Birds
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Red-tail art
My daughter came home from our walk yesterday and disappeared into her room to draw the hawk we saw.
She’s 11. I love her drawings — they just get better and better.
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January Robins
Some of the best sights go unphotographed.
This morning I went for a walk around the neighborhood. I’ve had to lay off running over the last year because of joint issues, and often I walk on the treadmill. This allows me to read while exercising, which is a source of pleasure right at the start of the day. But it’s always better still to get outdoors — even though at this time of year it’s usually dark. There is a meditative quality to these walks that I crave, and this morning I took my restless mind out for a stroll.
It was like walking in a cloud; the air is dense with water vapor from the melting snow, and noticably mild. The birds were quite vocal, almost as though they were having a premonition of spring: titmice, chickadees, cardinals, nuthatches, blue jays. The world was in shades of gray.
But then I saw something totally unexpected: two pale robins! This was a first. A pair of robins in upstate New York in January. Robins are supposed to mean spring:
Robin’s song is crystal clear
Cold as an icicle,
Sharp as a spear.
I have seen Spring lift her head,
Snowdrops a-shivering,
Winter dead.(“Robin’s Song,” E.L.M. King)
Granted, they weren’t singing. They were clucking, no doubt critical of the shrivelled berries they were eating. But still, it was a sight to remember.
Last year’s first robin: 3/7/12 -
Eagle Pair
We were driving home from a walk during which we saw almost nothing when we saw the dark bulk of these two eagles sitting in a tree beside the river.
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Red-breasted Nuthatch
I glanced out our front window and saw this visitor this morning!
Red-breasted Nuthatch We’re used to seeing white-breasted nuthatches, but the red-breasted nuthatch is a bird we’ve only begun to see since late summer here. As usual, I’m not sure if it’s that they haven’t been around, or that we haven’t been looking.
I love the blush of color and the eyestripe. It comes and goes like lightning, so I was tickled to get some pictures. They would be improved with a little sunshine (and no reflections from the window glass), but we’ll take what we can get. Smile, Little Bird!
It’s smaller than the white-breasted nuthatch, and perhaps not quite as aggressive. The white-breasted sometimes expands to twice its usual size to intimidate other birds when it’s on the suet, but this little bird darts in and darts out and minds its own business.
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A Riot of Redpolls
These little arctic birds are everywhere today! They’re on the feeder attached to the house, like this one, sometimes wedged tightly together.
They’re also on the roof.
They’re in the spruce tree.
They’re on the feeder out back.
They’re on the ground.
They’re in the treetops.
Everywhere, they’re discussing everything with great animation. They’re looking up, down, around — like David Copperfield, whose first plan as a young man is to spend some time “looking about me.” They move in a large, swirling mass.I’ve never laid eyes on one before this year — that I know of. But I was reading at All About Birds that during iruption years, they travel in huge flocks like this. They breed in the arctic tundra and boreal forest, so this is the sunny south for them!
There are many neat facts about them over at All About Birds. My favorite discovery is that they tunnel under the snow to stay warm, in tunnels sometimes a foot or more long. They can survive temps as low as -65 degrees!
Incredible. Welcome, redpolls! Enjoy your visit.
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New Year’s Day Eagle (and other birds)
We saw this eagle over the Susquehanna, watching for his first breakfast of 2013.
I also got a few better pics of the wrens yesterday. So cute!
Over at my other blog, I have a post on the birds at our feeder these days. They’re featured in my header images there. The post — which features two types of juncos, redpolls, goldfinches, wrens, chickadees, white-throated sparrows, and tree sparrows — is here. -
Dreamer
Carolina Wren I love these little round birds that maintain such rich coloration even in winter!
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Homemade Nature-Loving Gifts
We had a great Christmas this year, and one of the highpoints for me was the number of handmade gifts given. My brother made a number of beautiful wood gifts, and I gave calendars made using my nature photos. But the coolest gifts of all were made by my 11-year-old.
We had made a collage of her artwork while I was working on the calendars so that we could frame it and put it in the hall. Here it is.
Disaster struck as we were hanging it, and the frame broke. But here is my younger daughter’s collage framed. Older Daughter’s will look like this as soon as we replace the frame.
I love the cardinals passing a sunflower seed in Younger Daughter’s collage! Her osprey is really good too.
But back to the subject of Christmas gifts. Older Daughter has done some drawing of birds with her grandfather, so we made a mug that featured her collage as a present. It turned out spectacular, with the colors showing vividly against the mug’s black background. He loved it.
She also surprised my husband and me with framed drawings of our favorite birds. His is a peregrine falcon:
Mine (currently) is the red-breasted nuthatch.
Last but not least, she created a nature newsletter to pass out to our extended family. We made some and mailed them to grandparents last year, but it’s been awhile. This was her idea, and she did all the writing. I helped her a bit with Publisher and supplied some pics, but it really represents her creative effort.
We’re proud of her, of course! And as both mom and teacher, I’m amazed at the way our emphasis on nature study starting last year has opened up such a deep response in both girls. When she wanted to create something personally meaningful as a gift for loved ones, Older Daughter’s thoughts went reflexively to the natural world. One of my hopes for her is that she’ll never lose that sense of wonder. -
Plain Brown Packages
The girls and I took a walk at the local pond where we saw the redtail a month or so ago. He flew by a short distance from us but didn’t put on a show like he did last time. But it was fun to see (and hear) a flock of tree sparrows peeping as they fed in the bushes accompanied by goldfinches, cardinals and white-throated sparrows. The bushes were full of rustlings and twitterings, and the white-throated sparrows were in top form flipping over leaves on the forest floor.
Sparrows are thought of as plain birds, but seen up close they never fail to win my admiration. These tree sparrows have such a beautiful combination of browns and golds. They seem like flying chipmunks. I never noticed the yellow on the lower part of their beaks before.
There was a song sparrow too, in the same place I’ve seen her before.
Not far away was some fresh beaver work. Younger Daughter was convinced we’d startled the beaver because the tree “had spit on it.” 🙂
There are two large beaver lodges on the pond, as well as a number of muskrat homes. This lodge seemed to be where the numerous saplings and bush stems the beavers has nipped off were being taken.
It was cold, but we enjoyed seeing these reminders of creatures busy about the work of survival. It almost seemed like they enjoyed seeing us too. We certainly gave the birds something to gossip about.
“Dotty the Tree Sparrow spends the winter here. He left for his home in the Far North about the time you took it into your head to wake up.”
“Why do you call him Dotty?” asked Johnny Chuck.
“Because he has a little round black dot right in the middle of his breast,” replied Peter. “I don’t know why they call him Tree Sparrow; he doesn’t spend his time in the trees the way Chippy does, but I see him much oftener in low bushes or on the ground. I think Chippy has much more right to the name of Tree Sparrow than Dotty has. Now I think of it, I’ve heard Dotty called the Winter Chippy.”
“Gracious, what a mix-up!” exclaimed Johnny Chuck. “With Chippy being called a Tree Sparrow and a Tree Sparrow called Chippy, I should think folks would get all tangled up.”
“Perhaps they would,” replied Peter, “if both were here at the same time, but Chippy comes just as Dotty goes, and Dotty comes as Chippy goes. That’s a pretty good arrangement, especially as they look very much alike, excepting that Dotty is quite a little bigger than Chippy and always has that black dot, which Chippy does not have. Goodness gracious, it is time I was back in the dear Old Briar-patch! Good-by, Johnny Chuck.”
(Thornton W. Burgess, Burgess Bird Book, chapter 4)
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Killer Athlete
We have two Cooper’s hawks that pass through occasionally. The one pictured here is, I believe, immature. But the other is an adult, complete with the red flush on its breast, a bluish back, and red eyes.I’ve come to recognize them even in silhouette by the way they perch high up, near the trunks of trees, and also by the way they flick their tails — as though they’re forever dusting.
A few times I’ve walked out to scare them away. I know they need to eat, but I can’t sit by and watch them take our songbirds. I haven’t seen them get one yet this year, but I’ve seen the pursuit.
This morning, though, my songbird altruism backfired — enough to make me reconsider my interference. I saw the magnificent adult land in a tree, and I walked out. My dog ran ahead of me and startled a whole flock of mourning doves out of the brush below where the Cooper was perched. He took off like a shot after them. Last I saw, he had selected one and was bearing down in the distance. I never saw the outcome.
The hawk’s athleticism is so impressive to me! — his quick response, his acceleration and speed, his lightning-fast maneuvers in flight. Amazing…
I won’t be meddling again, though. The doves had been well hidden until I blundered into their life-and-death game of hide-and-seek.
