A Weekend of Good Birding

The by-line at the end of this column says that I am a birding hobbyist, but that doesn’t mean that I always have time to pursue my hobby. For some reason, this summer has been like that, with many distractions and not enough time to walk in the woods or wander in search of birds - until last weekend.

My weekend of birding started with a day trip to Plum Island. On the way, we stopped in Newmarket, NH, to check on the nesting Mississippi Kites which I wrote about two months ago. These southern birds of prey have never been reported nesting so far north before now. As we walked down Main Street with binoculars and scope, the local woman who monitors the nest daily greeted us. Pointing toward different tree tops, she said, “Mom’s there. Dad’s there. Baby’s still in the nest.” We watched Mom preen. We watched Dad fly gracefully, swoop, and then carry food to the chick in the nest. And through the thick leaves, we could just see the growing youngster moving about in the nest, still a week or so from fledging.

On to Plum Island and the wildlife refuge near Newburyport, MA. There we saw both the waning of summer and the beginning of fall. The summer breeding season was coming to an end as Common Terns were busy feeding their fledgling young. There was so much movement that it was hard to figure out how many families and how many young were being cared for. Young terns gathered in a loose group of three to six, impatiently waiting while parents fished over the open water. Sometimes patience was in such short supply that one or two or more would chase an adult. Other times a chick would wait quietly until it spied an adult carrying food, then scream loudly. The chicks were not far removed from independence, and it sometimes seemed that the adult was carrying food and delaying the feeding, as though to say, “Look this is how it is done.”

Shorebirds represented the beginning of fall. They were resting on the sand and feeding along the shore. Most of the small sandpipers, the peeps, nest in the Arctic. But their stay is brief. They court; they mate; they incubate. When the eggs hatch, the young are precocial - relatively well-developed and able to leave the nest soon after hatching and feed themselves. When the young leave the nest, the adults leave the Arctic and their young and start south. The young follow some weeks later. We saw adults: Sanderlings, Semipalmated Sandpipers and Plovers. The sandpipers and Sanderlings were in various stages of molt - some still showing their breeding plumage, some in winter plumage, and many somewhere in between. All reminded me that the best any field guide can do is to give an impression or suggestion of what a shorebird’s plumage may be.

But the real attraction for a mid-August day on the Massachusetts coast comes down to one bird: the Tree Swallow. Finished with their breeding season in New England and the North, they begin forming their winter flocks. Along the entire length of the island, swallows swooped and swirled over the dunes, salt marshes, and tidal pools, feeding on nature’s bounty in the form of mosquitos and green-headed flies. Near the southern end of the island they must have been staging for a flight across the bay. There we stood among scattered small trees and shrubs and watched the chaotic roiling of some 10,000 swallows. It was breathtaking.

Saturday morning, an Audubon walk through a private preserve provided this same mixture of impending fall and waning summer among songbirds. A pair of Scarlet Tanager and Baltimore Oriole were just sort of hanging around. A Canada Warbler was on the move, but not hurriedly so. A Yellow-bellied Sapsucker was keeping on eye on a juvenile.

But here, and everywhere else last weekend, the greatest activity was coming from the Cedar Waxwings. They nest in loose colonies; when one family fledges, there are likely to be other families fledging in the same vicinity and at the same time. The waxwings rushed from tree top to tree top, swooping out to flycatch, returning to feed young - young swooshing out, trying to feed on their own. Constant movement, constant activity, and all accompanied their thin, buzzy “sreee.”

Back in my yard in the afternoon, I continued to watch waxwings as they fed over the river. In a couple of months they will turn to the berries and crab apples hanging thickly on branches, but for now they are gobbling the insect protein.

The wren in my yard was still protecting his second brood. A House Finch fed a youngster, as did a Purple Finch. Young Rose-breasted and Evening Grosbeaks, pretty much on their own now, came by for a meal, as did young hummingbirds. The male seems to have moved on; at least he is no longer trying to defend his territorial prerogatives.

Sunday evening we kayaked on Sunset Lake. A pair of loons lured me from one side of the lake to the other, and from the west end to the east end and back again. They were just beginning their molt from breeding to winter plumage - still sleekly handsome. They seemed to have little concern as I drifted nearby and one came on its own to within a few yards, its red eye gleaming in the evening light before it slid quietly beneath the water.

We closed out one of the most pleasant weekends of this summer sitting on the edge of the river behind our home, slowly eating a bowl of ice cream. The sun had disappeared behind the hills and the hills were growing dark. I looked upstream. The remaining light of the dusk sky reflected on the river, giving it an almost mirror like glow. In the fading light, I saw small forms floating along the current, dark against the river.

We sat very still as the dozen forms approached on the current. But we were not unnoticed. A few yards upstream from where we sat, the mother Hooded Merganser went into a frantic half flight. Her brood followed suit. Half formed wings lifted them enough that they could scurry-run on the river’s surface. Quickly they ran past us and continued running downstream until they disappeared around a bend.

The last light of the day faded away, and we said a good night to a weekend of good birding.

When the Swallows Gather

I make periodic trips to Plum Island and the New England coast because I can see numbers and varieties of birds that can’t be seen in southern Vermont - shore birds and waders in Spring and Fall, gulls, diving ducks, and pelagics in the winter.

But mid-August is not a good time to go to Plum Island. The mosquitos are voracious. The green headed flies are at a vicious peak. The sun is baking hot. Parking is a premium as beach goers pursue their melanomas.

Nevertheless, I make a trip to Plum Island in mid-August anyway, because that is when nature has a show - one of her great shows. It’s a show that rivals the arctic migrations of the caribou, or the movement of the herds across the Serengeti. It is a winged show. The swallows are gathering - by the thousands and, at their peak, by the tens of thousands. They are predominantly Tree Swallows, but the purpose is not to pick out different species. The purpose is to stand in the midst of the abundant life.

Some years I have been early, or late, and have missed the show. I don’t think I was there at the peak numbers last week, but there was never a moment during the day when there were not hundreds of swallows on the wing, and any bush might be alive with swallows resting, but restless.

Entering the Parker River Refuge, there was a sign cautioning motorists about swallows in the road. Within yards, we had to pause, creeping slowly forward until two hundred swallows took flight.

Along the refuge road there were gatherings that numbered in the thousands. We stood on the road in the middle of one roost. Trees and bushes were covered with swallows, resting a moment, bursting into flight, darkening the sky, coming back to roost - restless, swirling life - a conclave and convention meeting to prepare for the great journey ahead.

Tree Swallows do not make the epic migration that many of our summer birds make. They winter predominantly along the southern Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and in the West in Baja California and the coast of Mexico. 170 years ago, Audubon saw huge flocks wintering in Louisiana, and still today flocks are often estimated in the hundreds of thousands. As sub-tropical winters have moved northward, so also have wintering swallows. I have seen Tree Swallows throughout the winter in Cape May, NJ, and it is not uncommon to find them wintering even further north. Seventy years ago, an observer studied a small flock of swallows which stayed the entire winter on Long Island, NY; most survived.

Tree Swallows can winter as far north as they do, because, unlike most other American swallows, they eat a substantial amount of vegetable matter. One study found that 20% of their food was vegetable - a variety of seeds and berries, but with a strong preference for the fruit of the bayberry.

Because Tree Swallows winter along the southern North American coasts, they return early to their northern breeding areas. Last year I saw Tree Swallows on Lake Champlain on March 28. By early-April, they are regularly reported in our neighborhoods, and by mid-April (barring a late winter storm which may cause them to withdraw) they are here to stay. By late April they are staking their claim to nest sites, often competing - successfully - with bluebirds, starlings, and House Sparrows for those boxes and holes.

Tree Swallows nest early, and raise their young. Unusual among our swallows, they undergo a complete molt before migrating. They gather in huge flocks and migrate late.

Arthur Bent summarizes this annual convocation: “Fall is a season of drama in the tree swallows’ yearly cycle. A single idea, or an urge, seems to grip every swallow in the land. The nesting season with its quarrels over, the swallows draw together with a common interest in preparation for their next step, the long migration they will take in companies of hundreds or thousands. In August and September we see them gathering in the great marshes by the sea, where they linger for many days in ever-increasing numbers, young and old.”

Last week on the barrier Plum Island, the swallows were gathering. Hundreds mingled restlessly in the bushes along the road. Some swallow hiccup sent them into the air, their mass creating a shadow across the road, before they settled again, briefly.

This annual Fall massing of swallows among the marshes of our seacoast seems to have survived, to some degree, the coastal development which has decimated the numbers of so many other species. In the 1830s, J.J. Audubon’s friend, Dr. Bachman, wrote that he “saw such an immense quantity of this species of birds that the air was positively darkened. As far as the eye could reach, there were Swallows crowded thickly together, and winging their way southward; there must have been many millions!”

These early naturalists observed North American fauna before it was drastically altered by the explosion of the human population. The line runs from a primeval past through these naturalists to the gathering of swallows today. The continuity in this line sets the swallows apart from other huge numbers of birds which we may commonly see and whose numbers may be as great, or greater, than that of the swallows.

For example - blackbirds. Huge flocks of blackbirds can be seen in Fall and Winter. They are often mixed flocks with starlings, a non-native species, and cowbirds, a Great Plains native which has colonized the opened lands of the continent. Or pigeons - the urban flocks all derive from feral birds brought over by settlers. Or Canada Geese - these adaptable birds winter by the thousands in the Connecticut River’s open water, and many travel but a few miles from their wintering fields to their breeding ponds. Most of these large geese flocks are very different from what the early naturalists observed; then the Canada Geese were almost all Arctic nesting birds which wintered in the deep south and whose New England presence was limited to a stopover on their journey.

But as nearly as we can tell, the gathering of the swallows from the vast continental interior to the marshes, grasses and dunes along the sea coast in the Fall, has been an annual event since the glaciers receded and tundra became forest. This glimpse of a primeval past draws me to the New England coast at this time of the year. Thousands of swirling and swooping swallows tell me that the natural order is highly prejudiced in favor of profligate life. It is a system that has served earth’s many life forms exceptionally well - until very recently when one of those life forms, in its profligacy, has gone dangerously amok.

The swallows, at least, seem to be maintaining their balance. I doubt that they are gathering to celebrate, but I celebrate their gathering, and thank them for it.