Spied on

One red sassafras leaf

Chimney swifts by the hundreds are migrating past Roundtop Mtn. right now.  I saw too many to count, especially given how they flit back and forth, high and low.  Swifts are even more acrobatic than swallows, and during migration at least, they move in larger groups.  The weather this past weekend was not conducive to much migration. Thunderstorm after thunderstorm rolled through, often several a day, each making the temperature hotter and the humidity higher—until the weekend was over, of course.

Today is the kind of day when lots of birds will migrate. Higher pressure, a tailwind from the northwest, cooler air.  Today would be a good day to be on a hawkwatch, and not only to watch hawks. Lots of species will move today.

Even as poor as the weather was, I had several good sightings when I could be outdoors. The first was an adult Bald Eagle, not migrating, as it was headed north on Sunday morning.  Bald Eagles are fairly common these days, especially along the Susquehanna River, but here on the mountain I can easily go several weeks without seeing one.  The second sighting was better. I was sitting outside in my driveway, keeping an eye on my free-ranging chickens after the Cooper’s Hawk scare of last week.  That’s when I spied a bit of flitting yellow in a tree above me. Even when I’m just watching the chickens, I take my binoculars with me.  But even with my binoculars it took a while to see enough of this bird so that I could identify it. I had a yellow-throated vireo, one of those birds I see rarely and then only in migration. After watching it for a minute or so, it finally appeared on a bare twig long enough for me to tell what it was.

The local deer have been out and about frequently this weekend, too.  I was taking this photo of a red sassafras leaf, the only red leaf in the sea of green. When I was done I turned around and found a doe watching me take photos.  She seemed more curious in what I was doing than scared. A day later, I found three deer in my driveway, one a fawn.  I was feeding the chickens and when I finished and turned to go into the cabin, I found the deer at the end of my driveway, completely unimpressed by encountering me.  Naturally, when I’m feeding the chickens, I don’t carry my good camera with me, though I did have the camera on my phone, so I used that.  It makes them seem further away than they really were.

Spying on me

More from Braddock Bay

Warbling vireo, mid-warble

Visiting Braddock Bay near Rochester, New York, offered me a good opportunity to see birds I don’t get to see on my mountain. May is prime migration and birding season. It’s hard to tear myself away from my own patch during May, but I'm glad I did as the trip turned out to be worthwhile for birding, though I didn't have nearly as much time for it as I would have liked.

The area where sawgrass ends and the solid ground begins is marked by a narrow strip of vegetation, a kind of hedgerow. In this narrow band, lots of birds gathered and found cover. The narrowness also presents a good opportunity for birders to see birds that usually prefer to stay hidden.

The first bird is warbling vireo, noted mostly for being drab and nondescript—until they start to sing. The song is lovely and repeated often. These birds are usually heard and not seen, so finding one out in the open and singing was a real treat for me.

Palm warbler





Also on hand and virtually everywhere else were palm warblers.



White-crowned sparrow eating dandelion



Another bird I don’t often get to see, let alone get to see well and be very cooperative, was a white-crowned sparrow that was very engrossed in those dandelions.

Now that I’m home again, I need to catch up on my cabin birding! When you’re a birder, as I am, May is no time to be sitting indoors.



Passing me by?

Sunset with redbud in foreground

After a week or so of relatively normal temperatures, yesterday the temperature rose to a near-record point for the date. With that, the leaves at Roundtop, literally overnight, burst open. Oh my gosh, it’s almost summer.

As if to prove that, this morning I heard the first red-eyed vireo of the spring, and just as in other springs, trying to find that bird in the upper reaches of the oak canopy proved impossible. It doesn’t help that the birds are nearly the same shade as that of the leaves when the first rays of the morning sun turns them a bright yellowy-green. So this morning I had to be content with the vireo’s sharp, brilliant song emanating from somewhere high above my head.

Sometimes the internet is both a blessing and a curse. It is with growing envy that I am reading reports of outstanding migration flights into the central part of the U.S. It is with even more envy that I read about some 35,000 broad-winged hawks passing over Braddock Bay near Rochester NY yesterday. Here at Roundtop, I’m still hoping for warblers to arrive and perhaps to see a few raptors pass overhead. Right now the migration is feeling nearly non-existent, one invisible red-eyed vireo not withstanding.

I’m ready for those migration floodgates to open. I’m just starting to worry that they are passing me by this year.