Savannah sparrow.
A gray, rainy morning kept me in bed for an extra hour. But you can’t keep the resident house finch down, nor the phoebes nesting above my back window. Nor the neighborhood crows. Or the pair of nesting cardinals.
Birch bark.
However, Nature can keep me inside where it’s warm and dry—so long as I have big windows to look through. I cranked up the heater and worked all morning and much of the afternoon. Not until after 4 p.m. did Jack and I venture out in it. By that time, a mere mist was descending onto a soggy landscape, and the world had succumbed to fog.
In town, small bunches of starlings were bouncing around the roadsides. Gulls, as usual. I didn’t see any pigeons.
We took care of business and finally ended up at the wooded Beech Hill trail. A dense fog had by then descended. I didn’t have high expectations. And in fact I neither saw nor heard a single bird until we’d begun ascending the steeper part of the upper trail, when I caught wind of the bright, rising note of an eastern towhee. A little while later, I heard—simultaneously—the calls of a robin and a chickadee.
We’d gotten as far as the summit before I heard a herring gull. A couple of ’em. Then, perched on a rock wall at foggy Beech Nut, I barely made out the shape of a small solitary bird that I assumed was one of the phoebe pair. It flitted away as we got near. We circled the hut, and coming around the back side I saw it again perched on the porch wall. It flitted down to the grass. Not a phoebe—a sparrow. A savannah sparrow. I didn’t expect a bird photo today, but somehow I got one.
Then I heard song sparrows singing, two of them. Six species. Not long after, while descending the lower wooded trail, I heard a crow. (Seven.) In the bottomlands, the fog seemed to be muffling any sound. But I finally heard something, and we stopped. A singing hermit thrush. And I got to thinking that maybe if the mallards were swimming in the vernal pool, and I somehow found another bird, that would make ten—but there were no mallards at the pool.
Droplets.
Surprisingly, as we entered the last stretch of sugarbush before the parking lot, I heard the sharp call of a flicker. (Nine.) And shortly after, the rapid chatter of a nuthatch.
Ten birds after all.
Despite the gray and mist, today nonetheless struck me as powerfully springlike. The trees are budding, and the empty, bare view of only a week ago now seemed less clean, messier, more alive. Rain is also forecast for tomorrow, but I remain immensely excited about the next few days.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 5:15 p.m., I hiked the wooded trails.
1. Eastern towhee (voice)
2. American robin (voice)
3. Black-capped chickadee (voice)
4. Herring gull (voice)
5. Savannah sparrow
6. Song sparrow (voice)
7. American crow (voice)
8. Hermit thrush (voice)
9. Northern flicker (voice)
10. White-breasted nuthatch (voice)
Elsewhere
11. House finch
12. Eastern phoebe
13. House sparrow
14. European starling
15. Northern cardinal
Strawberry.
Tags: American crow, American robin, black-capped chickadee, eastern phoebe, eastern towhee, European starling, hermit thrush, herring gull, house finch, house sparrow, northern cardinal, northern flicker, savannah sparrow, song sparrow, white-breasted nuthatch
