camera, and mostly failing. Phoebe is the fluffer, providing His Chetness with just enough help to keep him hoping he will get a bikkit in the end. I've probably watched this video a dozen times (it has 16 views on YouTube so far!) but I still laugh until I cry. Biased? Sure. But he's a funny dog.

This is the distilled essence of The Bacon: knowing, ornery, vocal, and supremely expressive. Frustrated with his lack of opposable thumbs, but fully capable, with those amazing eyes and that rough voice, of enlisting the help he needs to get what he wants. Watch it to the end. The Bacon gets his bikkit, and then some.

Happy birthday, Chet Baker. You are the sunshine of our lives, court jester and kiss dispenser supreme. I promise we will have your birfday party just as soon as I get back from Columbus.

If you're into radio and live video streaming, I'll appear on WOSU's All Sides with Ann Fisher (squee!) at 11 AM today, Monday, December 12. Listen here.  I know. What am I doing taking a gig on Chet Baker's birthday? It oughta be a national holiday.  And tonight at 7:30, I'll speak to the Columbus Natural History Society. You can find out more here.

Party when I get home, Bacon. I promise. You can open the package from the Virginia Chapter of the Chet Baker Fan Club. And I got you more bikkits. (Trader Joe's Sweet Potato and Turkeh).

Fledging Day for the Wrens

When you start seeing pale feathery necks and throats, you know those babies are getting big.


Carolina wrens do not stay in the nest very long. They develop at an incredible rate, being capable of flying at only 12 days after hatching! Please pause to think about that. On Day 1, it's a squirming pink blob of protoplasm the size of your thumbnail. On Day 12, it's almost fully feathered and capable of flight. FLIGHT! What were you capable of on Day 12? Sucking, sleeping, crying and pooping, that's what.

Even I could walk on Day 12, Mether.


When you've been around baby birds a lot, you just KNOW when they're going to fledge, almost as well as their parents do. Carolina wrens give a special squirking call when they get to fledging age. These birds got real jiggy around 10:30 AM on June 23, then settled down for the rest of the day. I knew, knew, knew that 10:30 AM June 24 would be the witching hour, the day they left. And wouldn't you know it, I had an interview scheduled on WOSU Columbus for 10-11 AM on June 24. I had to be up in the tower room, blabbing on the phone about me and my book, Letters from Eden. Can I get an ARRRGH? I mean, these birds were fledging as I was speaking and there was nothing I could do about it. Well, there was something I could do about it. I could give my camera to Phoebe, and SHE could capture the moment I'd been waiting a month to see...

First baby on the rim. Mom below. Photo by Phoebe Linnea Thompson.

Not only that, but my camera battery crapped out on Phoebe as this was happening. She couldn't find my spare, so without bothering me (because my kids know when Mom's doing an interview, nobody can interrupt), she grabbed Bill's camera, put my telephoto lens on it, and resumed shooting. Fledging was not going to wait for me, she knew that. Now that, my friends, is a useful twelve-year-old girl.



She is very useful as a pillow, I know that, Mether.

If you'd like to listen to the interview with WOSU's wonderful Charlene Brown (and hear how jiggy I was, knowing the wrens were fledging right downstairs!!), listen here.