"You can observe a lot by just watching" -- Laurence Peter Berra

This past Sunday Sally and I decided to have church outside. Our weather has been so quirky this winter and early spring that we have not been able to indulge in much outdoor recreation; we were hungry for the sort of spiritual renewal that only a good dose of contact with the natural world can provide. Although the previous week had been chilly and generally nasty, with biting winds and even a surprise (and surprisingly heavy) snowfall at the end of the week, the day promised to be much more pleasant. So, with hiking boots on our feet and binoculars in hand, we ventured out.

After a stop at the Maine Diner in Wells for some pre-hike sustenance, we headed for the Wells Reserve. The site of an old farm, the Reserve is a favorite destination for  many area birders, walkers, and general nature lovers. It encompasses a marvelous range of habitats: mixed woodlands, open meadows, overgrown orchard & pasture, marshland, and oceanfront; there's an extensive trail system through the property that allows visitors to sample them all.

The annual spring migration is just in the early stages, so our expectations for seeing a lot of birds were rather low. We hoped perhaps to pick up a few FOYs (birderspeak for "first of year") and since our primary objective was simply to get outside, we figured that any sightings would be gravy; we'd be happy with whatever birds we happened to see.

Things were, indeed, quite slow on the birding front, but we managed to conjure up a few interesting species: a pair of American Kestrels; a half-dozen or more Turkey Vultures;  a gorgeous Great Blue Heron; a couple of Eastern Phoebes; several White-breasted Nuthatches; a few Song Sparrows; numerous American Robins; and the odd Canada Goose or so.

The relative dearth of birdlife notwithstanding, this is an interesting time of year to be out and about in the woods and fields. The snow is almost all gone--the new that fell on Friday disappeared almost as quickly as it came--so, apart from a bit of mud, the trails are all clear. It will be another few weeks before the foliage opens up, so many things are visible now that won't be once the trees and bushes leaf out. Signs of seasonal change are plentiful. One aspect of this re-awakening that we quite enjoyed seeing was the emergent Skunk Cabbage which was abundant in the wet areas near the edge of the marsh. Whatever unpleasant associations its name might invoke, it is really quite beautiful in its early phases of maturation. The flower looks something like a sea urchin without its spines. It is usually concealed by the leaves, but lies exposed in the plant in the photo above right, on which the leaves have been either broken off or eaten. (Click on this--and any other photo--to enlarge it.)

 

Our route had taken us first down the Knight Trail (see map) through the old orchard, then to the beach and back via the Barrier Beach Trail. From there we strolled the boardwalk of the Laird-Norton Trail, which connects with the Farley Trail. There is a (welcome) bench on the Farley Trail, in the vicinity of the marker for the trail on the map. This is a favorite spot to stop for a bit, not only to rest our old legs but also because it offers a fine opportunity to sit quietly and observe whatever the local avifauna might be up to.

The photo at the top of this post shows our view from the bench. Note the small island of brush across the open field from the sitters' vantage point; this provides excellent cover for birds and other critters. The area around the bench is similarly bird-friendly. There are several old apple trees and, again, a good deal of brush; see the photo to the right.

For the first few minutes that we sat there we saw no birds moving around but, soon enough, the wisdom of Yogi Berra, and his words that serve as the title for this post, was revealed. Sally spotted a raptor flying high overhead, high enough so we could not discern much in the way of marking. But the long, pointed wings, slim tail, somewhat-smaller-than-a-crow size, general coloration, and the occasional glimpse of patterning on its face made the ID fairly easy: Peregrine Falcon. His or her presence may have accounted for the lack of activity on the part of any smaller birds closer to our level, though it was high enough to perhaps have been undetectable by any songbirds. And the Peregrine gave no indication of being on the lookout for Sunday brunch.

There may or may not have been any cause-and-effect at work here, but soon after the falcon passed over, the action around us began to pick up. We spotted another Kestrel perched atop a tree in the far corner of the field. A Blue Jay soon chased him from his perch. Numerous Robins began searching the field for food. A couple of Song Sparrows started to announce their presence with authority. A male Northern Cardinal flew out of the bushes to our left, traversed the field, and did his best to disappear in the brush in the mid-field brush island. His mate soon followed; she was more successful in concealing herself.

The real treat, though, came as were beginning to think about resuming our walk. When I got up from the bench to take the photo above I was astonished to look up and see a beautiful female Northern Harrier headed in our direction! Neither of us saw where she came from; all of a sudden she was just there. She tilted her way across the field, then came down less than fifty yards from where we were  positioned. She did not stay on the ground long, and did not seem to have caught anything. She soon lifted off again and went on her merry way. We were left with huge smiles on our faces over having had such a close encounter--the closest I've ever had--with such a magnificent bird.

In the 20-30 minutes we spent sitting on the bench our patience had been rewarded many times over. Another sports cliche came to mind as we reminded ourselves that, when birding, it is oftentimes best to "let the game come to you."

We continued our walk along the Farley Trail. Before it went back into the woods we spotted this old nest in the tall grass along the edge of the field. I suspect that it was last year's work of Red-winged Blackbirds. Red-wings are among the species that are just now beginning to arrive in Maine for the summer.

  The woods in this section of the reserve property are dominated by pines. We encountered abundant evidence of the importance of pines as a source of food for denizens of the woods; squirrels had used fallen trees and old stumps for lunch counters as they feasted on pine nuts.



We also ran across reminders, such as this venerable stump girdled by old fencing, that this property had, indeed, once been a working farm.  

At the point where the trail re-emerges from the woods a pair of White-breasted Nuthatches was bopping around the trunk of a large old pine. After watching them for a bit we realized that they were going in and out of a small hole about 10-12 feet up the trunk. A telltale white smear around the bottom arc of the hole was a pretty clear indication that this was their nesting hole! A male Downy Woodpecker was also working the branches of the big pine, finding whatever it is that Downy Woodpeckers find to eat. A bit further on we were delighted to see a Brown Creeper circling his way up a medium-sized Red Maple tree, and making occasional forays to the smaller trees around it.

We finally made our way back to the parking lot, again heeding Yogi's advice by taking every fork in the trail that we came to. Our bodies were a bit tired but our spirits refreshed. I had started the morning in a bad mood but, happily, my grumpiness dissipated somewhere between spotting the first Kestrel and the close encounter with the Harrier. As expected, we had not seen great numbers of birds, but were quite pleased with the variety of species we had found. We took some pleasure in having re-learned, for the umpteenth time, that you can, indeed, observe a lot by just watching.

Coda:
We were rewarded with one final avian treat on our way out of the reserve -- a female Pileated Woodpecker was whanging away at a tree right beside the road, very near the entrance gate. I stopped the car, and since nobody was behind me we sat and watched her for as long as we cared to. She did not seem in the least bit bothered by, or even aware of, our presence. Sweet.

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The Wells Reserve is a local treasure. We feel very fortunate to have such a resource so close at hand and have long been members/supporters. Perhaps some who read this would consider supporting it as well.

An Appreciation of Swallows...and of Edward Howe Forbush

Tree Swallow, West Kennebunk, ME

One day late in the summer of 1984 I was mowing a nice crop of rowen in the upper part of the big field that we called the Drake Lot, on the family farm in western Massachusetts. It was a gorgeous, damn-near perfect August day; sunny, with a few white puffy clouds in an otherwise clear blue sky, temperature in the mid-70s, just a bit of a breeze blowing. The air was crisp and dry; I knew that the grass I was cutting would be ready for raking and baling by the next afternoon. It was the kind of day when riding a tractor for a several hours was as pleasant an activity as anything else I might have been doing.

After I'd been around the field three or four times I was delighted to find myself accompanied by a sizable flock of swallows. They were constantly in motion, swooping and diving gracefully as they feasted on the insects that the mower was stirring up. Birds would come in low over the field behind me, flying swiftly over the swath I'd just cut. They'd snatch up a few morsels as the grass fell, go into a vertical climb over the mower, bank sharply to the right or left, then loop back to make another circuit. Others would come in from the sides, or the front, sweeping as many bugs as they could into their open mouths as they flew. With all the activity it was impossible to get anything approaching a precise count but there were at least a couple of dozen birds following me. Their numbers swelled with each successive lap I made around the field.

Their aerial acrobatics were such a joy to watch that it was all I could do to keep my mind on the mowing. The grace, speed, and precision of their flight was enthralling. George Lucas and his cohorts must have had the flight of swallows in mind when they developed some of the maneuvers of the tie fighters and other small spacecraft in the battle scenes of the Star Wars movies.

As the multitude of birds around me grew, I started to pay more attention to just what kinds of swallows they were. The familiar Barn Swallows, with their blue backs, reddish-orange bellies, and long forked tails, were much in evidence. They were equaled or perhaps surpassed in number by Tree Swallows, whose iridescent gunmetal blue-green backs and pristine white undersides flashed brilliantly in the afternoon sun.

I eventually realized, however, that there were a couple of other, much less-familiar species in the mix. Some had brown backs, and white bellies similar to the Tree Swallows but with brown bands across their upper chests. Their tails had a bit of a fork in them, though nowhere near as pronounced as those of the Barn Swallows. Others had coloration somewhat similar to Barn Swallows but were chunkier, and lacked the classic forked "swallowtail." I scratched my head about these two and resigned myself to having to look them up when I got back to the house for dinner.

Upon reaching home I turned to one of the few bird books I owned at the time: A Natural History of American Birds of Eastern and Central North America. This is essentially an abridged version of Edward Howe Forbush's monumental three volume work, Birds of Massachusetts and other New England States (1925-1929). I quickly learned that the brown birds with the chest stripes were Bank Swallows, a species I knew about but had seen only rarely. Cool. Even cooler was learning that the more colorful ones were Cliff Swallows, a species that was entirely new to me. I had not yet begun keeping a life list at this time but it was still a great treat to have spotted, and learned about, a new bird.

The real joy of doing this bit of research, however, came when I turned to Forbush's description of the Barn Swallow: 
No bird in North America is better known or more truly the friend and companion of man than the swift and graceful Barn Swallow. It nests within his buildings, and with a flight that seems the very 'poetry of motion' it follows the cattle afield or swoops about the house dog as he rushes through the tall grass, and gathers up the flying insects disturbed by his clumsy progress. When the mowing machine takes the field, there is a continual rush of flashing wings over the rattling cutter-bar just where the grass is trembling to its fall. The Barn Swallow delights to follow everybody and everything that stirs up flying insects--even the rush and roar of the modern juggernaut, the motor-car, has no terrors for it.

Wow. It was as if he'd not only been riding along with me on the tractor as I mowed, but had crawled inside my head and described what I'd been seeing. It was more than a little spooky to read something that I felt as if I could have written myself...though Forbush said it better than I could have.

Although I'd been familiar with Forbush's work for some time, up until that afternoon I had not fully appreciated what a fine descriptive writer he was. This was far from the last time that I would turn to him for information about some bird or bit of behavior that had aroused my curiosity, and have him describe exactly what it was that I had just seen. In an earlier post I wrote about watching a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers working away on a pine tree near my house. Forbush, writing roughly ninety years earlier, summed up what I saw quite well:
Pileated Woodpeckers are such powerful birds that they can split off large slabs from decaying stumps, strip bushels of bark from dead trees, and chisel out large holes in either sound, dead, or decaying wood. They like to strip the bark from dead pines, spruces, and especially hemlocks. Their size and strength and their long spear-like tongues enable them to penetrate large trees and draw out borers from the very heart of the tree.

Where I live now, on the banks of the Mousam River in southern Maine, I often enjoy the sight of Wood Ducks cruising past on the open stream, or paddling around the boggy backwaters. Again, Forbush's description of watching these striking ducks matches exactly what I have observed myself. He writes with such grace, beauty, and affection that reading his words brings another whole level of enjoyment and appreciation to the experience: 

Male Wood Duck, Murfreesboro, TN

See that mating pair on the dark and shaded flood of a little woodland river; they seem to float as lightly as the drifting leaves. The male glides along proudly, his head ruffled and his crest distended, his scapular feathers raised and lowered at will, while his plumes flash with metallic luster wherever the sun's rays sifting through the foliage intercept his course. She coyly retires; he daintily follows, exhibiting all his graces, the darkling colors of his plumage relieved by the pure white markings of head and breast and the bright reds of feet and bill and large lustrous eye.

Forbush wrote with knowledge and affection in equal measure. I will repeat the quote from Joseph Kastner about Forbush that I included in a previous post: "Going through his volumes is like going along on a long bird walk, getting to know birds through the eyes and ears and feelings of scores of birders--all their perceptions filtered through the mind of one of the finest and most literate ornithologists the country has ever known." Would that I could tag along with him on such a walk.

Forbush, who lived from 1858 to 1929, was writing in and of a New England that has now largely vanished, the New England of family farms, open country, and minimal suburban sprawl. It was a quieter world, a world in which "the rush and roar of the modern juggernaut, the motor-car" had only begun to make incursions. Although my bird-loving, farming father was of a generation after Forbush, he still lived much of his life in this same world.

I came along only at the tail end of this era but it has, in many ways defined me as well, particularly in my relationship with, and love for, birds. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to grow up doing things like mowing hay in the summer while swallows swarmed around me, and fixing fence in the spring when the woods and pastures were filled with the sights and sounds of warblers and other returning migrants, and hauling wood in the fall with flocks of southbound Canada Geese honking overhead. I am grateful also to have had a father who had an interest in, and was knowledgeable about, birds. As I have written previously, my father's copy of volume 3 of Forbush's Birds of Massachusetts was one of the books that set me on the path of my own efforts to learn about birds. These factors combine to give me an attachment to Forbush and his work that I simply do not get from any modern field guide or smartphone birding app.

I intend to write more about Forbush in the future, and examine some of his books, but for now I'll wrap up this post by returning to swallows. Tree Swallows this time. Forbush wrote of them:
In August, thousands of Tree Swallows, with other species, arrive at the seashore, where they roost in the marshes. They scatter about in the daytime, feeding on insects and berries. Their numbers continue to grow by accessions from the interior, until many thousands are gathered along the coast. Sometimes they alight on telegraph wires, covering them for miles, or they may light on the beaches until the sand is black with their hosts.

I experienced this phenomenon first-hand while visiting Plum Island, near Newburyport, Massachusetts, in September of 2012. Tree Swallows filled the air around me--many hundreds more than had accompanied me while I was mowing back in 1984! It was hard to believe that these were birds; it felt more as if I was caught in a swarm of very large insects.

I had my camera with me that day and captured a bit of the experience:

The human world may, indeed, have undergone vast changes between the time Forbush wrote about the late summer gathering of Tree Swallows and the day I found myself in the midst of a virtual cloud of them, but this seasonal behavior of the birds continues. The timelessness of this annual mustering of swallows makes Forbush's description of it equally timeless; his words are just as apt today as they were when he wrote them decades ago. I take comfort in this.

A Four Woodpecker Day

Four different species, that is. The lousy weather we had in southern Maine yesterday and today--roughly four inches of snow, followed by a light rain that put a thin, crisp crust on everything--brought a lot of traffic to our bird feeders. We had the usual abundance of Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, American Goldfinches, Blue Jays,White-breasted Nuthatches, and Juncos, but also a few somewhat less frequent visitors: several Tree Sparrows, a pair of Cardinals, and the first Red-breasted Nuthatch that I'd seen in some months. Because our house backs up on some woods we are blessed with having a lot of woodpeckers among the regulars. The little Downys are the most common--some days recently we've had as many as six at one time--and there are usually a few Hairys and a pair of Red-bellies around as well.

A pair of Pileateds has inhabited our woods for as long as we've owned the place--that is, I'm assuming it's been the same pair over the years, though I have no evidence to support that notion--but our sightings of them typically have been quite rare and fleeting. On a few occasions we've been able to get somewhat extended looks when they appeared on trees near the house, and in April, 2013, the male spent enough time exploring the hollow of an old branch on the old apple tree in the front yard for me to get a bit of video footage of him.

Until today, that had been the best look I'd had. About 2:30 or so this afternoon, when I should have been out shoveling the walks, I was instead watching the activity at the feeders in our side yard. I was particularly enjoying the sight of numerous woodpeckers competing for space on the suet cakes, and thought how great it would be if one or both of the Pileateds would show themselves to complement the ranks of their smaller cousins. I was enormously delighted, then, when I looked down into the woods a short way and saw one, working away on the side of a White Pine! I was even more pleased when a second bird joined the first.

We keep a pair of binoculars and a spotting scope handy by the feeder viewing area, so we quickly were able to identify the first bird as a male and the second as the female. The male was quite persistently working away in a single spot on the tree. The female was less tenacious. She started pecking away at a place of her own near the male's excavation and every now and then would try to get closer to where he was working. He would have none of it, however, and quickly and decisively warded off all her advances. She soon flew off to other nearby trees. She'd work on one for awhile, then move to another, and then come back to where her (presumed) mate was whanging away. She managed one decent-size hole a quarter of the way around the same tree where he was working, but never showed nearly the same determination that he did.

The speed of his labors was impressive! In ten minutes or less he had created a hole deep enough to engulf his entire bill and part of his face when he made his forward thrusts. I regretted that I had not begun my observations at the same time he started work so I could time his progress. Fortunately, after digging a hole that had an opening that looked to be perhaps three inches high, he re-positioned himself downward a bit and began working in a new spot. This time I was ready, and started the timer on my iPhone. In only two or three minutes he got all the bark chipped off in the new location, and after only three or four more had carved out significant depth. In less than fifteen he had created a hole roughly the same size as the first one.

He continued to expand the new hole downwards and after a total of about half an hour of work he had created a cavity more then twice the size of his first effort. Impressive, indeed. I tried to calculate the number of pecks per minute but his drumming was too irregular. Instead, I counted the number of pecks per burst of activity. These ranged from two to ten, in periods lasting no more than a second or two.

After he'd been working for nearly forty minutes he suddenly stopped and became perfectly still. As did the female who was, at this time, on the adjacent tree. As did the Juncos and Chickadees who were hanging out in the Rose of Sharon bush by the feeders. As did the Downy who was on one of the two suet feeders. A cliche from old Western movies came to mind: it was quiet...too quiet. I strongly suspect that a raptor was in the area, but damned if I could spot one anywhere. The birds-as-statues routine continued for several minutes, but they eventually resumed their activities as abruptly as they had halted them.

As I observed the male, he often took short breaks from his drumming to eat whatever it was that he was finding in the tree. The point of his labors was, after all, to find food. I was never able to see just what it was that he was eating, though presumably it was insects of some sort.

Later, after we did finally get out to do the shoveling, I took a side trip into the woods, yardstick in hand, to try to measure the bird's excavations. His first hole had an opening of about 2.5-3.0" while the second one was nearly 5.0". I was able to reach up and get the yardstick into the second hole and measure the depth. Not a terribly precise reading since the hole it was considerably above my head, but as near as I could determine the hole was on the order of 3.5-4.0" deep. Not bad for about 40 minutes of effort.

This was the best opportunity I've ever had for extended observation of a Pileated Woodpecker at work, and I'm grateful for the experience. This was also the first time that we've had all four species of resident woodpeckers--Downy, Hairy, Red-bellied, and Pileated--visible at the same time. Quite the treat! Had it been a different time of year we might have been able to add Flicker to the mix.