Winter birds

This has been the best winter for birding in a long time I think.


The usual suspects arrive at the feeders every day. Lots of little birds of the sparrow, finch and chickadee clans. Jays have made a raucous comeback after West Nile disease decimated them a few years back.
Lots of red tailed hawks.
Not enough visits from the Cooper's hawk and we miss her when she isn't here to bomb the pigeons.
WAY too many mallard ducks and crows, going after the corn bags every afternoon.


Then for three or four days somebody was out in Grandma Peggy's little winesap apple tree making soft, purring calls that I not only did not recognize, but had never heard before. It is very hard to pick out birds on grey, cloudy days, and despite several efforts I never saw our murmurous singer. Then day before yesterday there was someone large and grey out in the young honey locust in the old orchard. At first I though he was a shrike, but he flashed black and white as he flipped down and picked up some large object, maybe walnut sized.


Wow, a mockingbird! I'll bet he was my mystery singer and is mimicking some southern songbird. We get mockers sporadically but it has been ages since the last one. Peg used to put black currents on the windowsill in the living room and they would come and eat them. In fact when we moved up here Liz found a mummified one in the closet of the room she chose (shudder). If this one stays around I will put out some raisins or currents for him. I think the big thing he picked up was probably a dried up old apple from the orchard, but there are lots of wild grapes, rose hips and other dried fruits around for his dining pleasure.


The best bird sighting came the other night when Liz and I were driving up the river on our way home from the Farm Bureau board of directors meeting though. With the locks open and the ice gone for the moment, the long, flat, stretch on Riverside Drive looked like a sheet of dark, polished metal as we slowly passed.

Then a softly glowing shimmer of movement caught my eye out on the inky expanse. I turned to see what caused it (Liz was driving.) For the entire length of the smooth part of the river, from the old insurance office all the way down to Dunkin Donuts (and maybe beyond, I couldn't see) a narrow necklace of gulls floated like a trail of feathers down the center. In some places the trail was only a gull or two wide, in others thirty or forty marked their places in the roosting flock.


Gulls look different at night. Ephemeral, like insubstantial like puffs of milkweed down. To keep their places in the constant stream of the flowing river, they leap frogged over one another, a handful at a time, skimming low up the river to land at the head of the line, then floating slowly back down. They were so incredibly lovely, adrift on that long, silent mirror, that it took my breath away. I am rarely pleased to be out late at night, but the gulls made me glad that I was.

***Alan saw a pair of something huge and white, with long, trailing legs, laboring up the river the other night. I suspect great white herons, but didn't get to the window fast enough to see when he came in a hollering. They come under the heading of maybe once every ten years or so birds and are a big event. I hope they come back by.