White-throated sparrow.

Lots of white-throated sparrows on Beech Hill this year. Plenty of plaintive calls of tseet, and all variations of “Old Sam Peabody-peabody-peabody!” The secretive sparrow has nested on the hill every  year I’ve kept track, but this spring—at least so far—has brought record numbers. Then again, every year is different, every season. One winter will be snowy, the next dry and cold, the next warm and thawy—like this past one. Seems like last year warblers arrived a bit earlier.But its possible (if not probable) I’m not remembering accurately.

Savannah sparrow.

Today dawned gray and damp, with temperatures about 60 degrees (F). At least that’s what my home thermometer showed, so I wore a heavy T and a light hooded sweatshirt. As soon as we started up the wooded Beech Hill trail, I knew I’d overdressed. No more than a couple miles inland and maybe a hundred feet farther from sea level, and the temperature seemed to have risen by 10 degrees—and the humidity by a greater factor. About fifty yards in, we heard an enormous clap of thunder.

But it didn’t rain. And early birds were singing. New warblers today—and I write this with some excitement—were ovenbird, chestnut-sided, and yellowthroat. Oddly, these three species are likely the commonest on the hill, but they came a day after Nashville, black-and-white, and black-throated green. No matter. I love these little jewel-like birds with their hyphenated names. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be given a photo opportunity. (Unlike today.)

Also many more blue jays calling on the hill this year than last, at least in early May. A flicker showed up in a tree near the trail—I’ve been taking pains to differentiate this year between the flicker’s call and the pileated woodpecker’s—and the gobblings of turkeys echoed again through the trees. Curiously, a mallard flew over low. And at the summit hovered a kestrel.

Singers included the usual phoebe, savannah sparrow, field sparrow, and hermit thrush. And tufted titmouse. Clearly, tree swallows have found a nesting cavity on the eastern slope (likely one of the artificial ones).

Layers.

Returning down the lower wooded trail, I found myself listening to the voices, off in the trees, of ovenbirds and Nashvilles and black-throated greens and marveling at the miracle of sound. Sight is miraculous, too, of course—but in sound we have a sense that lets us ID an animal or size up a situation off behind rocks and hills and trees, and from any side of us. Footsteps from behind. I walk the trail and I watch my step and I hear a group of chickadees behind and to the left of me, maybe thirty yards away, and I hear a Nashville warbler at the edge of my hearing up the hill to my right, and I listen to the cry of a herring gull maybe a quarter mile off above the cow farm. Too often, it seems, we take our ears for granted.

For instance, while riding my bicycle this afternoon in muggy air that’d warmed into the upper-70s, I became aware of two noble raptors above me entirely by way of their voices. Coming north out of Rockland, I heard the squeals of an osprey over the harbor and looked up to my right to see the angled arcs of its great wings; and later, coming south out of Rockport, I caught the unmistakable high whistle of a broad-winged hawk and looked up to my left to see the bird soaring over the trees.

At other odd moments today I saw: cardinal (male), grackle, starling, jay, and phoebes chasing. Crows along the roadside now seem to ignore my bicycle as they do most cars. (They’d flee my approach as recently as last year.) Eventually, the overcast blew away. And the sky—oh, the sky. At about 7:30 tonight, the sun hadn’t yet set and the ochre-and-blue and the white of the swiftly-moving clouds looked like the heavens in a Renaissance painting. But, man, did the warm wind blow.

Tonight the wind has calmed, but the air remains warm. And I hope to dream of warblers.

White-throated sparrow.

Beech Hill List
At 7 a.m., I walked all trails.

American crow (voice)
American robin
Black-capped chickadee
Blue jay
American goldfinch
Black-throated green warbler (voice)
Herring gull (voice)
Ovenbird* (voice)
Black-and-white warbler
Mallard
Northern flicker
chestnut-sided warbler* (voice)
white-throated sparrow
Nashville warbler (voice)
wild turkey (voice)
common yellowthroat*
song sparrow
savannah sparrow
eastern phoebe
American kestrel
field sparrow (voice)
blue-headed vireo (voice)
tufted titmouse (voice)
pileated woodpecker (voice)
hairy woodpecker (voice)
tree swallow

*first-of-year bird

Elsewhere

House finch
Northern cardinal
Mourning dove
European starling
Common grackle
Rock pigeon
Osprey
Broad-winged hawk

Savannah sparrow.