Beech Nut.
A few of us pay attention to the clues. The faint sounds, the furtive movement in the dripping brush. We seek out the trail not for the physical challenge, or conversation with a hiking friend, or the grand view. It’s the small things we see or hear or sense in other, subtler ways. We birders, I mean. We tend, when we’re out in the landscape, to live in the moment. Maybe that’s the main thing about the pursuit that attract us—it’s so easy to slip into The Zone, to forget past losses and future fears in favor of the immediate, every single thing there is to notice, each small surprise after another.
Work of a pileated woodpecker.
As seems to happen a lot, I didn’t expect to find much on my Beech Hill hike today with Jack. Because of the weather, I mean—bone-chillingly drizzly (30s (F), tops), damp and drippy, dark with a heavy overcast. Didn’t see or hear a bird for a good while, too. But finally I heard the voices of chickadees. Then I heard the sudden rapid-fire call of a pileated woodpecker not far away.
Pileateds have been busy up there lately, come to think of it. The trunks of many young hardwoods are eaten up, great chunks of bark stripped free, piles of shavings on the forest floor beneath them. They’ve actually felled a couple small dead trees with all their drilling. Looks like the work of beavers.
At the summit, a small movement: a brown blur of a song sparrow flitting silently away. Another brown blur was the phoebe, still hanging around the same trees as yesterday. Then, back down in the woods, the bright short song of a brown creeper echoing amid the dripping trees. And the faint, nearer notes of a white-breasted nuthatch. Then a big rush as three large turkeys dash away behind a rise and out of our sight. We paused to let them run. And, finally, the notes of a goldfinch from a treetop somewhere.
That’s a lot of birds for a rainy, dreary day. And it occurred to me that, of the nine species on today’s Beech Hill list, most of us likely would’ve only noticed only the turkeys.
The overcast did dash one hope of mine today, however: to witness the new moon’s thin crescent appear in a cluster with Venus and Jupiter low in the southwestern sky. So I contented myself instead with listening to the squawks and titters of a horny American woodcock.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 4:15 p.m., I hiked the wooded trails.
1. Black-capped chickadee
2. Pileated woodpecker (voice)
3. American crow (voice)
4. Song sparrow
5. Eastern phoebe
6. Brown creeper (voice)
7. White-breasted nuthatch (voice)
8. Wild turkey
9. American goldfinch (voice)
Elsewhere
10. House sparrow
11. Tufted titmouse
12. Northern cardinal
13. Downy woodpecker
14. Herring gull
15. American robin
16. Mourning dove
17. American woodcock
