A month ago, I wrote that all of the usual suspects had made appearances in my 2010-2011 Project FeederWatch counts except the northern cardinal. Within days of that post, the cardinals seem to have remembered the fine seed in my yard and started coming back, thus all of the usual winter visitors have now made at least one appearance in my yard this season.
About two weeks ago, I started catching glimpses of something that wasn’t one of the regulars. I would see out-of-focus of underwing stripes on a bird among the chipping sparrows or a quick flash of yellow (and not enough for a lesser goldfinch) in a tree. I couldn’t make a positive ID, but I saw enough for me to think yellow-rumped warbler. I kept looking and getting short flashes that reinforced my hunch. Then one day, I guess he just decided not to hide and for the past two weeks this warbler has joined the backyard crew.
It’s not really surprising that there should be a yellow-rumped warbler visiting the yard. They’re quite common around the pond down the street this time of year, but I’ve never seen one in my yard until two weeks ago. Now, I get to watch him more closely and regularly than I do when they’re high in the trees around the pond. It’ll be interesting to see, too, when he leaves. One of the things I love about doing Project FeederWatch is the way it tunes me into migration by making it quite clear when different species come and go. For instance, according to my records, I’m unlikely to see much of the ruby-crowned kinglet after this week, and I’m very curious to see if he follows the same schedule he has the past few years.
Here’s what I’ve recorded so far this season. The numbers in parentheses are the highest numbers of the species seen at one time:
I stroll the streets and dodge mangy grackles,
fluttering birds in trees, those angry grackles.
Black feet and dark beaks snap at my sandwich—
I’m surrounded by the grabby grackles!
I sit a bench and study pawns and queens
‘til “checkmate’s” called by the cagey grackles.
At dinner parties, I near drop my drink
shocked by the sins of the feisty grackles.
I hang for hours on back porches, strumming
old guitars, swapping lies with folksy grackles.
At night, I roost in city trees and sing
croaking wild songs, toasting jolly grackles.
—
This is in response to Big Tent’s prompt about alliteration. There’s some in there, but the process led to a ghazal and some grackles.
Go to the Big Tent to see what others came up with.
For those who may not know, grackles are, like blackbirds, members of the icterid family. Here in central Texas, we see two species: the common grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) and the great-tailed grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus).
Most all of the usual suspects have checked in for this year’s Project FeederWatch. The orange-crowned warbler and ruby-crowned kinglet came back to the suet feeders last weekend, and the goldfinches finally returned as well.
The lesser goldfinches are year-round residents, but they typically leave the feeders in October and return late in November or early December. This year it was late December before one came around. Especially exciting, though, was the fact that a few American goldfinches also came by. I saw them regularly during the 2008-2009 Feederwatch season, but last year I only saw one, and he came very late in the season. Hopefully, the ones I saw will tell their friends, and I’ll see them fairly regularly over the next few months.
The only species I haven’t seen yet are Bewick’s wren and northern cardinal. The Bewick’s wren is around. I see them several times a week, but I have yet to see one on Saturday or Sunday, which are my official count days. Perhaps they like to take the weekends off. I know I do. As for the cardinals, I’m not surprised that I haven’t seen any since summer. Some winters they’re around the feeders, and some winters they aren’t. If I don’t see any, I’m sure they’ll show up come spring. Down here, that means next month.
Here’s what I’ve counted. The numbers in parentheses are the highest single count for that species:
White-winged Dove (24)
Mourning Dove (1)
Blue Jay (3)
Carolina Chickadee (1)
Black-crested Titmouse (3)
Carolina Wren (2)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet (1)
Northern Mockingbird (1)
Orange-crowned Warbler (1)
Chipping Sparrow (23)
House Finch (1)
Lesser Goldfinch (1)
American Goldfinch (2)
House Sparrow (12)
I don’t think it’s too late to get involved with Project FeederWatch, which is good because citizen science projects rock.
I want to get back to my practice of taking (at least) weekly walks down the neighborhood trail. I have missed that quiet, open time that had been such a part of ’09 and then dropped almost as soon as ’10 was in the door. I suppose that without the commitment to count birds once a week, it was too easy to find other things to do. Too easy to be too busy.
Lately I’ve been realizing what an effect this not-walking the pond trail had on me: I felt more rushed and hurried and short of time last year. Too often empty when I sat to write poetry and telling myself that I was perhaps just too busy. When I walk and watch birds, investigate trees and follow butterflies, everything else slips away. There is a sort of purposeful emptying that occurs and yet, I also feel full when I get home. Not full in the sense of having overindulged, but full in the sense of fulfillment.
I’ve come to realize that these walks along the trails, the regular path to the pond and back, the place I always veer from the path to look for certain snakes in the summertime or certain birds or a deer bone that moves from time to time across a meadow… all of this adds to a sort of ritual (dare I say prayer or communion) that I have missed this past year.
And so, having learned my lesson the hard way (is there any other?), I suspect I’ll be taking those (at-least) weekly rambles again. I started on New Year’s Day, as if to make a statement to myself and also to collect a fewstones, and it was a great half-hour. So simple, a half-hour-a-week, but those half-hours accumulate like compounding interest into so much more than just thirty short minutes.
Regarding my writing, I’ve felt uninspired lately. That’s not to say I’m not writing. I am. I’m just not happy with what I’m coming up with. It feels like wheels spinning, forward motion only a dream or perhaps an illusion. I’m not a big believer in writer’s block. It seems an excuse. I mean, I can write. I do. It just hasn’t been flowing. Doors open, and I’m ambivalent at best about going through. As though I already know what’s out there, and without surprises, why not just stay home?
Perhaps getting outside on the little trails between the streets will help me find my way back to Mars—or at least the parts of Mars where the end of my novel still hides beneath billion year old sands. I know it will help uncover those things that make poems more than just words and line breaks.
Jumping into the river of stones has reminded me of the importance and, yes, pleasure of discipline in writing. Of being ready to meet the muse, if you will. That was my intent when I started a gnarled oak two years ago, but I slipped away from the discipline of doing that too and it became a too-sporadic thing. I plan to continue this daily practice when January rolls to a close. The kind of close observation and paying attention required is exactly the sort of practice I need—meditative and prayerful (there it is again) in some sense that goes far deeper than simply writing 2-3 lines of poetry or prose.
And it’s bigger than writing, of course, this walking and seeing. More important somehow than just a door to words. It’s a door to discovery and a deeper knowing of myself, the world around me and my place in it. Somehow, all these small things add up to so much more than the sum of their parts. Is it magical that so little time can be transformed into so much living? I feel like it is sometimes, I admit it, and so I resolve to perform at least a little more magic this year, careful always not to endanger anyone or turn myself into a toad.
The return of the chipping sparrows is the first real sign that autumn is coming to central Texas. We know it’s here, has been for a month, and the occasional flirtatious cold front suggests that winter might make an appearance, but the chipping sparrows come about the time the leaves begin to fall from the cedar elm out back.
They’ll be regulars at the feeder the next few months, poking for the small seeds the white-winged doves and house sparrows aren’t interested in. They’re less skittish than those two year-round species as well. When I open the back door, the house sparrows and doves fly off immediately, but the chippers stay put as if to say, “Dude, what’s the deal? That’s the ape that brings the food.”
Through the winter I’ll usually see a dozen or so in the mornings and evenings, but come late March just before they fly north, I’ll see massive flocks in the backyard. Seventy or more birds poking around in the grass and to a colorblind guy like me who has trouble seeing brown birds in green grass, it seems the very lawn is writhing and wiggling awake after the winter. Then, one day, they will be gone and summer will be just around the corner.
—
I started my Project FeederWatch counts last weekend. Here’s who showed up for the first count. Mostly, the usual suspects:
Chipping Sparrow: 4
Black-crested Titmouse: 3
Carolina Wren: 1
Carolina Chickadee: 1
House Sparrow: 8
Blue Jay: 2
White-winged Dove: 17
The only no-show was the Bewick’s wren, which I see pretty regularly, though I didn’t see one on my official count day.
Yesterday morning, I got to work unusually early. I didn’t get up any earlier; I just moved a little a faster getting ready. It wasn’t intentional, but sometimes that happens. I even stopped for coffee, and still I was at work before the sun was up, well, I would have been if the sun had come up, but it was a nice cold drizzly morning so there was no sun, just the good crisp early dark.
As I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a crested caracara swoop over the lot and across the road right in front of me. I slowed down to watch him soar out over the fields near the building, gaining altitude and quickly becoming nothing more than a dark point in the gray expanse of sky.
I don’t see caracaras often, and I’ve never seen one around where I work. I’ve seen a lot of interesting birds around the building, but this was kind of a treat. As I watched him fly away, I couldn’t help but think of the previous night’s election and wonder what sort of meaning might have been read into the appearance of such a beautiful raptor. Good omen or ill?
I’m not one to take stock in omens, but the idea of reading our hopes and fears and finding either solace or justification in some bird’s random passing fascinates me. Perhaps the crested caracara’s black and white coloration could represent the newly divided nature of our government. Perhaps the bird’s powerful flight could imply that with divided government we can soar over all our problems.
Or maybe it’s a warning about the modern conservative penchant for viewing the world in black and white. Perhaps I should have looked for some gray birds: a mourning dove or scissor-tailed flycatcher. Most of the scissor-tails have already fled the country, though.
On the other hand, this bird is known colloquially as the Mexican eagle. So maybe its northbound flight across the field symbolizes illegal immigrants, and predatory ones at that, sneaking through the dawn into our country to destroy our culture and do all the other horrible things the right wing expects.
Speaking of wings, the bird did have both a healthy and functioning right and left wing. Neither one was dominant, and that circles me back (hopefully not too much like a vulture which I also saw an unusual number of yesterday) to that divided government thing. I do generally prefer divided government. Perhaps that’s a function of having once been a debate coach playing with my mostly optimistic nature.
I watched the bird disappear, feeling a little sorry for the poor guy for all the burdens I’d just laid on his shoulders, I mean, he’s just a bird trying to find something to eat in a world where such meals must seem increasingly scarce to a hunter like him. I wondered if our newly elected Republican house had any member who would worry themselves over wildlife and healthy ecosystems. If that wasn’t such a heartbreaking thought, I might have laughed.
In the gray predawn,
a crested caracara
swoops over the road.
