Turkey vulture.
In the gray morning fog of semi-sleep, I heard a turkey gobble. Some time later, I heard it again. Heard the same thing last spring, as I recall: wild turkeys up the hill.
Turns out the morning was gray and foggy, too. Chilly. Where was this warming trend I heard so much about? Never mind. Still got the song sparrow, the phoebe, the house finch, the cardinal. One note about the cardinal: it has this crazy chippy call that I’ve never heard before—a chip, chip, and then a very rapid series of junco-like chips. Anyone else ever heard a cardinal do that?
Common loon.
Son of a gun if the sun didn’t emerge in late morning, and things warmed and dried. By the time dog and I headed for the hill in early afternoon, temperatures were in the 60s (F). Titmouse, chickadee, phoebe, song sparrow. Up toward the top, I spotted a turkey vulture circling. Quite a little wind up there, but it felt warm. (Flies are out, which means warblers aren’t far behind.) Another TV joined the first one, and they kept circling a while, never flapping their wings.
But on the way down, a small hawk sailed by, flapping its wings. A sharp-shinned hawk, near where I saw the kestrel yesterday. Didn’t manage a good photo, but I got a good look through binoculars. Not a lot else going on, though—until we’d nearly reached the bottom, when I heard the plaintive strains of a white-throated sparrow. Over and over it called. First white-throat song I’d heard this year.
On a late-in-the-day bike ride, I heard the usual urban birds: starling, house sparrow. Saw no rock pigeons today.
Then I decided on another dog-walk at the breakwater just as a line of dark blue clouds began to blow in from the west. This made it a brisk walk—didn’t want to get caught out there in a thundershower—and one without many birds sightings. Several loons is all, in various states of plumage (though a couple of these were calling). The western sky loomed darkly, and the air held a particularly rich salt-sea smell.
Afterward, I did a little grocery shopping just as a few raindrops began to fall. Clearly, the sky had opened up while I was in the supermarket: as I emerged, everything was wet, but the setting sun had broken through to the west—which always causes me to look east. Sure enough, a full-arc rainbow.
Today’s List
Wild turkey
Northern cardinal
Eastern phoebe
Song sparrow
House finch
Herring gull
Mourning dove
Tufted titmouse
American goldfinch
Turkey vulture
Sharp-shinned hawk
White-throated sparrow
European starling
House sparrow
Common loon
Weather.
