Uccelli italiani

Eurasian Nuthatch (photo from Wikipedia Commons)

My other little ancillary post about Italy is on bird-watching. It was never a main activity during the trip, but I did take my binoculars, and I did keep my eyes open for birds while I was there. I did most of my bird watching from the gazebo of the rental house in Castelnuovo, during breakfast.

What I learned quickly is that Italian birds are very shy. Our house looked straight out into a stand of trees and bushes. Every morning I'd be waked at about 5 a.m. with a cataract of birdsong coming from these trees. There would still be plenty of singing going on when I got up an hour or two later (our hours varied, depending on whether there was a concert the night before), but I'd almost never see a single bird in these trees. Or if I did, it would dart into the underbrush before I could get a good look at it. American birds will usually let you look at them, at least for a few seconds.

Finally one morning I wised up and got up early. I went to an empty upstairs bedroom where I could peek out of the cracked shutters, and I had a little more success this way. It was very foggy most mornings, but I could at least see any birds that flew into the little fig tree right by the gazebo. This is how I saw a Eurasian Nuthatch, like the one in the photo above, and a couple of other birds.

About eight o'clock, while we were eating breakfast on the gazebo, the sun would burn through the fog and the swifts would start diving off the roof and into the valley, feeding on insects. They made a racket that is one of the characteristic sounds of European towns. Swifts, martins, and swallows circle every Tuscan town, especially in the morning and evening.

There was another sound I heard, all day long, everywhere I went. It was a very distinctive call, but I never could associate it with a particular bird. Every time I would identify a bird, I'd look to see if its call fit the description of what I was hearing, but it never did. I knew it must be a common bird, though, because I even heard it in Milan.

One I even asked Sr. Bertolani about it. He said, positively, that it was the canarini. I figured from what he was saying that he meant the European Serin, which is related to the canary and lives on the side of the hill where the house was. So that was the first Italian name for a bird that I learned. (Not that I've learned so many others!) But still, the song didn't fit the description for the Serin song in my bird book.

I never solved this mystery until we got back home. I finally e-mailed Cornell's ornithology department, through the Bird Guide site that's linked on my sidebar, and described the song. The person who answered my e-mail wasn't familiar with European birds, but she forwarded my question to someone else who was. And the verdict? The Common Chaffinch, probably the most common bird in all Europe! How could I have missed seeing the most common bird in Europe when I was there, with binoculars, and trying to keep my eyes open, for three weeks? It's beyond me, but there you go! I thought it was very nice of Cornell to go to the trouble to answer my question, though.

Here's my complete list. As usual, I haven't bothered to put it in strict taxonomic order:

Little Grebe

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Alpine Chough

Alpine Accentor

Common Blackbird

White Wagtail

Carrion Crow

Common House Martin

Barn Swallow

Common Swift

Great Tit

Blue Tit

Eurasian Nuthatch

European Serin

Blackcap

Italian Sparrow

and

Common Chaffinch!

The naturalist impulse*

CZ feeding a Queen butterfly, 2007

In honor of the SAT II Biology test that CZ took yesterday, here is a quote from Anne Fadiman's essay, "Collecting Nature," from At Large and Small:

"Her conception of nature was incorrigibly romantic; she was painfully affected by beauty; she was a compulsive arranger; she focused on small details--the precise curve of a mourning cloak's forewing, the exact shade of the red spot on a zebra swallowtail's hindwing--rather than on larger and more important questions of behavior and habitat."

Thus Ms. Fadiman, who was describing herself as a child, became a writer and not a biologist.

That quote may apply more to me than to CZ, who shows few signs of being a compulsive arranger, but I think we're both delighted that she can now leave off test prep and go back to learning in a way that lends itself to enjoyment.  We are perhaps slightly appreciative of the impetus the test gave her to master the basics of the subject, but crammed in this way over two months, they are mostly devoid of beauty.  

We have raised butterflies, but we have spent more time birding, and this quote touches not only on the appeal of watching birds, but also on the appeal of keeping a notebook of birding lists (when she started she could barely write) or a life list on a site such as eBird, sponsored by Cornell's Lab of Ornithology.  CZ accumulated over 150 birds on her list before the spring concert season and her shoulder injury overwhelmed any desire to crane her neck looking for warblers.

Instead, yesterday afternoon, CZ watched a documentary on Jacqueline du Pre' and then spent three hours practicing violin. The sounds coming from her room were not unlike those of a bird or butterfly set free.  But in the evening, she picked up The Physiology Coloring Book, took out a set of pencils, and colored in the title. "See? These are the colors of the letters for me," she explained. Then she started reading and coloring the text--for fun.  

The last butterfly of 2007, a Monarch, going free in Riverside Park

*I wrote this title thinking I had heard the phrase somewhere before, so I looked it up.  Not too suprisingly, it was the name of a book on painting.

Birdy day

Today while CZ went to her classes, I went to Central Park's North End to look for warblers.  This time I saw lots of them in only an hour. Sometimes, when I go birding for hours and rarely see a migrant, I am tempted to think maybe I'm wasting my time. Shouldn't I be inside getting something done, or at least being sociable? But when I have a day like this, outside, listening to buzzy trills and seeing bright colors flit around, I remember what it is that I like about watching birds. It's an almost indefinable combination of beauty, detailed observation, and making educated guesses about where and when the birds will appear, but without really having control of the outcome.  

Before I make my list, I'll mention some highlights.  The most obvious one was a Scarlet Tanager.  In the spring, the males are a bright, tropical-looking red, with black wings.  This one popped out vividly against the green foliage, and seeming to realize it, he moved to the other side of the tree when he saw me.  Then he'd emerge into the open, spy me again, and repeat the retreat.  This went on for some time, so I really got to see him well.  

Magnolia Warblers were everywhere!  I've never seen so many that I stopped counting before, but that's what happened today.  And they were singing, too, which made them easy to find.  It's always interesting when you can watch a bird through binoculars while it's actually singing.  

I saw not one, but three Ovenbirds.  Ovenbirds are funny little brown warblers, like small thrushes with orange caps, that walk around on the ground near streams and logs.  When anyone in our family mentions an Ovenbird, one of the others of us inevitably comments, "Walks like a chicken."  You'd think we were eating frog legs, it's so predictable. 

I saw a 4" Winter Wren flush both a Robin and a Magnolia Warbler out of a clump of violets.  It must have been crowded in there!  Wrens are tiny, but fierce.  Even their song is feisty.

My favorite sighting of the day was a glimpse of gray-blue hood and white eye-ring, with some yellow underneath.  This fits the description of about three warblers, all pretty uncommon, but I only got one glimpse, and only of its head and neck.  So I stood there waiting to see if the bird would come out into the open again. It didn't show, but it did sing a few times, with a series of four ascending warbles and then four quick, quiet pips.  I heard it fly to another tree, repeat the song once, and then it disappeared altogether.

I did everything I could to memorize that song, through the sounds of other bird calls on the back through the park, during ten minutes I spent talking to a friend at the edge of the park, and through the usual panoply of Upper West Side noises as I walked home, including some loud salsa music with a sticky, repetitive tune.  When I got home, I checked Cornell's bird identification site, pulling up every warbler with a blue hood, to no avail--Connecticut, Mourning, and beyond all hope, McGillivray's? (No, of course not!) Then I remembered one more: The Nashville.  And there it was, a variation, but unmistakably the same song I'd heard.  

There were even some birds I couldn't identify today, which was fun.  Likely they were juveniles or females of migrating species.  These promise new challenges, and besides, they help me to imagine that there is still mysterious and uncharted territory ahead in birding.  

Not in taxonomic order:

Magnolia Warbler
Ovenbird
Parula
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Common Yellowthroat (male and female)
Nashville Warbler
Black-and-White Warbler
Redstart (yellow)
Baltimore Oriole (juvenile)
Winter Wren
Hermit Thrush
Scarlet Tanager
Catbirds
Cardinals
Blue Jays
Robins


*Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Bird update

Eastern Wood-pewee (from Wikipedia)

Birds last weekend:

Downy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Scarlet Tanager
Least Flycatcher
Black-and-white Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
And the usual suspects

This weekend:

Eastern Wood-Pewee
Blackpoll Warbler
Yellow-Rumped Warbler
and what I think was a partially-molted Indigo Bunting, but I didn't get a good enough look

I haven't seen as many birds as usual this year.  I think that's mostly because I haven't been to Central Park, but instead have been walking home through Riverside Park after meeting CZ for lunch on Saturdays. I haven't really had time to wander aimlessly yet.  

Usually even Riverside Park has more warblers, though.  Well, the season is only about halfway through.  And I'm always happy to see a Scarlet Tanager!

First birds of 2010

A Palm Warbler. This one is awfully cute, but he's not in his spring plumage, so if you want to see his rust-colored cap, try this copyrighted photo.

(If you haven't read this blog in the spring before, be forewarned. I get really enthusiastic about warbler migration! If you're one of those people who doesn't see the fun in spending hours looking straight up into trees with binoculars during pollen season, I won't be offended! It should be safe to return by early June.)

I was able to spend about an hour birding in Riverside Park yesterday. It was a cool, windy day which blew clouds rapidly over the Hudson and further dappled the light under the new, yellow-green leaves. I wore a wool jacket, but I didn't really need gloves.

Here's what I saw:

2 American Kestrels, squabbling high in a tree. Their querulous cries where what made me notice them.

4 Mourning Doves

1 Red-bellied Woodpecker, carving out a hole in the same spot as last year. I really admire his persistence, as last year's nest got taken over by Starlings. At first I thought this bird had really worn feathers, but eventually I realized he was all ruffled because his head would scrape the top of the hole on each strike.

1 Northern Flicker

2 Blue Jays, chasing one another

1 Black-capped Chickadee, heard only

1 wren, but only saw the silhouette so I'm not sure what type

2 Ruby-crowned Kinglets, one with his bright red crest up, furiously chasing the other

Robins everywhere. Singing, of course!

Yellow-rumped Warblers, several

1 Pine Warbler

Palm Warblers, lots and lots of them flying from tree to tree with the Yellow-Rumps and Pine Warbler, all eating catkins

2 Eastern Towhees

2 Chipping Sparrows

White-throated Sparrows, still around for now, calling, "Oh say, Canada! Canada!" I think they're homesick. Their friends the Juncos are gone.

2 Cardinals, an obvious pair

These birds were not here a week ago. I don't even think they were here three days ago. So these are the very first arrivals!

I was somewhat surprised to see so many Palm Warblers, since usually the Yellow-rumps arrive first, and in such large numbers that for about two weeks they're almost as common as House Sparrows. If House Sparrows are the street urchins of the bird world, Yellow-rumps are the bird equivalent to the zucchini squash--early and abundant, yet still seasonal enough that you're delighted to see them make an appearance.

Chipping Sparrow

All photos from Wikipedia Commons.

Harbor Herons redux

As you may know, we spent two (very) full days each month from July until October surveying heron foraging habits for NYC Audubon. Kate Ruskin and other people who work at NYC Audubon are now tallying all the volunteers' results and they hope to issue a report soon about their findings. Meanwhile, another Audubon volunteer, Sandra Koponen, has spent hours this year shooting footage and compiling this video about conservation efforts in CZ's and my very own volunteer location, Jamaica Bay!

If you watch the video, you'll see many of the very same points we surveyed in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. No, we're not in the video, but we're excited about the work that others are doing, because we love this part of New York City and we want it to be preserved for future generations of New Yorkers--not to mention the birds!

You know it's fall when...

...you see the Winter Wren

...you go to the park and all the fall birds have arrived--White-throated Sparrows, Juncos, and Titmice. The ubiquitous and year-round House Sparrows have started flying around in puffed and close-knit flocks, and if you look closely, you see a migrant or two, like this Black-throated Blue Warbler, stopping on its way south:

The little Winter Wren (at top) is only 4 inches long. When it stretches out its neck at the foot of a tree (they're bush dwellers), its whole body moves. It's not really big enough to move just its head. Luckily, its tail sticks up for balance. I saw one Tuesday--a real treat, because I've only seen one once before!

Some birds are just around in unusual numbers, like the Phoebe and the Blue Jay. The Robins haven't left yet, but the Grackles have arrived, and so has the Sapsucker. Even the Pigeons are flying around in circles instead of barely getting out of the way of the buses. It's a gregarious, bustling moment.

But I'm holding out for the Golden-crowned Kinglets, my favorites of all the songbirds. They usually pass through in flocks at about this time:

All photos from Wikipedia Commons

UPDATE, October 11: We saw our Kinglets today! They were all over the North Woods of Central Park, both the Golden-crowned and the Ruby-crowned. They were extremely cooperative, hanging upside down off branches at close range and at eye-level. They almost seemed to be following us!

We also saw another Winter Wren. We were actually there because someone had reported a Sedge Wren, a bird which hasn't been seen in NYC in forty years. We knew where it had been seen this morning, but alas, it was a no-show. Still, a lovely day with lots of birds!

***

Whenever we've had a moment this week, C.Z. and I have been looking at everything we can find under the microscope. I doubt this is systematic enough to "count" as lab science, but it's really fun! This week we've seen hair, mold, an onion tip, leaf cells, bacteria, diatoms, other unidentified micro-organisms, and a Euglena. I suppose high school science teachers wouldn't be impressed, but I thought it was hilarious when C.Z. put down her violin right in the middle of Nutcracker practice, put her eye up to the microscope and started talking to the light-shy Euglena, whom we had to constantly chase down, "Oh, you're so cute! I see you found something to eat. That's great!" And who knew that protists could dance to "The Waltz of the Flowers"?

Busy fall post

Little Blue Heron

Things are really picking up this week, with a bike ride across the Brooklyn Bridge for pizza, another heron day at Jamaica Bay, the beginning of co-op, Bob's birthday (today), and music school starting up this Saturday.

We've really enjoyed the heron survey, and if the weather is decent and we have an ounce of energy left over at the end of the day, we usually walk around to see what other birds we can spot. Fall migration has definitely begun, because we saw lots of warblers in semi-fall plumage on Tuesday. We had our Peterson "Confusing Fall Warbler" page bookmarked for easy access, and I was pleased when I spotted a juvenile Chestnut-sided Warbler, which looks quite different from the distinctive adult male of spring.

But our favorite new (for us) finds were a Little Blue Heron and a Wilson's Phalarope. They look a lot like other shorebirds, except that they spend more time floating in the water to look for food rather than walking along in shallow water. Phalaropes are known for spinning around in the water to draw prey to the surface. The one we saw kept flying around in circles above the pond, chasing a larger Lesser Yellowlegs.

I particularly enjoy walking gingerly along the tiny plants of a quiet mudflat in the late afternoon, with Least Sandpipers scattering in front of my feet almost like little crabs. It feels almost like an open, though extremely scaled-down, tundra, flat and deserted. I can just hear someone saying, "What do you mean, tundra? This spit is about 30 feet long, smells like low tide, is surrounded by marsh grass, and besides, it's 80 degrees out!" I don't know; it just does! I don't even mind my shoes getting muddy.

This Wilson's Phalarope is in non-breeding plumage, like the one we saw

***

This morning was the first fallish weather day of the year. I walked up to the Columbia Farmer's Market, as I hear it might be raining too hard tomorrow to make the trip down to the one at 97th St. And besides, I was on a birthday cake mission--I needed beets. Beets and ice cream.

The wind was whipping up bits of leaves and swirling them in circles. No colorful, whole leaves yet, of course. I think this wind is from a storm offshore. Still, it was all I could do not to buy pumpkins and butternut squash. I need to see what turns up in my vegetable share first. But beets are fallish enough for now.

This afternoon we've been baking the cake. During our time in the kitchen, we've been listening to the American Quartet and the Cello Concerto, and C.Z. does a running commentary. "The violins don't even play here for six whole minutes...Ooh, listen to that trill. Don't you like that part? I would never have thought of putting a trill there...Oh, don't worry about trying to heroically scrape all the batter into the pan before the end of the movement. This cadence material lasts forever. He tacked it on at the end of composing...You like that part? That's an oboe. See, don't you want to rent me an oboe? I promise I'll learn that part for you!...And this part is really hard! Dvorak isn't always fun for strings to play, but he's so perky you don't care." During breaks, C.Z. sight reads Dvorak. I guess she's trying to get all this extra sight-reading energy out of her system because she has her first regular lesson this afternoon, and she knows she has to whip her old pieces back into shape for her make-up jury.

The cake is in the oven. Spaghetti prep time, and then the lesson!

***

If I'm not back for a while, it's because we're starting school. I do have more to say. I always do!

(All images from Wikipedia Commons.)

Foraging for herons

A Snowy Egret. We saw lots of these. Love those feet!

We saw a Green Heron today, too

Today C.Z. and I started our volunteer work for the New York City Audubon Society. We're doing what's called "citizen science," where volunteers take down information that scientists use to learn about birds' habits. This study is on how herons forage for food. Our site is Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

It's really quite easy in theory, and with practice I'm sure we'll get much better at it in actuality, too. We have nine sites. At each site we record the weather and habitat (in percentages) and the number of each kind of wading bird. Then we do three-minute observations of what the birds are doing. We also record what other wading birds, if any, are nearby, in meters. For instance, if we're observing a spot along the West Pond, we might see open water, phragmities (a tall marsh grass), a mudflat, and shrubs. Perhaps there's a Great Blue Heron sitting on one little island of phragmites, and a Great Egret sitting on another, and a Snowy Egret walking around the perimeter of the egret's island. So we'll watch each bird for three minutes and record what he does, and how far the other birds are from him.

The tricky part, of course, is what to do when you get a lot of birds, but by the time you write them down, they've all changed. Or you were watching a Glossy Ibis, and he just up and flew away. Or you're not sure whether the Snowy Egret that just caught a fish is the same one you were watching a few minutes ago. And maddeningly, they all seem to start doing something really interesting after your three minutes are up. Are you allowed to start over?

As it was, we were there for four-and-a-half hours today, but what a lovely time it was. New York City, as those of you who live nearby know, is having an unusually cool summer. Before we left for Georgia, it was cool and it rained every day. Since we got back, it's been cool and gorgeous, with low humidity. This is a golden summer, and it's good to be outdoors in it as much as possible!

At Jamaica Bay, the high was in the seventies, the breeze was constant, and the colors were clear and bright. We saw all kinds of herons, almost every wading bird in our list! What I hoped we'd accomplish by doing this survey, besides learning how surveys work and helping conservation efforts, was to really learn how each species behaves. And we did learn some things, even today on our first trip. I learned that Snowys and Tricolors are fast foragers, while Great Egrets and Great Blues stand and wait for longer for something to come by. The Tricolors are quite aggressive in their fishing, and they tend to fish alone. Ours was on the water's edge as the tide was coming in, bay side. The ibises walk along with their heads in the water, sweeping from side to side like a blind man with a cane. And I learned that Great Egrets spend a lot of time sleeping in trees.

The survey made us more aware of the different plants on the island, too. I'd seen many of them before, but having to note them makes you pay more attention. All the flowers are in full bloom right now, and they're a riot of color. And I now know my spartina altiflora from my spartina patens from my phragmites. I always knew that I liked they way they look in the broad sweep of a saltmarsh landscape, but now I know what the different species are, too.

Yellow Warbler

And one reason the survey took us so long today was that it was a nice birding day generally, so we kept taking breaks to watch the other birds. During our rather sparse spring migration outings, I kept joking that all I wanted to see was a Yellow Warbler, so I'd know it was spring. Well, today I saw a whole family of them!

And we saw a mother flycatcher feeding her baby a dragonfly, up close. It was a huge dragonfly, and the mother had to keep taking it back out of the baby's mouth each time it took a bite, so she could change the angle. At first, we wondered whether she was going to take some for herself, but no, she never did! Then they both turned in our direction, and we beheld their satisfied birdy faces as they sat side by side on the branch. Cute! We saw so many flycatchers that C.Z. called it an "empi epidemic."

The Barn Swallows we saw looked like this. I think they were babies.

We saw two Barn Swallows just sitting still on a branch outside the Welcome Center. I'd never actually seen a Barn Swallow sit still before. In fact, I was so startled that I had to look them up in my Sibley Guide to make sure that's what they were. They were bigger than I'd thought! And I saw the brightest House Finch I'd ever seen in my life eating mulberries out of a tree. He really looked as though he were a sparrow who'd stained his feathers with bright red berries. And of course, there were Song Sparrows singing everywhere. They really add to the ambience of a bird sanctuary.

Oh, and once, as we were walking along the path, we stopped right in our tracks because, just thirty feet away, we saw a terrapin digging a nest. That was last year's volunteer research project, the one that got us to interested in doing more, but Dr. Burke is in Italy this year studying lizards. We sat on the trail for about five minutes, trying to be utterly still and quiet so our terrapin could finish digging her nest, but I think she got scared and scuttled off. It was right on the trail. We saw terrapins in the water, too, and dozens of marked terrapin nests, both real ones with cages, and fake ones without. They're to fool raccoons--Shh, don't tell!

Cedar Waxwings really like berries. They're fairly common, but aren't they beautiful?

Here's our full list, for whomever follows these things:

Mute Swan

Double-crested Cormorant

Great Blue Heron

Great Egret

Snowy Egret

Tricolored Heron

Green Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Glossy Ibis

American Oystercatcher (flocks)

Greater Yellowlegs

Unidentified plovers and sandpipers

Laughing Gull

Great Black-Backed Gull, which pulled a huge fish out of the water and proceeded to eat it!

Least Tern

other terns

Black Skimmer (love these!)

Empidonax flycatcher (mother, baby, and others, still not sure which kinds)

Tree Swallow

Barn Swallow

Gray Catbird

Northern Mockingbird

Brown Thrasher

Cedar Waxwing (eating beautiful translucent red berries)

Yellow Warbler family

American Redstarts

Common Yellowthroat

Song Sparrow

Red-winged Blackbird

House Finch (eating mulberries)

American Goldfinch

This is ever so much more fun than going to classes, I must say! And this weekend we're going to help with an Eco-Cruise. Who says New Yorkers can't get out in nature? Of course, it took a two-hour train ride to get out there, but who cares!

(All images from Wikipedia Commons)

Summer in pictures

We did so much during our ten days in Georgia that it defies easy description.  So I thought I'd just post some pictures with a little commentary.  This is a little hard to do while respecting the privacy of all of our various family members, friends, and one daughter who got a haircut. But I hope this will do the trip justice...

9 p.m.*, June 27th.  Bob's parents' house north of Atlanta. We played game upon game of spoons, which eventually evolved into a new game called "Extreme Spoons," in which the number of spoons gradually diminished until blood was drawn.  We also played "No Way!," a bluffing game which really has another name, but we don't call it that.  And "Outdoor Clue," a kind of tag in which no one knows who's "it." And badminton. A certain family member became extremely punchy during "No Way!" and laughed a lot at his own antics.  "Challenge me!"

We ate breakfast every morning on the screened porch, and made mint chocolate chip ice cream for dessert one night.  And C.Z. got in a little target practice.  Her grandfather think it complements her violin skills nicely to be a good shot with a revolver.

Taking the fishing boat out onto the pond on Bob's parents' property.  The area has been built up a lot over the past twenty-five years, but it's still pretty private where they live.  Does this photo look as hot and humid as it feels to me, or am I just such a Georgian that I can sense it in all that green?  Don't forget to plug the boat!

We also went ice skating, indoors, which of course is the only way you can go ice skating in Georgia, even in winter.  I didn't take the camera.  As it was, I had some trouble with the popsicle-like surface of the indoor ice, which kept catching on my rental skates. I really hate it when I look up through a lot of white dots and see people staring at me and looking all concerned!  But at least I wasn't wearing flip-flops...

June 30th, noon. Seven of us went trail riding (on horses) near Dahlonega and then hiked up Amicalola Falls.  The orange object in the foreground is a flip-flop, which can only mean one thing, Susan.

And what trip down South would be complete without catching a few crayfish in a stream?

Or spotting a newly molted cicada?  

Other sounds, and some bird highlights:  A Chuck-will's-widow at night, a Belted Kingfisher over the Apalachee River, and a Pileated Woodpecker knocking on an old pine. 

Next up, Athens, Georgia, where we ate potato salad and cantaloupe, drank sweetened iced tea, and then did a lot of swimming, at my parents'.  Just before we left for Athens, C.Z. got ten inches cut off her hair for Locks of Love.  It looks great, but she won't let me post a picture!  

July 2, 6:45 p.m., outside Athens in an 1870s farmhouse.  Some good friends invited us over for dinner and kayaking.

Just what every child needs: a fishing hat with a bit of rope stuffed inside, and a good stick.  But a tin-roofed hunting shack with taxidermic animals is also nice to have nearby.

Apalachee River, 8:45 p.m., from a kayak.  We're learning to pole around fallen trees.

A neighbor's woodshop, 9:15 p.m.  A radio was blasting slightly dissonant orchestral music as we entered through the open barn doors and saw the shapes of ancient power tools, with their old oil smell, looming in the dark.  I felt for a moment as though I was in a slightly eerie movie as my friend went to switch on the lights.  I later found out that her neighbor kept NPR turned on all night to keep the deer out.  The owner of the shop, like me, is reading Shop Class as Soulcraft.  And he built his house after A Pattern Language, too!  I love it when I meet people who like the same things I like.  

July 4, 7p.m. Athens, Georgia.  My sister's veggie burger and my niece's dinner invitation.  My nine-year-old niece also made an American flag cake, and my six-year-old nephew made lemonade. I also really liked my brother-in-law's grilled andouille sausages!  I won't say how old he is.

7:45 p.m.  Roger is caught red-pawed, licking off the plates in the dishwasher.  

10:00 p.m., a strip mall parking lot in Athens. Two six-year-old boys examine a really cool first-aid kit after watching fireworks (below) from a local park.  Also included in the evening's entertainment:  Hoola-hoops.

Happy 4th of July!  And then we went home. 

One more mental picture:  On the way home, on the train in the Atlanta airport, a tall, thin, tanned and pretty (but not model-gaunt) young woman with dark hair and eyes, in 4-inch heels and a black mini dress. In one hand she carried a clear, unscratched plexiglass box with a tiara inside. Underneath the tiara was a green and white silk sash, folded carefully so that the word "Georgia" was clearly visible. She was with her mother, I think.  

Next to Miss Georgia on the train was a seven-year-old girl with a pink suitcase and similar complexion, gaping open-mouthed in admiration.  What a perfectly Southern way to end a trip to Georgia!  

*All times are "ish" times, to quote a certain six-year-old.

Fledge Day

 A mother House Sparrow feeding her baby (image from Wikipedia)

Yesterday C.Z. and I took a long walk in Riverside Park, from 89th St. to 125th St., in a loop. We saw the first fledgling House Sparrow south of 96th St.  It flew low and wobbly over the path at about waist height. C.Z. noted that it must be a baby, because its tail was so short.  

The timing seemed right. We remembered the week in early spring when every hollow traffic signal pole in the city boasted its male sparrow chirping to claim a bit of real estate, and then the morning we woke up to see them robbing neighborhood window boxes for dried grass, and then the short out-and-back flights of a couple of weeks ago (which must be for feeding, but make them look confusingly like Phoebes). We realized that now must be the time for the babies to fledge.  

We walked on. Up by the Amiable Child monument,  we followed another baby sparrow that was sitting on the iron railing until we found its mom and two siblings.  

Then, when we turned back south near the Drip, we almost stepped on a baby sparrow which had apparently just made its first flight and was sitting in the middle of the path.  When it saw us coming near, it careened across the path and then a short ways up to the railing, overshooting and hanging upside down for a moment by its feet before it righted itself.  There it sat, slipping a little on the railing and chirping at us frantically with its one-note chirp.  We watched it for a while, from a respectful distance, to see whether it would try to fly again. It moved around a post and almost fell off the railing again, but didn't dare take off.  Its wide baby beak, still yellow and turned down at the corners, gave it a disgruntled expression.

After a while we noticed another baby in a nearby tree.  It began to chirp at its sibling, and they set up a chorus as if to say, "Here I am! It's okay!" and "You can do it!" Just when we thought our first fledgling was going to sit on the rail for the rest of the afternoon, it took another flight of about three feet. Its sibling followed, barely catching onto a thin hanging branch and swinging wildly. The two birds continued to encourage one another until the sibling made another flight, but our first baby was too tired or afraid to follow.  

We could see adult House Sparrows all around us on the other side of the path. Eventually, a group of four or five females flew over at once and all started chattering at the fledgling like a bunch of grandmas. After a while, they flew off, and shortly afterwards a male House Sparrow showed up, making a different low chattering sound, and hopping from one branch to another, then back.  It was exactly as if he were saying, "This is how you do it."  Then it fed the baby an insect.  

"That really reminds me of last winter when Daddy was trying to get me to try my first black diamond," C.Z. commented.  We use Green & Black's dark chocolate instead of insects.

Still, it was no go for our baby bird. Daddy flew off, and then the bird's mother showed up with another insect.  Apparently learning to fly is a high calorie endeavor. 

When we finally left after watching for about thirty minutes, the baby sparrow still hadn't flown, but it was obviously surrounded by a loving family. Watching the sparrows for so long gave me a greater appreciation for these ubiquitous dull-coated city birds that dot every street. They're an invasive, gregarious species that adapts to city culture, but then, so am I. And they have their customs and their seasonal rhythms just like the glamorous migrant warblers and overwintering White-throated Sparrows, even if they aren't as well-appreciated. The House Sparrow is likely the kind of sparrow that Jesus was referring to when he said that "not one of them falls to the ground apart from the will of the Father."  Watching the sparrows fledge yesterday gave me a whole new appreciation for what he meant. 

"We're in a Drippy world!"

--C.Z., one day years ago while we were taking a walk in the rain.

Worm-eating Warbler (image from Wikipedia Commons)

Cute bird despite the name, isn't it?

The past week has been so rainy that it's gotten to be sort of a joke among New Yorkers.  It's been cold and rainy, warm and rainy.  It's drizzled.  It's misted.  It's poured.  It's thundered.  Every now and then the weather clears up just enough to tease people into going outside, but at this point we've all wised up, and we take umbrellas.  And we aren't sorry!

It was during one of these short breaks yesterday that C.Z. and I made a dash for the Drip.  After all, it is the height of warbler migration. In this weather it's harder to find one favored spot for birds because all Riverside Park is one big Drip.  But we walked along the park wall in that general direction anyway.  

Once we arrived we found park birding expert Jeff Nulle keeping an eye out at the fence. Sometimes on nice days, the Riverside Park birders will even bring out chairs and watch for a couple of hours.  I'm starting to recognize people and learn their names, although birders are by and large not a chatty group--they're all about spotting passerines, and you might miss the birds if you talk too much.

Jeff was watching a Swainson's Thrush which was so red that I would have taken it for a Hermit Thrush if he hadn't told me otherwise.  He told me that a woman had accosted him that morning, alarmed that a pair of Mallards had taken up residence in a large puddle nearby. She seemed to be afraid that, like fish, they wouldn't be able to breathe once the water dried up.  New Yorkers are very concerned about nature--in theory.  But their experience is a bit limited sometimes!

Hermit Thrush (from Wikipedia)

The Drip being a bit slow due to the rain, C.Z. and I did a circuit of the bird sanctuary and spotted a Worm-eating Warbler gleaning from a tree.  It was the first one we'd ever seen (birders call them "life birds"), so we watched it for several minutes, which is an eternity in wiggly warbler world.  Finally it disappeared into the trees, and we went on to watch some of the usual Yellow-Rumped Warblers, a Black-and-white Warbler, a female Common Yellowthroat, a Goldfinch, and a Redstart.  

The migrating warblers were about as shy and soggy as our fellow Upper West Siders, so we didn't see as many as we'd have liked, but we enjoyed the walk immensely.  During this week of rain, a lovely green canopy of leaves has emerged on all the trees, their fresh light green contrasting with the wet charcoal gray trunks.  In the bird sanctuary, which is purposely not trimmed like the rest of the Park, giant weeds have sprouted up, giving the woods an almost prehistoric look.  It was 70 and humid, so we could really smell the soil, too. I love this weather! It reminds me of Georgia.

C.Z. and I spent about ten minutes watching a squirrel systematically strip the leaves from an entire branch of a young tree.  It was making a nest in the trunk of a larger tree a couple of feet away.  With admirable efficiency, it would bite off a twig at its base for maximum leaf harvest, jump into the nearby hole, pat down the new find, test it out for softness (or perhaps dryness), peek back out with both arms clinging to the side of the hole, and perform an amazing backwards leap with a twist to land on the dizzily swaying branch once again. Since the hole was at eye level and the squirrel wasn't shy (New York squirrels are extroverts), we could easily have taken a photo if we'd had our camera. I wonder whether he'll still be there the next time we go to the park?

We paid the Mallards a visit, too.  They looked quite happy upending themselves in a puddle which was the size of a small pond and deep enough to swim in.

Anyway, as might be predicted (at a 60% probability, in fact), we felt large drops of rain as we neared our own street again.  Within five minutes of our arrival back home, the bottom dropped out of the sky, complete with a few delighted shrieks from children caught out in the rain.  But by that time, we'd whipped up a couple of chocolate kefir shakes, pulled up some chairs, and were starting up a Teaching Company DVD on rock formations.  

Watching geology lectures always makes us wish we were going hiking in the Pacific Northwest, but for this summer, the glacier-scarred rocks of Central Park will be our mountains.  The weather, however, seems just about right for Portland, Oregon.