5:25 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 37 degrees (feels like winter, sounds like spring), wind E 0 mph. Sky: mostly clear, the south rinsed in rose. Permanent streams: volume diminishing, both body and voice. Wetlands: flying in from the north, three loud geese bathed in sunlight. Pitch into the marsh, wings bowed and feet lowered like landing gear. Land with a splash, heads periscoping above the new growth. Off the south end, lone scarlet tanager (FOY) singing in the pines, measured and harsh. Yellowthroats tilt their heads back and cut loose throughout the alders and cattails—no sign of catbirds. Pond: west drift to mist; turkey gobbling in a clearing; seems late for the party. Red-eyed vireo (FOY) crooning in the red pines beyond the feeder stream, over and over and over. Even the flight up from the jungles of the Amazon wasn't enough to dull its quest. Brace yourselves, I tell my dogs, he's with us until the end . . . and there's a lot more of them on the way.
Aristocratic remove: on a cold morning, pileated and flicker call, a wild duet, proclamations so loud and incessant that even my bones notice, the woodpeckers themselves remain hidden. Red-shouldered, preceded by a scream, flies across the marsh, head down, searching for a wayward vole or a chilled sparrow. Bitterns back and hummingbirds and rose-breasted grosbeaks and chipping sparrows and black and white warblers, whispering in the duff. Ravens and crows conspicuous by their absence, jays by their silence. Ovenbirds. Blue-headed vireos. Purple finches. Phoebes and robins feeding chicks, one in the barn, the other in a shrubby cedar. No bats behind the barn door. (Did I miss them when I left for Colorado?)
Brittle pine, edge of the road, house wren rapid-fire delivery. With each stanza, the lower half of the slightly decurved bayonet bill and short, stiff tail bounce in cadence, quivering body parts. Chums for company. The audio version of match.com A second wren appears. Watches and listens and then inspects a vintage hairy woodpecker hole, in and out. Emerges, a bill full of debris, a spring cleaning. Then, two wrens share a pine snag, one singing, the other listening, evaluating—King and Queen of the thicket. Perhaps, an eventual mixing of genomes, the building blocks of evolution. The palette of natural selection.
And I had to look up "FOY", which for you birders is "first of year"--but has other meanings as well: https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/FOY I'm partial to "fountain of youth", which is what your posts bring to me :-) I only saw a scarlet tanager once as a child in Ohio--a reverse red-winged blackbird in my memory. Thanks again for sharing all the sights and sounds and way with words: "the palette of natural selection"--the colors of the world.
Hi Ted — Welcome back! I was so glad to see your emails returning to my in-box and glad that I will get to experience spring through your eyes and ears and words.
Congratulations on your sagebrush sparrow and on meeting Isabelle. She sure missed some great birds while napping and nursing. Very good of you to start a list for her. What fun the two of you will have over the years with the birds.
I’m in Quechee for a while, helping out with my grandkids, 6 and 3, and I’m enjoying your not-so-far-away observations. We have phoebes and robins on nests here as well. The kids gather straw and moss that they think the robins might like and leave it strewn about at dusk. The next morning, if the materials are gone, they are wildly excited.