The Ten-Ring Bird Circus Continues

We left our heroine just before 1 PM on July 30, 2012. She was nearly limp with excitement at the incessant bird circus going on outside her studio window. But it was not close to over.  At 1:09, the juvenile hooded warbler decided to try bathing in the Spa.

The bubbler is attractive but very, very scary to a small warbler at the same time. The hooded made about a dozen passes at landing before she screwed up her courage to do it.

It helped to have a friendly tufted titmouse enjoying himself right there in front of her. If he can do it...

The Warbler has Landed. But she's too shy even to drink. Knock-kneed with fright she is.

At 1:38, the juvenile orchard oriole returns. It still hasn't bathed, but it's watching a male northern cardinal with great interest. What a beautiful sleek bird. Reminds me of my Ora Lee, who lived in my studio for 17 years.

Turns out that the oriole's watching the cardinal because it wants to drink and bathe in the spray from its bath!

It drops down beneath the bath and laps drops off the Creeping Charlie leaves with its long, feathery tongue. Then it wallers around in the wet leaves a bit. That'll count for the Spa bird list. It landed and drank from the bath. #70 it is!!

At 1:43, the juvenile hooded warbler finally works up the courage to bathe!

And glory be, she preens it out in the birch right where the worm-eating warbler was earlier.

 She makes sure every feather is just so before she leaves at 1:44.

1:46. A young male American redstart comes to check out the thistle feeder, as a redstart has several times each day for the last week. I don't know if it's the same redstart, but the curious young birds figure that if the goldfinches are eating from the feeder, there might be something there for them, too.

Such a gorgeous plumage, this young male born this spring. See the peachy orange breast patches? That would be yellow if this were a female. And it's a bird hatched this year, showing no black speckling in the head or back as it would if it were a 2011 model. Can you see the flattened, flycatcherlike bill and rictal bristles at its corners? It catches flies and other insects right out of the air. Hence the flycatcher bill.

1:53. A common yellowthroat, again a juvenile, shows up and skitters through the saucer of water I keep for those birds that prefer still, shallow water to the deeper, more challenging Spa.

It preens and preens, rearranging its mussed feathers right under my nose.

1:53. I get one of my favorite shots of the day from our little male redstart. Just beautiful, like an avian butterfly he is. 

  1:59. That gorgeous orchard oriole bombs back through. Who knows. It could be an entirely different individual. I'd believe anything today. All these birds in less than an hour. At this point I've given up trying to get anything done on my article.

Man, I love late summer. Spring is fun and pretty and exciting, but fall birding is THE BOMB. Get out there, people!! Or, if you've got a good window, stay in!!

I Get Nothing Done Around Here!

I'm going to try something here that I've never done before. I'm going to try to give you a minute-by-minute account of the kind of thing that goes on in and just outside my studio here in the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio. Because so much happens in these posts, I'll have to break them up into several installments. But pay attention to the time signatures of the photos as you read, please.

 Today I had the whole day to myself at home, a huge luxury and rarity. I got to do just what I wanted to. So I cranked up the music, cleaned my drawing table, and started work on a few pieces on South Africa. Part of my writing process involves staring out the window. Staring out the window a lot. And staring out the window in late summer in my sideyard is dangerous. Very dangerous. It all started with 

a white-eyed vireo chattering and singing to himself in the birch just outside the studio window. 

It's 9:54 AM, Monday, July 30.

 I can't quite decide if this is an adult or a juvenile coming into adult plumage. I think a juvenile would probably still have dark eyes, so I decide it's an adult. 

I turn my attention next to an indigo bunting in the Magnificent Bird Spa at 9:59 AM. Pretty, very pretty. 

This is not just any indigo bunting. This is my Piper. He sings every morning right outside my bedroom window. More on him later.

At 10:47 a male eastern bluebird drops in for a bath.

At 11:55 the action starts heating up, with a brown thrasher keeling over in the hot sun to cook his feather mites.

He shuffles over to the edge of the trees, spreads his wings and tail, and lays down flat as a doormat.
What you see here is his elevated rump feathers, one tail feather, and both wings out to the side. His head is toward you.

This is the most extreme sunbathing pose I've ever seen, and it attracts the attention of this bird's sibling (they were both hatched in our black raspberry hedge on Dump Hill).

The thrasher's head briefly comes up. Do not adjust your dials. There is nothing wrong with this brown thrasher.

Dead birds don't preen.

it's Aliiiiive!!

Still panting, the young thrasher (note the light grey, not yellow-orange eyes) moves into the shade. It's going for noon and I've gotten very little done on my article.

Just a minute later, at high noon, an adult male hooded warbler (Nope, Zick--juvenile male--see correction below!) pops up in the arbor vitae about four feet from my face. Ahh. Look at you, peeking at me.

That's better. But you're almost too close for my telephoto!

 and now you're definitely too close. Whew! Knocking me out! My friend Bob Mulvihill, PA bird ager/sexer/bander/researcher extraordinaire, wrote August 2 to advise that juvenile male hooded warblers get a full black hood in the same summer they're born. See the dipped-in-ink look of his tail? That, according to Bob, is a "fault bar," an indication that the entire tail grew out all at once. He further advises that the unhooded bird you see just below this one is a juvenile female. Female hooded warblers may attain a full cowl over the back of the head as they age (after hatch year), but they almost never get a full bib of black. Saw one like that just yesterday.

Four minutes later, a juvenile female hooded warbler sweeps in after the adult. There are just a couple of dark feathers in her nascent hood. (Bob says that a full adult hooded warbler would never be in such perfect smooth feather as these two--it would have very worn brown feathers visible in wing and tail this time of year).  Thank you Bob!! So we've got two juveniles. No wonder they're so rowdy.

 What a lovely little bird. She's chasing all around with the juvenile male. Fall birds are always messing around and mock-fighting. They seem to enjoy migration.

Round and round they go and where they'll stop...My article is never getting done. There's that crazy band on his tail again--check it out. Almost looks like a magnolia warbler's tail.

The aesthetics of the background aren't the best, but the birds absolutely adore looping in and out of the rusty old tomato cages I use to support the cardinalflower spikes. I'm not going for fabulous photography here. What I'm trying to do is show you the action, fast and furious as it is. I've shot all the brown thrashers and hooded warblers in less than ten minutes!

At 12:04, a juvenile scarlet tanager drops down to the Spa.

and is quickly joined by the male indigo bunting. Bathing birds beget bathing birds.

At 12:06, a worm-eating warbler suddenly pops out of the wiggling birch leaves. Holy Cow! Somehow I refocus from the spa and manage a decent shot. I'm pretty excited at this point.

He gives me a lovely view of his marbled undertail coverts 

before a white-eyed vireo slams into him at 12:07:47 and displaces him from the perch.

The vireo mutters and sings, mutters and cusses as he works his way through my hummingbird garden.

I really like white-eyed vireos. They're sassy and mouthy, and if you listen closely, you'll hear all kinds of birdsong imitations in their litany.

The vireo briefly vanishes and its place is taken at 12:08 by a female indigo bunting only just now building her nest! By now I'm just laughing. The birds are arriving and switching places so fast I barely have time to get the lens on them before another one blows in. The bunting flies on a straight line east. I make a mental note to watch for her and try to figure out where her nest is.

Meanwhile her mate Piper is taking his umpteenth bath in the Spa at 12:08.

It's been just a bit over two hours and the birds just keep flooding in. I'm not done by a long shot. If you're not birding in late July and early August, you're missing an incredible show. More anon!

All This Useless Beauty

Nashville warbler in a young cherry tree.

It's all happening too fast, going away too fast. The blackpoll warblers are in; they're the latest migrants. I'm starting to see female warblers coming through, another sign that migration is winding down (males migrate first, so they can set up their territories before the females arrive). It's been a beautiful spring, what we've been able to see of it through the constant travel and the pouring rain. Everything is lush beyond belief; my gardens are burgeoning. I planted some zinnia seeds today, looking forward to July blossoms for the butterflies and hummingbirds. Everything grows when it rains all the time. I'll have mesclun and arugula (rocket!) tonight.

I'm off again this weekend to give a Saturday talk and lead a Sunday morning field trip at Beaver Creek Wetlands near Dayton, Ohio. Praying that whatever digital projector they come up with will talk to my Mac laptop. Hoping it doesn't rain for the field trip, but figuring it will. Why break precedent with the rest of the spring? Nursing a whopper of a sinus infection, sore throat and all, trying to get my voice in shape to record some commentaries tomorrow before I leave. I sound like Timmy at the bottom of the well. Schlepping kids to sports events 30 miles away. Whoops, gotta go to town on the way and buy red tube socks and black pants for the uniform, gotta buy a third ball glove for Liam, who has a knack for leaving them wherever he happens to be. Hope whoever found them is enjoying them. Cleaning house, again. I wouldn't mind it so much if I didn't have to do it every week, if it would just keep for a bit longer. How does a boy not notice he has a Driscoll strawberry stuck to the sole of his shoe? They're big.

All right. Enough about doing too much. We all do too much. Outside, it all goes on without us, all this useless beauty*, and we can go out and look at it, or we can keep running on the gerbil wheel. Outside, the hooded warbler sings his syncopated song, higher than you'd think to look.He checks his flank for a louse.Right across the driveway, the Kentucky warbler answers with his galloping trill. He doesn't willingly grant a glimpse, much less a good picture, but he's so worth the effort.How did we get so lucky, to have both these birds breeding along our driveway?

Back on the deck, facing the day, I see an indigo bunting, a piece of lapis snagged in the willow top.He flies to the sycamore we transplanted from the vegetable garden to the back yard. How it has grown--it's a little giant, an open-grown, symmetrical beauty, just beginning to show leopard spots on its bark.Its other choice was to be pulled up. I'm glad we transplanted it. It drinks the water that comes off the roof and pretends it's on a riverbank.

Such riches we're given, bounteous treasure for free, and most of us don't even stop to collect it. I count myself in that number, most days, as my gerbil wheel of the things I should do turns.

A Nashville warbler finds caterpillar after caterpillar in a young cherry.
He shows me his ruddy crown
and strikes a pose that pleases.
Thank you, warblers.

Try to catch the last salvo of spring migration, wherever you may be. In the far North, it's just getting going. In the South, birds are already fledging young, the migrants long gone to their breeding grounds. It all goes on around us, and it's good to gather it in, like a flower that will soon be spent.

*thanks to Elvis Costello for that album title