Short

Beautiful weekend, nasty cold.  Bad combination, but at least on Sunday a big flock of Cedar Waxwings stopped off in the trees around the back yard most of the day.  I estimate at least 30, maybe much more, given the noise and the amount of constant movement.  Migration’s pretty much over, I’m guessing.  Used to be we’d know the end was in sight by the half-dozen Blackpolls that would go through in ones and twos over a half-week, but no Blackpolls for several years now.  Hardly any warblers at all, in fact; Parulas seemed to be common, but relatively few Yellow Warblers, and almost none of any others, even Yellow-rumped.  Depressing.

Nice morning

There seemed to be a sort of warbler wave going through this morning; several Yellow Warblers, a Redstart or two and a couple of Black-and-Whites were calling around the house (no Parulas, though – unlike yesterday).  It was a cool, damp, overcast/high fog kind of morning, which I remember as being a good time for migrants.  No thrushes or other birds, though.  Last Saturday up the road at Cromwell Bridge we had both Orioles, numerous nesting Gnatcatchers, lots of Parulas, lots of Bluebirds and Tree Swallows (+ Barn and a couple of Rough-winged Swallows) and a bunch of other odds and ends.   The usual nesters have settled in: Robins, Catbirds, Mockingbirds, Cardinals and House Sparrows.  Goldfinches, House Finches and Carolina Wrens are nesting in the vicinity, but not the yard this year.  I think I need to put up the Hummingbird feeder, since they’re back in the area and we should be able to entice them to nest.  I think it might be an idea to put up an owl box as well, since we have loads of owl food in the area and lots of dense cover with all the vines.

Of course!

The day after that last rant, the White-throats had all pulled out for nesting spots.  Since then, some nice migrants moving through.  Thursday evening, as I was firing up the grill for the spring season, I heard a Brown Thrasher singing around the side of the house, and was able to watch him go for several minutes until he took off down the street.  Then, this morning, a Redstart was singing just outside when I got up and a Red-eyed Vireo sang us off from down the street.  Tomorrow morning, it’s another birding workshop, and perhaps the weather will be better then.  To cap the evening, my birthday present (from me, of course) finally arrived a month late – the cast recording of Peter Pan which I remember so fondly from my childhood.  I’m wallowing in the great Cyril Richard’s Hook as I type these words.  The rest is somewhat forgettable, but Hook’s songs are about the best Broadway has to offer, in my opinion.

I see it all, now – it’s a plot.

So, the White-throated Sparrows finally (finally!) pulled up stakes and headed North, eh?  Haha!  Came out of work last evening only to be surrounded by maybe a dozen of the little clowns, whooping it up in the bushes, marching in formation as a brass band, dancing around doing juggling routines and forming human pyramids and the like.   OK, I know when I’m licked.  I give!  Uncle!  Stick around all year if you want – shoot, I’ll make room in my basement for you if that’s what you desire.  First the infuriating House Mouse that has decided that he (she?) is one of the family and joins us at dinner and during the evening, each time casually trotting past the half-dozen lethal (set, and baited, but unsprung) traps and equal numbers of sticky Tanglefoot pads, not to mention the several containers of D-Con poison.  I’m just waiting for it to hop up on my sholder and start making cooking suggestions.  And now, the White-throats That Wouldn’t Leave!  What, they think they’re Canada Geese now?  I’m drifting into Mugato-land; soon I shall be attempting to brainwash a male model into assassinating the Prime Rib of Propecia.  I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!  It’s May 1, for goodness’ sake!  Will no-one rid me of these turbulent sparrows?  Argh; I think I’d better go and lie down for a while..

Movements

No White-throats yesterday, none this morning; I think they may finally have headed north, despite the rather Canadian weather we’ve been having this week.  A real first yesterday, though – a Great Crested Flycatcher calling down the end of the block when I came home last night.  I just put it it down to one of the local talented Mockingbirds until it gave both the ‘wheep’ and ‘brrreeeep’ calls and kept calling for several minutes.  Still no warblers, though, although I’ve heard that other people are getting some in the region.  In other news, an orchard spider was set up in one of the front holly bushes (presumably since the large forsythis bushes down the side were reduced to little more than ground cover last fall by the wife) and the Cowbirds have stopped courting, so presumably the local nest hosts are well underway.  There should be some more news after the birding thing on Saturday.  Even though nobody signed up for it, I talked Marty into showing up anyway just in case.  Given Marty’s usual history and luck, it will start pouring rain and he’ll lock his keys in the car..  Should be a fun time anyway!

Quick update

Last night, leaving work, several White-throats were singing and scratching in the bushes, and this morning, White-throats were singing in the back yard, which I take to mean that they are finally mobilizing to head back north.  The Catbirds pulled back in last night, apparently, and were “singing” away happily this morning as well, along with both House Wrens and House Finches, which seem to come and go from the neighborhood on some sort of unpredictable basis.  It’s been cool (40s at night, 50s in the day) for several days, which may or may not have anything to do with it.  Goldfinches also singing and flying around this morning.

Same old, different old.

For weeks, now, every time I come out from work and don’t hear a  White-throat singing or ’sweeting’ at me from the bushes, I figure they’ve finally headed north.   Then the next day, there one or two are again.  I have no idea if it’s the same ones or whether they’re ‘trickling up’ or what.  I didn’t hear or see a single one over the weekend, so I thought along with Rocky, “This time for sure!”   Naturally, coming into work this morning, a single White-throat was whistling his fool head off in the bushes.  Will they never leave?  Meanwhile in the past couple weeks, the oaks have _finally_ finished flowering (the downtown oaks, especially the Willow Oaks, finishing almost 3 weeks ago, now).  The Red Maples have finally largely lost their repulsive flesh-toned look as they’ve shed the masses of seed-copters and leafed-out to a large extent (the other maples have sometimes had big seed loads, but nothing like the Red Maples this year).  Everything has pretty much leafed out or started to (my 4-year-old Black Walnut has finally started showing some serious bud action this week, but he’s a late bloomer.  *rimshot*).  Around the area, we’ve had at one time or another over the past 3 weeks, a Lacewing, a Red Admiral, both Whites and Sulfurs, a Mourning Cloak, a Carpenter Bee (but no Bumblebees!) and a Leaf-cutter Bee.  Also, the porch light was attracting a load of smallish pointy-ended beetles which look familiar, but I’ve forgotten the name of (Dermestids?) and a couple of what look suspiciously like Carpet Beetles.  We had a couple of smallish nondescript moths as well.  The few Bowl-and-Doily Spiders are full-sized, and one had a male hanging around in her web.  The Tent Caterpillars are in mid-season form and almost all over the Cherries and Crabapple.  In bird news, the Purple Martins and Chimney Swifts were back last week, along with Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and a young Peregrine.  The House Wrens have left after about a week of singing, and the Carolina Wrens are back in place.  The Pigeons have been doing their F-14 and V-wing displays for weeks now, so they should be popping out babies very soon if they haven’t already.  The Robins are well along in their nesting, and our porch-nester popped out of the bush the other day with what looked suspiciously like a fecal sac.  The Cardinals seem to be nesting well, the Cowbirds have been courting for over a week, and the Mourning Doves are finally getting serious about our porch as well.  We’ve had one or more Turkey Vultures over the city most days recently, and a couple of Black Vultures last week as well.  It wouldn’t surprise me if Black Vultures actually nest in the city, possibly in one of the rotten houses around the east or west side.  I haven’t noticed any warblers yet, but then again, we don’t get many warblers any more.  I think I had no more than 3 species in our yard last year, a real drop-off from when we moved in over 15 years ago.  No thrushes, either, although they’ve always been pretty spotty (*rimshot*).  It turns out that the rabbits aren’t completely gone, because I’ve had reports that there is a single rabbit still living on our block, although he can only be spotted at dawn or thereabouts.  I still haven’t seen him even though I’m up and out by 7 most days.  Pretty clearly predation is the factor here, because even only 5 or 6 years ago there were something like 3-4 rabbits for every three houses, and they were visible all day.  Pretty fearless, too (for rabbits).  The foxes don’t seem to have increased, I haven’t seen our local Redtail for weeks, and we don’t seem to have any more free-ranging dogs and cats than we did a decade ago.  Beats the heck out of me what could be doing it.  On the opposite side, we have apparently traded in our difficult-to-catch White-footed Mice for impossible-to-catch House Mice.  The little buggers seem to be extremely trap-shy.  I got one the other day by putting down a row of Tanglefoot traps across his run between the kitchen and dining room, but I haven’t caught any since then, despite seeing at least 2 different ones.  I’ve even gone so far as to handle the traps only with gloved hands, and use a special “mouse attractant” in the bait, but so far no go.  I don’t know – maybe it’s time to do a real fumigation (maybe get the cockroaches and ants at the same time?).  We’ve used 4 different kinds of snap-traps, 2 different kinds of live-traps, the sticky traps and poison, and we seem to have reached a dead end catching these varmints.  You get one, then they avoid the traps.  I never thought they were that smart.

Oh, yes – the other day, driving down Belair Rd, I passed a lone runner heading south, holding a large, Olympic-type torch.  “That’s funny!”, I thought; ”Doesn’t that go from Greece to England this year?”  I had images of the international news the next day: an accident scene a few blocks further down, with tire tracks indicating that the runner was hit by a car that travelled diagonally across the road and through a display window before swerving back onto the road and being lost in the distance.  A normal Belair Rd driving event, in other words.  As it happened, however, no accident made the news, and it turned out to be the other Olympics – it was the Special Olympics torch en route to the opening ceremonies of the Maryland Games.  Still nice, of course.  One more for the list!

Update

Yesterday was a nice warm May day, Whites and the first Sulfur of the season out, and a nice bit of dim sum down in Chinatown (reborning) to mark my birthday.  Today, Titmice, House Wrens and Goldfinches calling around the house, a Carpenter Bee (!) hovering here and there along the side of the house, and a laggard White-throated Sparrow shuffling in the underbrush.  Cutting the backyard exposed the fact that the violets we used to have in front have moved to the back of the house for reasons unknown.  The Female Sharpy (hybrid/Cooper’s?) had another pigeon out in her corner sometime in the last week or so (judging by the pile of feathers) and the sump is completely dry, due to the exceptionally dry spring we’ve had.  Otherwise not much of note.

Sporadic Notes (must remember to start attaching photos)

It’s been a spectacularly odd time so far:  the winter was mostly very warm and dry, with occasional cold spells.  The spring has been very warm and very dry for the most part.  Our Daffodills were up in January, but didn’t flower until March.  We had both White and little Blue butterflies out in February for a brief period, but none since then.  I had a very large female Hogna helluo up on my porch the third week of March, during a brief rain storm, very early for the year.  We’ve had almost no early flowers out (only a very few Bugleweed, for instance – too dry?), which may be why we’ve had no Bumblebee sightings so far this year.  There’s a full-sized Bowl-and-Doily spider web in our flowering crabapple tree as of yesterday (a month early?), and a few Agelenopsis funnelwebs here and there outdoors.  Normally at this time of year I’d be hard-pressed to find more than scattered cribbelates like Amaurobius under rocks and logs.  Even though the big flies have been out for a couple weeks, no orb-weavers that I’ve noticed, but it is very early for even the young ones and the little Araniellas.   A small flock of Barn Swallows (a week early?) went over yesterday, and the White-throated Sparrows seem to have headed out of town Monday night (4/3), so the migration is going on.  I had a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and a Brown Creeper on March 25, but that’s not too unusual.  Meanwhile, the oaks have been in flower for over a week now, which puts them a full month ahead of the time I remember from 30 years ago, when the warbler migration in April/May overlapped the oak flowers.  The Cardinals and Robins were courting and beginning their nesting season early in March, so they seem to have active nests going right now.  Maybe three broods this year?  Certainly the Starlings and Mourning Doves will be shooting for three (maybe four!) at this rate.  The Barred Owl calling in our neighborhood back in February doesn’t seem to have stayed around, but that reminds me that something has wiped out our local rabbits.  We had a thriving rabbit population for about 14 years, and then suddenly they have mostly disappeared.  I haven’t seen a single one this year so far, when we used to have 1 or 2 in our yard at all times (more for a bit after the young left the ‘nest’).  I doubt that the Red-tailed Hawk that moved into the area could have single-handedly wiped them out so thoroughly, and we don’t seem to have any more foxes than we always have had (fewer, if anything – I haven’t seen any sign of foxes for almost a year now).  I’m not sure whether it’s disease, rat poison, lawn spraying, or simply coincidence and more predators (probably not).  I’m still not sure about our female Accipiter: she seems to have characteristics at least intermediate to, if not heavily shaded towards, a Cooper’s Hawk, and the male is really small compared to her.  She’s almost as big as an American Crow, and he’s barely Blue Jay-sized.  Maybe it’s just extremes in action; nobody I’ve asked has had any idea of (or any interest in) the question of Accipiter hybridization (or, for that matter, the question of corvid hybridization – I’m still suspicious that the Fish and American crows were hybridizing here about 10 years ago, judging by the odd ‘mixed’ calls, which have now mostly gone away again).  That will do for now.

Before I forget

Yesterday our local female Sharp-shinned Hawk was sitting out in the backyard noshing on something (presumably a pigeon).  I watched her haggle bits off a long bone and saw some other bits nearby.  When I went out to check later, however, all I could find was a scattering of down and pinfeathers.  Very odd.  The other interesting thing was that she is definitely a huge Sharpshin; as big as (maybe bigger than) the American Crows.  Very burly, very Cooper’s Hawk-looking, but definitely the classic squared-off tail.  I guess she eats well around here…  Sometimes I wonder if Accipiters hybridize at all.  I also still think it would be interesting to check the genetics of the local American and Fish Crows to see how much (if any) hybridizing took place in the aftermath of the West Nile decimation, but nobody I’ve talked to seems interested in it.

That reminds me, I really ought to put down the yard list, so here it is.  It’s not as bad as I thought a city yard would be, and considering that I don’t have any feeders up, it’s a bit surprising:

Sharp-shinned Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

Eastern Screech-owl

Common Nighthawk (flyover only)

Chimney Swift (flyover only)

Ruby-throated Hummingbird (visiting the Weigelia and ignoring the infestations of Trumpet Creeper!)

Northern Flicker

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Downy Woodpecker

Blue Jay

American Crow

Fish Crow

White-breasted Nuthatch

House Wren

Carolina Wren (N)

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Swainson’s Thrush (by song)

Veery

American Robin (N)

Gray Catbird (N)

Northern Mockingbird (N)

Cedar Waxwing

European Starling

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Blackpoll Warbler

Common Yellowthroat

American Redstart

Northern Cardinal (N)

Rufous-sided Towhee

Song Sparrow (N)

Chipping Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco

White-throated Sparrow

Red-winged Blackbird

Brown-headed Cowbird

Common Grackle

Baltimore Oriole

House Sparrow (N)

American Goldfinch

House Finch

Count = 40, with 7 confirmed nesters.  I really ought to put up feeders and nest boxes; I might lure in a few more…