Who's Watching Who

  I’m not a morning person and I suspect that I miss seeing a lot of birds because I look for them too late in the day. Circumstances had me up by the Susquehanna Greenway bright and early Monday morning and so I thought I’d take advantage of the early hour to do a little bird watching along the trail. There are a lot fewer local birds around as many of them have already left for warmer climates, but if I was lucky maybe I’d find a few of the less frequently seen birds from up north which were currently migrating through on their way south.

  As I walked down the trail I was not able to catch anything more than a quick glimpse of a bird before it would fly off into the wild blue yonder making it impossible to identify what it was. It looked like it was going to be one of those days when the birds saw me and took off before I saw them. I’d heard a kingfisher and a blue jay calling, but I had yet to see anything more than these momentary glimpses of birds fleeing away from me.

  There was very little wind blowing. I prefer windless days when the trees are all leafed out because the birds are easier to spot when there is no wind. When the leaves on the bushes are perfectly still I’m more apt to notice a few of them rustling where a bird is hopping along a branch. If I focus there long enough with my binoculars hopefully the bird will pop up out of the leaves for a few seconds so that I can get a look at him.

  A common yellow throated warbler hopped up onto a branch near me alarmed by my presence. Common yellow throats seem to be everywhere right now. I can almost count on seeing one or two when I’m bird watching. During breeding season they are a little yellow bird, but now their feathers have turned much browner.

  There was another bird flitting about in the undergrowth. When I got my binoculars focused on him I saw he had two white wing bars, was gray on top and bright yellow underneath. I could think of only one bird that looked like that. “Now let me see those dark stripes on the flanks,” I thought as I angled for a good view and yes, there they were…a magnolia warbler. What a pretty little bird.

  I could hear the sound of something pecking on a tree nearby then “Peek!” Ah ha, there had to be a hairy woodpecker around here someplace… and there he was at the top of that tree.

  Further down the trail bulldozers and backhoes at the nearby landfill were making loud noises. I doubted I’d find any birds in that area with that racket going on and except for a killdeer on the island in the river there weren’t any. If the birds weren’t staying there because of the noise neither was I and I was happy to go back down the trail where it was quieter.

  Returning to where I was able to hear the birds once more, I thought I heard a shorebird calling. I moved to a clearing by the river to see if I could find it. I didn’t see any shorebirds, but I caught a glimpse of a large brown bird sailing through the treetops, a raptor of some kind, that disappeared into the trees. I thought it was gone, but then the bird rose up above the trees and circled around coming back overhead. It was a red-tailed hawk. The hawk sailed through the air along the ridge of the hill in front of me. Suddenly a dozen crows flew up from the trees below.  They made swooping passes at hawk probably hoping to drive the hawk out of the area, but the hawk just seemed to take all this activity in stride and continued circling lazily overhead until it disappeared behind the hill.

 As I proceeded along the trail I observed three cedar waxwings sitting in a tree top just above my head while further back in the bushes a vireo was flitting around. As I watched the vireo the waxwings above me never moved from their perch. It seemed odd that they would allow me to be so close to them. I noticed that one of the birds was covered with puffs of downy white feathers, a good indication that it was probably a fledgling and as such might not be able to fly very well. The other two were most likely its dutiful parents staying nearby. I focused my attention back on the vireo. If only it would come out from behind the leaves. I thought I saw a dark line through its eye. I always assume a vireo is a red eyed vireo if I see a line through the eye, but now I know that isn’t always the case. This bird lacked that sleek look that I associate with a red-eyed vireo. In one glimpse it looked like it had a trace of yellow near the rump and in another glimpse maybe some more yellow near the head. Darn bird, he wouldn’t hold still. He stayed deep in the bush and when he did get into a position where I was able to get my binoculars focused on him he’d move somewhere else so I had to refocus my binoculars all over again. I caught another glimpse of what appeared to be an olive green back. He stuck his head out of the bush for a few seconds and from what I could see he didn’t have red eyes. Now where did he go? I searched around looking for the bird in the bushes and up in the tree branches. Oh there he was. Good grief! He’d been sitting on a branch right in front of me watching me all this time while I was searching for him. I lifted my binoculars one more time to try and identify him and he flew off for good. Well as I said earlier it was one of those days when the birds seemed to be doing a much better job of people watching than I was doing of watching them.