Upland Sandpiper.
The sky hung dark and low this morning when Jack and I rose early, as we usually do. With the start of May comes the beginning of high migration, when my habit is to head for the hill first thing. A few raindrops hit the windshield on our way to the wooded trailhead. As often is the case, we were first to arrive, and within a hundred yards or so, I’d added eight or ten species to my daily bird list, most of them ID’d from their distinctive voices—the distant squee! of a Broad-winged Hawk, the magical fountains of song from a Hermit Thrush. It had begun to drizzle a little, but never mind.
Savannah Sparrow.
As we approached the summit about a half hour later, the drizzle had become a shower, and I’d had to adjust my leash arm to cover my camera. Off to the southeast, Chickawaukie Lake hung in a vague gray mist of approaching rain. We waited it out on the porch of Beech Nut, but before long we were back on the trail, where I’d glimpsed an Upland Sandpiper (a true rarity, only my third there ever) and had moved to within few feet of a singing Savannah Sparrow. I even managed a decent portrait of the cooperative bird.
Perhaps an hour later, on our muddy return trip down the sullen wooded trail, we were hiking in a plain ol’ steady rain. Aside from Jack’s jingling tags, the only sounds were watery ones—drippings and tricklings and splatterings against last year’s leaf litter—but “yuck” was a thought I had only briefly before my body began to thrill at the bite of the external chilly wetness against the internal warmth of exercise, and I fell into The Hiking Zone, where my mind begins to drift. First I found in my head the theme song to the old TV show “Mr. Ed,” whose cadence oddly matched the pace of our progress between the trunks of trees, and then the idea of the horse and the trees somehow brought to mind “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and I wondered when exactly Robert Frost had composed that poem (1922) and how wonderfully timeless it really is, even in our present age, when we’re carried here and there by traveling machines and rarely hear the sound of harness bells anymore, and I thought of the opening line—“Whose woods these are I think I know”—and ruminated over the crazy notion that anyone can truly claim ownership of any woods, and then I had the startling revelation that I was pretty sure I knew exactly whose sweet, sloppy woods Jack and I were just then slogging through, only she doesn’t live in a village.
Beech Nut.
In his remarkable book on avian migration, “Living on the Wind,” Scott Weidensaul poses the possibility that the “home” of a migratory bird is perhaps not where it mates, nests, and raises its young, as so many of us assume. Consider that most of our local migrants spend only three or four months here on the 44th parallel, whereas for two-thirds of the year you can find them poking about in some distant southern, tropical, or equatorial locale—even way down in Southern Hemisphere. Shouldn’t those southern climes be considered the homes of these wandering species? Isn’t their dash north to sing and breed merely a natural directive, a risky-yet-necessary foray?
Similarly, tapping on a keyboard in a climate-controlled cubicle seems hardly the native state of a human being. It’s merely what many of us gotta do to put bread on the table, to feed the young ’uns, to assure the survival of our family genes. Of course, there’s also an ominous difference: collectively, our natural directive has progressed to the point of changing the winds and giving rise to the Anthropocene Epoch. But what if we made it a habit to spend some time each day outdoors? Maybe it’ll take a little pressure off our planet.
When dog and I got back home, there was no rain. The roads soon dried up, in fact, and I could see some blue in the southeastern sky. Then, in early afternoon, came thunder, and the sky opened up and dumped a bunch of marble-sized hail all over everything. I’m pretty sure that’s the only time I’ve seen true hailstones in my thirty-plus years in Maine.
Talk about a rarity.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 7 a.m., I hiked all trails.
1. Black-capped Chickadee**
2. Hermit Thrush
3. Broad-winged Hawk (v)
4. Tufted Titmouse (v)
5. Hairy Woodpecker (drumming)
6. American Robin*
7. Yellow-rumped Warbler
8. American Goldfinch
9. Red-winged Blackbird
10. Mallard*
11. American Crow*
12. Mourning Dove*
13. Northern Flicker (v)
14. Eastern Phoebe
15. Song Sparrow**
16. Field Sparrow
17. Savannah Sparrow
18. Blue Jay (v)
19. Brown-headed Cowbird (v)
20. Ruby-crowned Kinglet (v)
21. Northern Cardinal** (v)
22. House Finch**
23. Great Blue Heron
24. Upland Sandpiper
25. Herring Gull*
26. Pileated Woodpecker (v)
27. Chipping Sparrow
28. White-throated Sparrow (v)
Elsewhere
29. House Sparrow (v)
v = Voice only
*Also elsewhere
**Voice only elsewhere
†First-of-year bird
Tags: American crow, American goldfinch, American robin, black-capped chickadee, blue jay, broad-winged hawk, brown-headed cowbird, chipping sparrow, eastern phoebe, field sparrow, great blue heron, hairy woodpecker, hermit thrush, herring gull, house finch, house sparrow, mallard, mourning dove, northern cardinal, northern flicker, pileated woodpecker, red-winged blackbird, ruby-crowned kinglet, savannah sparrow, song sparrow, tufted titmouse, upland sandpiper, white-throated sparrow, yellow-rumped warbler
