17 February 2025

White-throats

Monday, April 29th, 2013
White-throated sparrow, Beech Hill, Rockport, Maine, 29 April 2013.

White-throated sparrow.

They must’ve showed up sometime overnight last night, the white-throated sparrows. All I really know is that there they were this early morning, on either side of the wooded trail, at the summit, down near the Beech Hill Road parking lot. A few early singers—possibly even hardy year-round birds—have been singing “Old Sam Peabody” for a week or ten days, but these birds were new. At least two or three dozen of them, emitting their distinctive tseet! notes, browsing in the understory.

Eastern phoebe, Beech Hill, Rockport, Maine, 29 April 2013.

Eastern phoebe.

Other sparrows, too: songs, Savannahs, fields—and, today, the first chipping sparrows I’ve heard so far this year. (Towhees, too, of course.) I got so distracted at one point that, obsessed with photographing one of the shy field sparrows, I saw a bird perched in a little birch in the direction of the field’s bouncy song and fired off a few shots, stepped closer, fired off a few more, closer, more… and realized I was photographing a song sparrow. The field sparrow was singing from a branch two trees up. It flew long before I got near enough for a photo.

No fox sparrows this year, though, and I haven’t seen a swamp sparrow in a while. An osprey circled, screaming. And I spotted a mating pair of brown-headed cowbirds, the worst of parents, soon to raid some unsuspecting warbler’s nest. But I saw no kestrels up there this morning for the first time in a week at least, maybe more.

Fittingly, somehow: my best photo of the day was my first—a portrait of a comely phoebe near the wooded trail head.

Beech Hill List
Beginning at 7:15 a.m., I hiked all trails.

1. American robin*
2. Eastern phoebe**
3. Hairy woodpecker (v)
4. House finch**
5. American goldfinch**
6. Black-capped chickadee**
7. Herring gull*
8. Tufted titmouse** (v)
9. Broad-winged hawk (v)
10. Eastern towhee
11. American crow*
12. Yellow-rumped warbler
13. Osprey*
14. Northern flicker (v)
15. Wild turkey (v)
16. Hermit thrush
17. Song sparrow**
18. Savannah sparrow
19. Brown-headed cowbird**
20. Field sparrow
21. Northern cardinal* (v)
22. Double-crested cormorant
23. White-throated sparrow*
24. Chipping sparrow** (v)
25. Blue jay (v)
26. Red-winged blackbird
27. Mourning dove* (v)

Elsewhere

28. Mallard
29. European starling
30. Rock pigeon

v = Voice only
*Also elsewhere
**Voice only elsewhere
†First-of-year bird

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Bird Report is a (sometimes intermittent) record of the birds I encounter while hiking, see while driving, or spy outside my window. —Brian Willson



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