Observation and Description Exercise

Just a little test of myself as an observer and as a writer -- what can I say about the birds that have been visiting the feeder and yard while I am here on campus, unable to see any of them?

Grackles
These birds began to show up about the time the snows were undergoing their final melt. Bold and surprisingly flamboyant for birds dressed all in black, they're both captivating and aggravating. They are compelling for their brilliant plumage, which looks at first like a plain black, but upon longer observation is revealed to contain subtle bronzes and brilliant blue highlights, like a raku pot or a woman's naturally black and shiny hair. They sing strange songs, with creaks and ringing rattling trills, like harpsichords mated with rusty gates and old tin cans. Some of them, when preparing to sing something particularly high-pitched, an assertive skrrrr-REEEEK!, inflate themselves like minature bagpipes before letting the vibrations belch forth from their beaks. The males are flying around with their tails turned into vertical mail openers, slicing through the air as they show off for the females; they also puff themselves up like pigeons on the ground before the females. When confronting each other by the feeder, they raise their beaks so that they are pointing skyward, and look at each other out of the corners of their eyes. The feeder is barely big enough to hold them, but they persist in clinging to it, swinging the feeder around wildly while they fling seed out at an astounding rate, aggressively pecking out the sunflower seeds that are a duller black than themselves, and gulping them up whole. When I sit on the porch, the smaller birds will dart in, but the grackles are unwilling; more than once has one swooped in only to spot me in my rocking chair, causing it to then flap indignantly to a nearby tree where it procedes to screak and squawk its indignation.

Robins

The male robins showed up before the females, arriving like the grackles as soon as the bare ground emerged from beneath the melting snow. One day there were no robins, it seemed, and then the next they were everywhere. I hadn't seen so many before, and it had been years since I'd seen any in California, so I found them hard to ignore. In the grass and on the pavement, they perform an odd darting movement, in which they tip themselves to the horizontal like miniature velociraptors, run a few paces, then bob back up to the vertical. At other times they hop and walk slowly across the lawn, pecking and probing with their beaks. From time to time they orbit each other in pairs like a sort of avian tumbleweed, rolling and fluttering around at a distance of about eight inches to a foot apart. When a late-winter snow blew in, they spent the next day huddling unhappily on branches and areas where the pavement had melted away the snow, trying their hardest to have nothing to do with that cold unpleasant whiteness. A couple of weeks ago, I spotted the first females, lighter of breast and just as bold. They chased the males back and forth across the lawn, under the bushes and around the trunks of trees, in a variation of the tumbleweed dance. They do not come to the feeder, having no interest in food as banal as seeds.

Red-Winged Blackbird
As best I can tell, there is only one representative of this species visiting our yard and feeder. At first glance he seems like a trim grackle, but then you notice his yellow epaulets on the brows of his wings; beneath them are the red feathers that give him his name, feathers he reveals when flying or by shrugging. He also perches uneasily on the narrow rim of the feeder, and gulps down seeds, though not as messily or as greedily as the grackles. His song is the very essence of warm-weather drives along backcountry roads, the air soft and the roadside grasses waving.

Mourning Doves
The mourning dove's cry is another one that feels tinged with a balmy nostalgia, a sound that goes along with lazy afternoons, soft breezes and hammocks, the quiet ticking of my grandparents' grandfather clock, and the distant drone of lawn mowers and airplanes. At other times, it has also mingled with the scents of dust, woodsmoke, and sage, but not here. The dusty brown birds of those drier climes are not as striking as their humid cousins; the birds here have bright pink feet, dark brown markings (including a strange little "mole" on each cheek), and body feathers of the softest, pinkish grey-brown you can imagine. People sometimes refer to "dove grey" but that color is to the birds' actual plumage what black is to the grackles'. Aside from the cry, one other thing remains consistent with my earlier memories of doves -- the fluting bursting whir of their wings, made when the bird suddenly launches into flight. In the desert, chapparal, and oak-savanna hills, this was a sound that exploded from the ground, when you nearly trod upon the camouflaged birds on the ground. Here, it's the accompaniment of a bird startled when you move in your chair on the porch. These doves are less timid than their dry-land brethren; they will peck at the fallen grains a yard or two from my feet. They also happily perch in trees, a sight that continues to be strange to me.

Starlings
The starlings, frequent visitors during the winter, have mostly moved on, perhaps chased out of their wintertime territories by the grackles. I still see them on occasion, their oddly freckled feathers, long pink legs, and long yellow beaks marking them out instantly. I encountered one at the hardware store the other day, its beak full of straw, chirruping and croodling as it hop-walked along the pavement, gaining momentum needed to launch itself and its burden upward to where it was building a nest, tucked in the bend of a corrugated metal roof.

Chickadees
These are the most reliably bold of all the birds to come to the feeder. They care not if I'm in the yard, sitting on the porch, or even standing a yard from the feeder. They fly in, quickly select a single seed, and dart away. These days I've noticed them doing something I didn't see them do during the winter; they fly to a nearby branch with their prize and peck forcefully at it until it yields, then return for another seed. They seem more likely to produce short liquid chirps and tweets now, instead of their familiar namesake song.

Chipping Sparrows
Another late-winter arrival; I recall these charming little birds from Minnesota, so I'm glad to see them visiting me here. They are so beautiful and sleek, with cleanly striped sides, neatly drawn white eyebrows, and, in the springtime males, a charming red cap. They, as the name implies, mostly make chipping sounds in between pecks.

Juncoes
After my encounters with their chestnut-tinged cousins on the West Coast, I initially expected more from these quiet ground-hopping birds. There, they are cheerful, aggressive, and tend to move in flocks. The juncoes here are unassuming singletons, grey-white beneath and charcoal-black above, with small eyes and neat white beaks. I've never heard any of them make a sound that I know of, nor have any of them ever landed on the feeder, being content to pick up the seeds that other birds toss to the ground.

Cardinals
I've come to quite enjoy these charmers, especially the females, who seem bolder than their flashy male companions. I'd thought they were simply wintertime birds, but so far they seem happy to linger. The males tend to move in quick dashes between feeder, porch, and cover; the females alternate between rustling about in the low hedge in front of the porch with the house sparrows and hanging out on the feeder and porch railing. They have a charming tendency to sit on the rail and look around them alertly but calmly, and on occasion I've seen them stretch up tall and raise their crests, as if something interested them and they were trying to get a better view. They too make a sweet chipping or cheeping noise, a bit longer and squeakier than the chip of the chipping sparrow.

Carolina Wrens
These are infrequent but regular visitors. I believe there are two pairs of them, as I saw all four at one time, but I don't know how many are permanent residents of this neighborhood. Like the female cardinals, they are cheerful, cocky little birds, though with a bit more brashness than the cardinals (who consistently give the impression of alert sweetness). They are a rich brown with darker stripes and lighter bellies, and long down-curving beaks and short up-sticking tails. They love the suet feeder, and I'll often see them clinging to it, but they will also happily eat fallen seeds. They don't like the feeder so much. The male has the most musical and loud song of any of the birds here; sometimes I'll see him up in a tree singing away, his throat puffing up and vibrating, his beak agape and pointed to the sky.

House Sparrows
A lot of people complain about these guys, along with the starlings, for being aggressive "weed" birds. I agree that the birds you encounter in the parking lots of urban fast-food restaurants aren't much to admire, but I find their rural cousins charming. They are brash and flamboyant and lively, flocking noisely from bush to hedge to feeder to porch to neighbor's roof to dust bath to mud puddle. They cheerfully let the cardinals, juncoes, chipping sparrows, chickadees, and house finches tag along, and they are in constant motion. They bounce on branches, they peek on tiptoe into bird houses, they sit in rows on twigs and squabble with each other. They have neat grey-brown bodies, black eye streaks and dark-brown heads, and the yard would be much emptier without them.

House Finches
The house finches are sweet, slightly timid, and gracile birds. They have lovely long streaks on their breasts and sides, and the males in particular have wonderfully red-pink heads. They easily crack open seeds with their thick pale beaks, and they make their house sparrow flock-mates look round and fluffy by comparison. They are willing to eat at the feeder when I'm on the porch, if other birds are about. I don't know that I've ever heard them sing, or scold, or make any other kind of distinctive noise.

Downy Woodpeckers
There are at least two, as I've seen both a male and a female come to the suet feeder. There is a tall maple in the neighbor's yard that has lost branches in winter storms, and it is their favorite perch and feeding site. I will hear tap-scritch-scrabbling sounds, and I will know without looking that somewhere nearby there is a downy woodpecker hopping up and down a tree trunk, prying at the bark, looking for insects. When they come to the feeder they begin by hopping down a trunk to about a foot above the ground, darting into the porch hedge, then darting to the back side of a porch rail post. From there they hop from post to post until they get the feeder, where they then hang on the suet cage and peck. They will not do this if I'm outside and in sight, but do not mind me when I look through the windows. I don't know what sounds they make, beyond the ones of moving and feeding.

Comments

[ianqui]

As I am lately becoming something of a crazy bird-lady, I think you should put up pictures of your visitors!

[Rana]

Alas, they are hard to take pictures of, being (a) timid, and (b) fast. I have tried to take a few with my so-so telephoto lens, but it is a manual focus, and my eyesight's not quite good enough. But I'll consider it. :)

[Claire]

Rana-- I just read "The Birds" by Daphne DuMarier-- the short story on which the Hitchcock film is based. I mean, literally, I started on the commute to work and finished it on the way home. It was sunny and clear today and it still scared the crap out of me! Please don't read it! Especially with all of your feathered friends!

[Rana]

Peck! Peck! Peck!

[Lance Mannion]

I so enjoyed this post!

Your female cardinals must be into grrrlbrrrd power. Back in Syracuse we had lots of cardinals visiting our feeders, but we almost always only saw the males. We only knew the females were there by following where the males flew after they visited the feeder. The females were very good at blending into the leaves, which is what their coloring's designed for, and it always thrilled me whenever I was able to catch a glimpse of one.

[Rana]

I think it helps that I first put the feeder up in the winter, when they had no place to hide. ;)

What I'm finding particularly interesting is the way that birds come in waves. There's a bunch of old regulars, then a new batch of different ones comes in, then when they've become part of the regular crowd, in comes another wave of new ones.

Today, for example, I saw four new species: a tufted titmouse, a rose-breasted grosbeak, a goldfinch, and a white-crowned sparrow. Bam!