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Posts Tagged ‘American coot’
Sunday, October 23rd, 2011
 Hills. Lovely, mostly sunny, chilly day. Spent much like yesterday, by me, at my kitchen table, being productive. Jack napped for much of it. Toward late afternoon, we took our usual break. Our hike break. Our Beech Hill hike break.
 Bare slope. Today we met my friend Liz and her boy Daniel in the parking lot. Jack was happy to see them (and vice versa, I’m pretty sure). A bit of wind was blowing—a chilly wind, which made for a brisk hike up. Not much in the way of bird life did we see. A couple crows, a flicker calling from down the eastern slope. Oddly, no sparrows appeared. But I scanned Chickawaukie Lake for the coots, and I spotted a little raft of them. Decided to add them to the list today. What the heck.
I did hear the chips of a couple yellow-rumps in overflight. And another chip on our way down, whose source I managed to spot, as a little warbler lit in one of the trailside birches. I got a pretty good look at it through binoculars—yellowish, dark eye-stripe—enough to identified it to my satisfaction as a south-bound palm. When it flew, it flew in a southerly direction.
Arriving back at the parking lot, I heard chickadees in the trees. The tiny sound of them always makes me want to look a little nearer, and sure enough there were a couple yellow-rumps flitting up there among them. Spotted a solitary blue jay bob away across the road. As Jack fetched a stick back in the far lot, I tracked the voice of a woodpecker that turned out to be a hairy, hammering trunk bark.
 Birch. The final bird? A brown creeper—whose call from somewhere above us I know by heart by now.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 4:15 p.m., I hiked the open trail.
1. American crow
2. Northern flicker (voice)
3. American coot
4. Yellow-rumped warbler
5. Palm warbler
6. Black-capped chickadee
7. Blue jay
8. Hairy woodpecker
9. Brown creeper (voice)
Elsewhere
10. House sparrow
11. Herring gull
Tags: American coot, American crow, black-capped chickadee, blue jay, brown creeper, hairy woodpecker, herring gull, house sparrow, northern flicker, palm warbler, yellow-rumped warbler
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Saturday, October 22nd, 2011
 Two islands. I awoke to a dramatic overcast sky full of lumpy, cavernous blue clouds. At mid-morning, I figured I’d check on today’s college football schedule and discovered my DVR had pooched. That’s OK. My team has an off-week. Anyway, who needs TV?
 Beech Hill. Spent a productive day at my kitchen table—but kind of felt like I spent too long sitting. No matter, there’s always Beech Hill.
En route, dog and I took a swing through town, where major sewer projects have for several weeks caused all kinds of traffic confusion. Picked up my mail at the P.O. then figured we’d stop off at Chickawaukie Lake to look at coots. I was surprised to spot a great blue heron flapping slowly overhead as we pulled into the swim beach parking lot. Saw a cormorant sitting on a float—and a big flotilla of coots bobbing out toward the center of the pond. Beyond the coots, Beech Hill stood beneath a high sweeping curtain of gray clouds, even as a little sun broke through low in the western sky, bringing a glow to the fall foliage.
A pair of song sparrows flitted in front of us as we turned in. A jay hollered loudly above us as we got out of the pickup. The sky—what a sky. As we turned up the first rise, a wide ray of sunlight set the blueberry fields on fire.
 Lone oak. We found ourselves in shadow again while coming around to the summit, but great swaths of the bay shone brightly in the sun as a solitary sailboat glided by.
Heard crows, a nuthatch, a robin, a yellow-rump. Coming down, heard a flicker and a downy woodpecker. Plenty of birds about still—overshadowed today by a glorious fall landscape.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 5 p.m., I hiked the open trail.
1. Song sparrow
2. Blue jay (voice)
3. American crow
4. White-breasted nuthatch (voice)
5. American robin (voice)
6. Yellow-rumped warbler (voice)
7. Northern flicker (voice)
8. Downy woodpecker (voice)
Elsewhere
9. Black-capped chickadee
10. Herring gull
11. Ring-billed gull
12. Great blue heron
13. Double-crested cormorant
14. American coot
 Autumn slope.
Tags: American coot, American crow, American robin, black-capped chickadee, blue jay, double-crested cormorant, downy woodpecker, great blue heron, herring gull, northern flicker, ring-billed gull, song sparrow, white-breasted nuthatch, yellow-rumped warbler
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Friday, October 21st, 2011
 Yellow-rumped warbler. From bed this morning, I heard the voices of titmice out my window. On my first trip out with Jack, I heard the soft calls of a nuthatch and the ever-present caws of crows. The day began sunny and cool and lovely.
 Song sparrow. And continued that way—although with a rising wind. Still nice enough to go cycling, I figured, and so I headed out for a vigorous ride. Coming south, into the wind, tested my endurance; going north was a gas. I passed crows stalking the roadsides. Gulls sailed in the semi-blue sky.
Come late-afternoon, Jack and I took off for our daily hike, with a quick stop at the grocery store. Driving out Route 17, I spotted two tight-packed rafts of coots out in Chickawaukie Lake, their motto being “safety in numbers.” Couple cars in the Beech Hill lot when we arrived, couple crows flapping around above us.
The wind had died down some as we hurried up. Beautiful sky of clear and cloud and light and color and shadow. Heard yellow-rumped warblers and chickadees and—kind of surprisingly—a singing cardinal down the southern slope. At the summit, the usual song sparrows flitted away from us, but I got a pretty good look at one, along with a pale fall yellow-rump.
Descending, I noticed I could make out the raft of Chickawaukie coots through my binoculars. Was tempted to add them to my Beech Hill list but thought better of it. Then we ran into our friend Sam coming up the trail and had a pleasant chat about hawks and woodcocks and mowing.
 Spruce. By the time we started down again, the orange October sun had just begun to disappear behind the ridge, below a great purple cloud. The hills glowed dully on account of it. The air smelled good. Our spirits were high.
Tonight has bright stars again. I broke out the spotting scope a little while ago to see how many Galilean moons I could count revolving around their planet. Three.
Now Orion is rising.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 4;45 p.m., I hiked the open trail.
1. American crow
2. Yellow-rumped warbler
3. Black-capped chickadee (voice)
4. Northern cardinal (voice)
5. Song sparrow
6. White-throated sparrow (voice)
7. American robin (voice)
8. Blue jay (voice)
Elsewhere
9. Tufted titmouse
10. White-breasted nuthatch
11. Herring gull
12. Rock pigeon
13. American coot
14. Mourning dove
 Jack on the trail.
Tags: American coot, American crow, American robin, black-capped chickadee, blue jay, herring gull, mourning dove, northern cardinal, rock pigeon, song sparrow, tufted titmouse, white-breasted nuthatch, white-throated sparrow, yellow-rumped warbler
Posted in Lists, Observations | No Comments »
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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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