No apologies for this late post. There's nothing urgent in it, few birds at all in fact, just some long-winded musings.
Yesterday in the early afternoon I spent an hour or so in the small and rather trashy bit of woods between Cass Park and the machine shop next to my house. I saw a total of about a dozen individual birds, only one of which was likely a migrant, and yet the experience was surprisingly satisfying. I think the reason has to do with a very basic psychological ability which we all develop as very young children, namely the recognition that an object or being which leaves our view does not go out of existence. It still must exist and it may return to view in the future when we can once more interact with the object or being. As far as I know I developed this sense of the permanency of objects just as normally as everyone else does. But my experience in birding over the years has constantly eroded and undermined that sense. Time and again I will see a bird that I don't know where it came from, then in a sudden flit it is gone to I-don't-know-where and I never see it again. I joke that they are popping back and forth between dimensions, briefly deigning to visit ours, but it really is a bit unnerving and troubling the way a bird in the bush can hide and flee. Having seen other birders with more faith that they can find the hidden bird and that the hidden bird will return, I have gotten a bit better at patiently outwaiting the bird's fears. Yesterday's sojourn actually began with a non-bird. I saw a large insect with doubled green wings flying rather slowly and a bit awkwardly over the lawn between trees at the edge of the park. I raised my binoculars in curiousity and saw nothing. As often happens the object I seek swerves as I raise my glasses so my aim ends up wrong. But a minute later I saw it again, and I watched naked-eye to where it landed in a clump of leaves on the outside of a nearby tree. I stared at that clump through binoculars and saw only leaves. I walked around for better views and still saw no insect for a long time. Then I noticed two long thin line segments pointing down: a pair of antennae. But before I could locate the body they seemed to retract. The bug had moved, but not into the open. Then it crawled on top of that leaf clump and revealed itself as a Praying Mantis, a critter I hadn't seen in quite awhile. Shortly after that it fluttered off again, in a pattern which I may recognize in future, toward other less accessible perches. Already my faith in critter permanence had been rewarded three times. I was attracted into the woods by a sort of chipping noise which I quickly realized was a chipmunk. I refuse to give those guys extra attention if they aren't out in the open. I don't want to encourage them. But almost immediately I heard a Blue Jay. Jays aren't exactly a big deal. They are here year-round, fairly conspicuous, and sometimes a bit annoying as they displace other birds from feeders, fill their gullets with large quantities of food to store, raid the nests of other songbirds, and also scare off those shyer songbirds as they raise the alarm about the presence of a suspicious person with binoculars in the woods. But I still like Blue Jays. They are simply gorgeous. Blue has always been my favorite color, and when the light shines just right the blue refracted in a bird's feathers seems to fluoresce. Even the process of making the blue in a feather is a bit magical, as I've also come to appreciate the specialness of a bit of blue sky in a land where such benevolent weather must be appreciated and not taken for granted. The Blue Jay sailed off ahead of me from above in a nearby tree. Oddly it landed briefly and awkwardly on the vertical branchless trunk of a dead sapling. It wasn't alone there. I think it paused to hassle a female Hairy Woodpecker who shifted her position but retained her dignity and her possession of the tree as the Blue Jay moved on. As it turned out I saw that female Hairy Woodpecker a dozen or more times during my walk. Each time it disappeared from view with no expectation on my part of it being seen again. This multiple reappearance was reassuring to the infant in me, but it also told me that I was a benign presence as far as it was concerned, which pleased me. Either that or the piece of woods was just so small that we simply kept bumping into each other. In a larger habitat perhaps it would have been gone forever along with my faith. When I heard first one chickadee and then a second, my hopes were raised for fellow small insectivores among them. Most of the motions I was able to track down were of course the very active chickadees whose sounds led my eyes to them as well. But one subtle movement was no chickadee. Half hidden among leaves and branches on top of the hill I saw an entirely light underside, some darkish streaks on the flanks and I thought yellow on the cheek. I had multiple poor glimpses, which was again somehow reassuring. I thought it might be a young female Black-throated Green Warbler, but considering the distance, obscuring vegetation, backlighting, and dappling of green and yellow light through the leaves, I wished for a better look. I especially wished for a look from within my nearby yard, as it's a species missing from that list, ever. As it turned out I decided to return directly to my yard. While angling for a better view of the warbler I'd waded into a patch of those weeds with fuzzy hitchhiker seeds, the kind that I'd once found suspending a terribly scrambled bit of feathers containing a Gray Catbird. The tiny burrs had thoroughly infested the lanyard on which I keep my notebook and even the pocket where I keep it. Where could I detach the seeds without planting another patch? I retreated to the middle of the minor portion of my lawn which I actually try to keep mown. If the buggers germinate, I'll be sure to cut them down. A ten-minute interlude of grooming ensued. No birds, and especially no warblers came to my yard, so I returned to the woods, more careful of the understory this time. Some noises are birdlike. Others aren't. I don't really recall what I heard, but it wasn't much, and it definitely wasn't birdlike, that caused me to turn. A raccoon was walking toward me, still about five yards off among the shrubs, vines, and weeds. Suddenly I no longer wanted to be so accepted, in case it was rabid. But neither did I want to evoke an overly defensive reaction, as I recalled the horrific story I'd heard on the radio of a woman attacked unprovoked by a mad raccoon that wouldn't quit biting her until after three grown men had been beating on it with tire irons for twenty minutes. Maybe that memory isn't quite accurate, but you can check the archives of This American Life to find out. I moved sideways while staring at the big-bodied pointy-headed animal, and I used a deliberate shuffle to make a bit of noise. It abruptly changed course 120 degrees without breaking pace, or admitting it had changed its mind, and it was gone into the brush as quickly it had appeared when I first became aware of it. But ten minutes later it walked obliquely and unthreateningly past me again, quietly insistently existing. It was about that time that I heard a Carolina Wren making raspy calls from the hillside. After hearing but not seeing for awhile, I opted to make some similar noises, the sounds of a desperate birder: spishing. The Carolina Wren obligingly flew into view. In fact it flew considerably closer to me, and tagging along with it to see what the fuss was about was a young female Black-throated Green Warbler. Not only was it still around, it was still what it seemed to have been, which is wonderfully satisfying. And though it soon disappeared, it also showed up again for another good view a few minutes later. Other birds seen included a Tufted Titmouse (twice, but it may have been two), a White-breasted Nuthatch along with the wren, a streak of departing reddish brown female Northern Cardinal verifying some chip notes, and a shadow moving across the treetops whose maker banked so we could see each other through a gap in foliage, then called to be sure: Crow, American. I also heard but never saw a Northern Flicker, a Red-bellied Woodpecker, and a Ring-billed Gull. I heard Blue Jay again, and thought, "that's my original bird" until its calls were joined by a second individual. Well, if neither of them was the original Blue Jay, I bet they were all close relatives. --Dave Nutter -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
