Indigo Bunting Nest!

I was going in the garage via the small side door and saw a tall white lettuce plant (a weed) sticking up out of my pink hibiscus patch that lines the garage. I reached over to pull it and a small brown bird fluttered up out of the hibiscus!  Now, having done this a number of times I know the way a female bird flies when she's coming off the nest--in a quick, fluttery way designed to draw attention to her and not her nest.

And there in the nest were three lovely greenish-blue eggs. Which I did not photograph, because I didn't want to scare Mrs. Piper.

who sat for a long time on them and stared me down when I'd peek at her from the yard. Go away, primate. Just go away.

And then on August 15 in the morning I peeked in when she came off the nest and there were two babes, just hatched.

The flash fired, whoops! but it didn't stop the new babies from begging from an unlikely mama: my Canon G-12.

Oh sweetness.

They've grown by Day 2...but still think the camera's Mom. I've learned to disable the flash, and to wait for late morning to get the most ambient light on the nest. Ohhh, I love this shot so much.

 By the looks of that last egg, it's not going to hatch. See the big gas space in it, the white zone at the big end? The contents are probably liquid, never having been fertilized. And gas is building up inside. 

I had an interesting discussion with a chicken-raising Facebook friend about whether or not to remove the bad egg. She recounted having to shampoo and blow-dry a buff Orpington hen who sat too long on a bad egg and had it explode on her.  I sympathized completely, and shared my experiences shampooing and blow-drying everything from cedar waxwings to hummingbirds. Yes, I have blown-dried a hummingbird or two. Find that exact sentence anywhere in the universe, I challenge you.

I heard her point, but my cost-benefit analysis of the situation came out in favor of leaving the infertile egg in the nest. I've had 30 years of experience with infertile eggs in bluebird nests, and I've never had one explode in the short time it takes to fledge a brood. I do routinely remove them after the nestlings are two days old, but the ones I don't find simply get pushed down into the nest cup and do no harm. This, however, isn't a bluebird nest in a safe, predator-proof box. It's an open-cup nest about 2 1/2 feet off the ground in a shrub. I didn't want to touch this nest with my hands. I stuck the camera lens in through the leaves but never handled the eggs or young. I was taking a pretty big risk as it was, just approaching the nest. I didn't want to leave my scent on it and possibly attract a black rat snake or raccoon.

 The nest is in a pink saucer hibiscus shrub right up alongside our detached garage. A cement sidewalk borders the flower bed. This is an old photo of the shrub--it's a the bright green one with heart-shaped leaves, just to the right of the pink hollyhocks and window. It's a bunch more grown over now, as you'll see.

I could stand on the sidewalk, poke my camera in through the leaves, and grab a couple of shots without touching anything. Since we walk up and down the sidewalk all day long, my scent being there would not alert a predator. The chance to document an indigo bunting family's life from Day One was just too good to pass up.  I knew I'd probably never have a chance like that again, and I took it. But I didn't want to touch that nest with my hands.

One of my favorite photos from the series, also on Day 2, August 16, 2012. I can't take that bad egg. 

It's in use, a sweet baby's pillow. Doin' his chickie Pilates.

The Buntings Bide Their Time

It was all well and good to have indigo buntings around the yard. I did begin to wonder when they were planning to get down to the business of producing more indigo buntings!  The summer was wearing on.

Piper made sure he always looked his best. Puttin' on my top hat...

During the 8-day power outage the first week of July when the electric fountain wasn't operating, I made him an acoustic bath, which he gladly used. Well, Piper and about a hundred other birds. 

The storm zapped the Spa pump and I had to replace it. What didn't I have to replace after that storm?The day I hooked the new pump up and plugged it in, I literally felt my heart start beating again. I'd been bereft without the sound and sight of birds bathing in moving water.

You felt bereft? If I don't get four baths a day in sparkling clean water I feel absolutely worthless.

Just as avid in her appreciation of our backyard amenities was Mrs. Piper. Here she is!

She'd slip in when nobody was looking and have herself a good soak and flutter. I think Mrs. Piper is a young bunting, perhaps born in 2011. She shows only the barest hint of blue on her rump and shoulders. An older female would have a pretty good blue shoulder and rump.

She doesn't have to be blue. I'm blue enough for everybody. 

It seems other birds were waiting to breed, too. I heard a racket and fluttering in the birches above my head on July 31 and witnessed this:

A male American goldfinch coughs up some regurgitated seeds for...

No, not his baby, but his mate.

Courtship feeding often precedes copulation, so I knew the goldfinches were finally readying themselves for breeding. The weed seeds were coming ripe; the birch cones were starting to dehisce. It was time for seed-eating birds to nest.

And by an utter fluke, I caught Mrs. Piper carrying nesting material to an undisclosed location near our garage. This photo was taken on July 30, my Big Day of Bird Photography. Keep hitting "Newer Post" when you've seen that one. Because it was redonk, and gave me fodder for four posts!

I was beside myself to capture this moment, and only hoped I might find the Pipers' nest.

"Serendipity favors the prepared mind."--Louis Pasteur

Waiting for Piper

Bird photography requires great patience and a quiet, still center. You must be willing to wait for the moment when the bird you're after finally shows up and does the thing you're trying so hard to photograph. You set yourself up and make sure you're in the right place at the right time and then you hope.

I do a ton of bird photography; I spend part of every day doing it. That's because my studio window is set up to look out on one bodacious planted bird paradise of a yard. I'm bragging because I done made it myself. Everything that's there we planted, and the birds thank us by coming in close.

But waiting for Piper isn't like tapping away at your keyboard and staring to your left, then grabbing your camera as I'm doing right now. (I've taken dozens of photos of hummingbirds and yellow-throated, prairie, pine and Blackburnian warblers while trying to get this post written). It was a much more purposeful thing, because I had to wake up at 4:45, clear the blear from my eyes and be ready to rock.

Sometimes Piper would show up when there was enough light to catch him, and sometimes he wouldn't.

But other birds showed up.

Male cardinal, born this summer. He's getting his all-red bill and breast. 

Another one, peering up at me from the bell post. I love these scruffily endearing babies.

I did not expect a female Baltimore oriole to drop in while I was fruitlessly waiting for Piper to come back. But I was very grateful that she chose to check out the landscape roses growing by the water garden. The light was very low, but luscious.

There were more--tufted titmice and Carolina chickadees; a scruffy-looking common yellowthroat. But my favorite of the bonus birds I saw while waiting for Piper was this one: a Baltimore oriole fledgling. Oh, thank you for choosing poke as your perch. Your colors are divine. Positively tropical!

Just look at your little blue feet, you cute thing. Ahh, I love freshly minted birds.

I realized that I could just hang out the bedroom window all morning, Piper or no Piper. But oh, when he did appear...

Piper at the Gates of Dawn

I took that from Wind in the Willows, but those of you who love the book already knew that. Piper was a good name for this bird, this indigo bunting who, for a couple of weeks, sang me to waking on the farm bell right outside my window. He started singing before it got light and he'd come to the farm bell, which is about 20' from my bedroom window, just as shivering dawn was dragging herself out of her eastern bed.

I wanted a picture of that. The first couple of times I shot through the glass and it was terrible. It's hard to find a setting on your camera for oh-dark-thirty that doesn't involve flash, which was the last thing I wanted to do to a bird with the courage to sit and sing his heart out on a farm bell just outside my bedroom window.

This is about as good as it got. July 13, 2012. Shot through glass in dim light.

So I got smarter. I removed the screen and slept with the window wide open all night so I'd be awakened by Piper's first note. I put my Canon 7D on its monopod and kept it at bedside. The next morning, here's what I got.

These are the actual light conditions under which Piper sang. What jumps out at you?

Piper's mandible. 

Here, with a little post-processing, you can see the silvery reflective mandible that distinguishes the male indigo bunting. I always wondered about that feature. Now I know when it comes in handy. It looks wonderful on a dawn-singing male, a little visual punch to go with the ringing audio 

"Fire! Fire! Where? Where? Put it out! Put it out!

I was still dying to get a photo of Piper on the farm bell. It was just too perfect that this magical creature, the one for whom our sanctuary, Indigo Hill, is named, would come and sing on the farm bell. Bill's mom used it to call the kids in from playing at the old farmhouse where he was born in Pella, Iowa.  And before that, who knows how many farmhands over how many decades heard its BONGG and started salivating?

I had to get that photo. Love the bell, love the bunting.

And after a couple more mornings of banging away with my camera in the dark, I did.

Ahh, Piper. You magic bird, you. Thank you.

A Bunting Named Piper

The thing I like most about being able to work from home (besides being able to open the fridge or flop down for a nap or be there for my kids when they're sick) is being there to know the birds in my yard, to be in on their lives.  Piper is our indigo bunting, and he arrived in April and fooled around for a couple of months doing who knows what. Then he got serious in late June and proclaimed his territory from the top of Dump Hill to the farm bell in back to the willow and sycamore on the side, to the ash in the driveway. Our yard was his and he wasn't going to let anyone forget it.

I had watched him all summer in the Bird Spa. Piper was nothing if not a clean little bird.

On hot days it seemed that every time I looked out, Piper was doin' his thing. I stopped everything each time I saw him there. He is so beautiful.

As the summer wore on and the juvenile birds began to disperse from their natal homes, Piper had to share his bath with American redstarts (like this one) and common yellowthroats

and once in awhile even a scarlet tanager!

who of course was in his drab winter plumage. More's the pity.

If it offended Piper to share his bath, he never showed it. Even with four American goldfinches!

It was late summer before Piper and his mate really got going. Other birds, like our yard bluebird, were on their third brood before the indigo buntings began to think about breeding. 

This male bluebird is thinking about taking a bath. See how worn and shabby his feathers look, with gray-brown showing through? 

He'll start his molt soon, as soon as the kids are out of the house and finding their own jobs. 

Not a minute too soon, huh, Raggedy Dad?

Next: Piper and Mrs. Piper get serious.

Chicken Soup for the ADD Birdwatcher's Soul

My "work" day started at 9:54 with a white-eyed vireo and a couple of brown thrashers. Now it's 2:11 pm July 30, 2012, and a juvenile male American redstart is headed in for a real bath. A perfect spotlight of sun lights his way.

This is very nice.

I am getting very wet and floating around like a little orange leaf.

Vireo. Why? This is a very large bath and you don't need to crowd in.

You're right. Sorry about that. I'm red-eyed with embarrassment. Your spray was so alluring...

2:26. Our resident female eastern bluebird, feeding three five-day-old young in a box in the front yard, stops in for a well-deserved drink. Her plumage is so worn she's barely blue any more.  But come October she'll be vibrant and glossy again, these brown summer weeds replaced with fall cerulean frost.

3:10. Piper the indigo bunting stops in for yet another bath.

3:11. A monarch comes to nectar at the butterfly weed which is reblooming below the studio window. A tiny beautiful bee flies by.

3:11:39: a ruby-throated hummingbird slams into the monarch and knocks it into the air. Hummingbirds can be so rude!

3:41. A juvenile scarlet tanager drops in for a drink and bath.

It actually goes up to the bubbler and drinks out of it just like a child at a playground. Score another favorite photo!

I'd taken 360 photos in 2 hours 20 minutes on one July day. I probably missed half the action when I was looking down trying to work. On days like this, I'm thankful that I can be here, seeing things like this right from my drawing board. My only regret is that there's no one here to share it with.  But people who can sit at a window all day and stare out of it are hard to come by. People who will  do that are even harder to find. So I roll it in my hands for a few hours and make a little mud pie of words and photos, just to try to show you how cool it all is, and how the show just goes on and on and never stops at all. It's not just here. It's everywhere. Birds are migrating, right now. All you have to do is look.

And putting out a freshly scrubbed bubbly birdbath on a hot summer day doesn't hurt either.

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!