Pileated woodpecker.
This early morning, while making breakfast, I heard the loud queedle! of a blue jay outside. The bird was close by. Soon after, taking Jack out into the angled sunlight, I heard the song of the randy resident male house finch across the road.
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Black-capped chickadee.
This afternoon, on the wooded Beech Hill trail, I heard only crows in the distance—that is, until dog and I got about half-way up the hill, when I caught the faint first half of the two-note fee-bee! love song of a chickadee. We stopped on the muddy track and stood motionless. Within a minute, five or six of the little birds were flitting amid the low leafless trees on every side, coming to within six feet of us, delivering the whole range of chickadee calls in our general direction. I got the distinct feeling they were there because we were there.
* * *
I saw no bluebirds on the open fields today, but I saw crows. Active crows. Crows cawing and flapping over the bronze fields, casting dark, moving shadows. Down at the parking lot, I heard the coos of a mourning dove and the monotonous whistle of a titmouse.
* * *
Returning through the woods, I heard a faint hammering. We stopped and stood motionless. I faced the direction of the sound. It took a minute or two, but finally I spotted the bird: a hairy woodpecker about a hundred feet away, poking about high in a hardwood.
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Down in the soggy bottomlands came a sudden ruckus—crows off to the southeast of us a couple hundred yards away, invisible through the trees. They were hollering insistently at something. A red-tailed hawk, perhaps, or some other raptor just arrived from a southern latitude. They carried on for two or three minutes before the woods grew quiet again.
* * *
Returning home, climbing the stairs, I heard the calls of returning robins from across the road somewhere—and what sounded like the yodel of a pileated woodpecker. It was a short yodel, though, and dampened by distance, so I figured maybe I’d mistaken a robin’s alarm notes for the snippet of a woodpecker’s call. But back inside a few minutes later came confirmation of my first hunch in the form of the loud, clear voice of a pileated woodpecker calling somewhere in the trees out back. I snuck out onto the deck, stood a moment, then spied the bird climbing the trunk of a big pine up the hill. As proof, I grabbed an unimpressive, distant photo.
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This evening, in late twilight, I stepped onto for some air and immediately thought I heard the peent! of a woodcock. I hear it only once—not the usual peent!, pause, peent!—but just that single note thrilled me, as my first listen to a woodcock in March does every single year. Still, a single note isn’t usually enough to convince me that my ears were not somehow deceived. A minute passed before I heard another sound: the unmistakable whistling of a woodcock’s wings in the darkening sky above me. Not its full, miraculous flight song, but undoubtedly the sound of the wings of an American woodcock. I figure it was traveling north. And I couldn’t have felt more jubilant to have heard my personal proof of the promise of another spring.
* * *
Tonight, as Jupiter and Venus sunk beyond the hill together, I heard the faint honking of Canada geese. True, they sounded a little like dogs barking in the distance—but I’ve learned to trust my ear.
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Addendum: shortly past midnight, and woodcocks in full night display all over the night sky—will plenty of peent! action off in a wet patch somewhere up the hill. My first bird of Monday, 12 March 2012.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 4:15 p.m., I hiked all trails.
1. American crow
2. Black-capped chickadee
3. Tufted titmouse (voice)
4. Mourning dove (voice)
5. Hairy woodpecker
Elsewhere
6. Blue jay
7. House finch
8. Herring gull
9. American robin
10. Pileated woodpecker
11. American woodcock
12. Canada goose
Tags: American crow, American robin, American woodcock, black-capped chickadee, blue jay, Canada goose, hairy woodpecker, herring gull, house finch, mourning dove, pileated woodpecker, tufted titmouse
