42

At Peck's last summer
Can you tell I am getting antsy?

Alan and I have been keeping a loose list of the birds we have seen here at the farm this summer. I don't bore you with a list of names but we are up to 42 species at this point. They are mostly common, with the most exotic being the willow flycatcher, a bird that is hard enough to distinguish from the alder that even experts tell them apart by their call. Ours has been thoughtful enough to call all day, all spring and half the summer, allowing us to spend hours on What Bird listening to recorded calls. His call is a perfect match.

To add to our enjoyment of this drab little critter, it has taken to coming right on to the sitting porch several times a day picking at yarn from a trellis. Must be thinking about nesting again, although it isn't calling much. I am trying for a photo but between the wren rushing in to drive it away and its level of personal wildness that may not happen.

The end of the dawn chorus has been like the turning off of a switch. After weeks of having the delight of waking to cardinals, mockers, robins and what all, there is nothing calling now but a couple of starlings. And the wren. Which never shuts up. This lack is probably partly due to the season.

And partly due to the sharp shinned hawk. He was first spotted taking out an English sparrow, to which he was quite welcome. Then the other evening, just after an especially torrential rain, Alan and I were on our way out to milk when we heard a commotion from the mulberry by the compost bin.

Underneath the canopy, on the lowest branches, was the wettest, most bedraggled hawk I have ever seen. Each feather stood up in a ruffled peak like Harry Potter's hair.

It was clutching something and trying unsuccessfully to fly away from us and from the dozens of small birds that use the tree as an all day, all-you-can-eat cafeteria. They were (not unreasonably) quite discommoded by its presence.

Finally it made it to wing, showering water droplets behind as it lumbered away. It was lugging quite a large frog in its talons and we had a nice chuckle at its antics. I suspect it is a young one to which flying is a relative novelty.

Or else just a klutz. Either way I wish it would move along. I love taking a minute now and then to walk out on the porch to see who is flying back and forth across the long lawn, beaks crammed with berries. Or what the mockingbird is fighting with at any given time. It is getting too quiet.