Orange

Brown-eyes susan

Are you seeing more American goldfinch lately? Goldfinch are on the move, often entire family groups.  Goldfinch breed much later than most other birds, waiting until the milkweed and thistle produce seeds.  It’s often early July until the young birds hatch, but they make up for it by being ready to fly within 9-10 days.  Tthe young birds typically stay with the parent birds for at least several more weeks, and all of them flit around together in search of seeds.   That’s the point where the birds are right now in my area.  I see or hear them every day, usually in groups of three or five, rarely more.

Another sign of the progressing season is that for a few minutes I actually considered wearing my headlamp this morning when I walked the dogs.  The morning was crystal clear, not a cloud to be found, and for the once the humidity was low.  So I can’t blame an overcast sky for the near-darkness in which I found myself.  It was entirely the result of the shortening hours of daylight.  I believe I can make it through this week without my headlamp, but I suspect next week will be a different story.  This morning, I simply slowed my exit from the cabin by a minute or so and waited another minute for my eyes to adjust, and we were on our way.

A few visitors

Gray squirrels must be a bit smarter than I’ve given them credit for in the past. I have one that comes to the patio door, stands up on its hind legs, places its front feet on the glass and peers inside the cabin. It gives every indication that it’s begging or looking for food. I’ve seen it pull this trick twice now, both times when the bird feeders (should I call them squirrel feeders?) were empty.

It drives the dogs crazy, of course. The cats aren’t much better, though at least they don’t bark, which is something of an improvement. So far, I haven’t been able to get a photo of the entire procedure, though if the dogs didn’t scare the squirrel with their hysteria, that might be possible. I’ll keep trying.

So far, I have plenty of goldfinch coming to my niger seed feeder, but I haven’t found anything more exotic than that. I’m hoping for siskins but haven’t found any local birders who’ve had them this season. I’ll keep looking.

Morning Gold(finch)

It’s no secret that eastern goldfinch love thistle. I’ve found that the easiest way to photograph them is simply to find a decent patch of thistle. The birds ignore my car as I drive slowly towards the spot. I try to get the camera ready before I get too close. Then I open the window and photograph the birds from inside the car. Usually I don’t turn the motor off, as sometimes that scares them.

This morning, I found an adult male and what is apparently a sub-adult male at my chosen thistle patch. The younger bird has the bright yellow of the adult but is missing the black cap. Goldfinch tend not to be particularly shy. If you’ve fed them at your household bird feeders, you’ll know that the birds show up and stay until they eat their fill, unlike the bouncier chickadees or titmice who pick up a single seed and flit away, only to return again and again, each time taking a single seed and then going someplace else to eat it.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Nearly every day, I find another little sign that spring is here. A little sign today, a little one tomorrow, and after a week or two, that all adds up to a lot of indications that the season is changing. This morning I saw a male eastern goldfinch that was about half-changed into his bright yellow and black breeding plumage.

On Sunday I saw the usual group of goldfinch among the pine siskins at my feeders. Not one of those had started to molt. So, is this a "new" goldfinch? Has the molt started since then and already progressed that quickly? Did I simply miss seeing this particular goldfinch this weekend? I have no idea. I only know that Mr. Goldfinch and his lady-love appeared at the feeders this morning, and he is already starting to look rather dashing.

Both this early morning and last evening I saw lots of migrating turkey vultures. The birds are flying both earlier and later in the day than is usual for them. I am blaming the weather for that. After several days of overcast and misty weather, yesterday was clear but windy, today will be sunny and less windy. Tomorrow brings the first of three days of rain. So the birds have only a limited opening for a little northward migration.

Birds have a heightened sense of weather systems moving in, weather moving out and when they’d better make hay and just move. They easily sense high and low pressure systems—you would too if you could fly. But their ability to see or sense systems that aren’t here yet, is to my mind, even more impressive. That ability seems extra-fine-tuned, some mechanism that allows them to know far more than just what weather is here today and extends that to also knowing what will be tomorrow and beyond.

It’s one thing for me to look at the radar and see that storm system over in Indiana, but when you see 10,000 raptors move earlier in the season than is their typical pattern ahead of a group of systems that is going to shut down migration for at least a week, you know they are seeing or sensing it, too. That’s amazing.

Birds on ice

Yesterday brought yet another snow/sleet/ice/rain event to my cabin. This one, for once, produced somewhat more snow than ice—until sunset, that is. Then a bit of rain fell, which instantly soaked into the snow and then immediately turned everything to ice when the temperature dropped below freezing. This morning, I don’t have a skating rink, I have a glacier. It’s that bad.

When I’ve said in the past how much I like winter, I meant the old winters, when actual snow fell. These new climate-change / global-warming winters that bring more ice than snow are for the birds. And I doubt they like this very much.

My feeders were busy during this latest precipitation event, and I saw more birds than I have all winter. Until yesterday, I never saw more than one goldfinch at a time at the feeders, and I suspected I was seeing the same goldfinch not multiple goldfinch that appeared one after the other. Yesterday, I had plenty of them, and with them came several pine siskins—the first of the season at my feeders.

What I found most interesting is that the siskins and the goldfinch happily fed together at the feeders. Both species appeared to arrive and leave at once, as though they are all hanging out together when they are not at my feeders, too. I also observed that both are exactly the same size, at least to my eye. I don’t think I’ve seen them side by side like this before, so that wasn’t something I’d been able to observe before.

Goldfinch Again

I know I don't usually post photos of the same thing--or in this case the same species of bird--so close together, but this American Goldfinch was just begging for it this morning. And perhaps it's not such an awful thing, as posting another photo of a goldfinch simply illustrates how commonly I'm seeing these thoroughly lovely little birds right now. Of course, I do like to hang out in this little thistle patch they're so fond of. It's not just the goldfinch that like this little 8-10 foot wide patch between the woods and a dirt road. Unfortunately, for me and my photos, though, the goldfinch are proving the be the easiest of the visitors to photograph.

The thistle patch this morning also hosted some tiny butterflies, a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird, a brownish mid-sized bird that I never got close enough to identify, a Northern cardinal and a host of small sparrows that didn't want to come out of the cover for even an instant. And that was just in 5 minutes. As soon as the weather clears--after Hanna blasts through this weekend--I will take a chair and plant myself in this spot in hopes of photographing at least a few of those other visitors.

And speaking of Hanna: I'm due to get some rain from this system. The forecast doesn't sound awful for my area, but forecasts aren't reliably accurate, so who knows what the hurricane will actually bring?

Coastal hurricanes can often produce good birding at inland areas like mine. It is pretty common for terns and gulls of various species that are never seen around here to show up in farm ponds or in fields to escape the path of a hurricane as it rides up the coast. Once I had Caspian Terns on one of the old snowmaking ponds. Actually, Caspian Terns seem to be the most common evacuee I do see, though they usually prefer to evacuate to a nearby river or large lake. So I am hoping to escape the severest of the weather, but I am hoping I just might get an interesting evacuee or two.

Morning Gold and Friday Quiz Results (with Confessions)

I found this lovely male American Goldfinch early this morning as I was leaving Roundtop. My first confession of the day is that I didn't notice this lovely bird until I thought I had already snapped my morning photo for this blog post. I was taking a photo of the mother of all thistle plants. It was much taller than I am, as tall as a small tree. When I finished, I turned and discovered Mr. Goldfinch, who was probably wondering what in the heck I was doing in his thistle patch. He stayed long enough for me to take a few photos of him.

Now for my next confession. I thought I knew what the species was of the tree with red berries that I posted for my Friday quiz, but I am no longer sure that’s the case. I even asked a person I know who knows a lot about trees, and I ended up with yet another answer. Of course, all the people I asked saw the photo and not the tree itself, so that may be part of the problem with the numerous identifications.

Here’s the rundown of possible species. I though it was a black cherry tree (also known as wild cherry). I confess, however, that I didn’t pay much attention to the tree when I took the photo, as I was actually photographing something else and suddenly saw the berries over my shoulder, so I quickly grabbed the shot and moved on. I did think I could relocate the tree to confirm the identification, but that has not proved to be the case. Serviceberry has also been mentioned as a choice, as has hackberry and dogwood. All these choices have at least a few issues, so let’s go through the choices and see where that takes us.

Hackberry: Twigs are hairy, the base of the leaves are rounded and one side of the leaves are toothed. In my photo, the base of the leaves are as pointy as the tips. The leaves have no teeth, and the stems don’t look hairy. So let’s cross this one off.

Serviceberry: Leaves are pointed and notched at base, finely saw-toothed, 11-17 straight veins on each side. This sounds good up to the saw-toothed leaves. Try as I might, I can’t find any evidence that the leaves are saw-toothed, even finely. And there aren’t 11-17 veins, and the veins curve near the tip of the leaf., so I think I have to rule this one out.

Black cherry: leaves elliptical, finely saw-toothed (there’s that word again) with curved or blunt teeth (whatever that means), dark bark with horizontal lines on the tree’s trunk and an elliptical stone to the fruit, which starts out red and then turns blackish. I still can’t see anything that looks like the leaves are saw-toothed, even if it’s a blunt or curved kind of saw-toothing. The dried berry or stone in the middle of the photo does look elliptical. I see no evidence that the fruit is turning black-ish, though. If anything, it appears to be going from red directly to the brownish stone. So I’m thinking this guess isn’t right either.

Dogwood: Leaves are elliptical (so far so good) that appear not toothed but tiny teeth are visible under a lens (okay I’ll give this one a pass) with 6-7 long carved veins on each side of the mid-vein. So far this one sounds good. Fruit is berry-like, elliptical and shiny red with several at the end of a long stalk. Okay, I was all ready to buy into this one, right up until the long stalk, which this tree doesn’t show at all. And the photos of the dogwood berry all show 4-5 berries clumped together, which is how I'm used to seeing them, but this tree shows no more than two and that just once. The other berries are all singles. Still, of all the guesses, this one seems to have more of the identification points than the others.

So maybe it’s a dogwood. (Congrats to sister on this one) But I still want to find that tree again for one final check. Isn't that just how it goes? Just when you think you know something, you find out there's more to the story. But that's what makes it fun.