Published by Richie July 17th, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
Copyright 2007 by Richie Swanson
I took a last look into Aghaming Park and Preserve after birding it dawn-to-noon four mornings per week since February. A prothonotary warbler flashed luminously yellow, biting a mayfly’s head, feeding fledglings. A great crested flycatcher rasped, dive-bombing a yellow-bellied sapsucker from a tree-hole. An American redstart slapped a caterpillar against a branch until gut-juices squirted. A yellow-billed cuckoo pumped its tail and wings in time to its knocker-call. An Eastern wood peewee slurred pee-ah-wee sleepily, then abruptly chased another bird from a hunting perch. All these birds winter in mature forests disappearing from Central and South America. They’re breeding in woods on the Upper Miss and need them on the Lower Miss too.
Continue reading ‘Last look at Upper & Lower Miss Birds, 7-04′
Published by Richie July 7th, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
Copyright 2007 by Richie Swanson
The towering double-trunk cottonwood seems a likely place to take a last-ditch listen for North America’s most steeply declining warbler, the cerulean. I pause during this field season’s final visit. A prothonotary warbler flashes in foliage instead, shaking a mulberry too big-looking for the tiny-gold bird to swallow. He tightens his bill and shuffles the berry. He drops it, dives down, darts up, and a brown-headed cowbird flaps its fledgling-wings, begging. The prothonotary feeds it, flits on, gleans a bug from a leaf and feeds a second cowbird fledgling. Continue reading ‘Warbler, Cowbird, Predators, 7-04′
Published by Richie June 29th, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
Copyright 2007 by Richie Swanson
One minute, the blue-black Mississippi cast a glossy dawn-reflection of the tall-dark woods that have been housing the first red-headed woodpeckers I’ve encountered at Aghaming since 1998. The next moment, a breeze smelling of backwaters fermenting, of humid-black mud curdling in sloughs, wafted upriver, and fog hid the channel and bluffs. It hung green between trees in the woods as if it were sucking up and oozing the color from the chin-high poison ivy all around the nest-hole tree. I waited. No red-headeds called or appeared 5:20-6:00 A.M., nor 6:50-7:10. Sleeping in? Hidden in tree-crowns 70-feet high, dense-dark with foliage? Evicted? Depredated? No red-headeds came to the hole or nearby woods 7:00-11:30 the next morning. No quirr. No queak. Continue reading ‘No quirr, no queak, yet sapsuckers squeak, 6-26′
Published by Richie June 22nd, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
Copyright 2007 by Richie Swanson
As the sun finishes its seasonal circle above the Mississippi, nearing the northernmost point on the celestial equator, rising behind the most-upriver bluff this year, dawn glows indigo, and 85 great egrets drop through a heat-fog the same hazy-gray as herons’ wings. The egrets growl like soft-toned dinosaurs above Osprey Marsh. The wind gusts, and they flutter like giant-white butterflies, dipping like swallows above waves, scooping fish with dangling bills.
The first red-headed woodpeckers here since 1998 quarr, kritt and drum in alarm from the bottomland woods across a slough. They may not know it, but they suffer an excess of European culture. A pair flies to a courtship limb where reverse-mounting occurred last Sunday, a sign of a deepening pair bond. The two woodpeckers swing together in perfect ritual, but now the female flies off, leaving the male bobbing by himself. Continue reading ‘An excess during Solstice Week, 6-19′
Published by Richie June 14th, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
Copyright 2007 by Richie Swanson
A Canada warbler singing on June eighth? More than 80 miles south of the nearest nest record in Wisconsin? Chip-chupety-swee-ditchety! He advertised for a female all morning, ending his song with itchity like a common yellowthroat, flashing his black necklace above ferns, fallen logs, upturned tree roots and mossy rocks on swampy-forested banks a l suitable nest cover. An Eastern kingbird fluttered shallow wingbeats in midair, bumping bills with another, hovering slowly down to a dike, rasping, Kitterkitterkitter! She picked up a stick and tossed her head high, shaking her prize up, down, sideways. She dropped it, seized it again, repeated her routine, then flew followed by the other. She performed stick-behavior I did not find in science, and then a yellowthroat raised his black mask, singing phrases I haven’t heard during 30 years of listening. We-chew we-chew we-chew a-chew! Chew-chew-chweet-chweet!
Continue reading ‘Singing, Learning, Charming, 6-10′
Published by Richie June 7th, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
Copyright 2007 by Richie Swanson
The first red-headed woodpecker I’ve encountered here since 1998 lands directly behind a second high in a granddaddy oak. Each leans horizontally along the limb, pointing its bill downriver. The first scoots low along the other’s back, and their scarlet heads wag. White-and-black wings flutter, fluff, tilt, and minutes later one red-headed taps a maple snag beneath a hole, bowing partway in. The second pokes out its head, chortling, Quirr! Quarr! Quarr! The first hitches itself excitedly up to a broader hole, and a wood duck veers deftly through treetops, landing above the snag. She peers at the red-headed as it ducks in. The big-white teardrops around her eyes look gentle and pretty, but her brood may be in the hole, and wood ducks sometimes clasp and snap intruders’ necks.
Continue reading ‘Red-headed, Least bittern, Red-shouldered! 6-03′
Published by Richie May 31st, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
Copyright 2007 by Richie Swanson
Kik! cries a black tern, dangling a fish from his bill, his wings as densely dark as a massing thunderhead, edged a grayish stratus-white on front. He flies from a remote slough at Aghaming toward a marsh at Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge, once called the species’ most important breeding area on the Upper Miss. Will he land on a muskrat house, a potential nest site? Feed a female in display? He vanishes, but a second plummets suddenly-crookedly as if after a minnow, then veers jerkily with four others, their wings knifing higher than the river-bluffs, performing early courtship flights. Black terns declined 84.8% in the U.S., 1966-1989, 4.6 % per year on the Mississippi Flyway, 1966-2003. Winter flocks have decreased precipitously, and scientists fear DDT and other contaminants accumulate in black terns south of the border, perhaps causing problems in reproduction in North America. Continue reading ‘Black Tern, Great Egret, 5-27′
Published by Richie May 24th, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
Copyright 2007 by Richie Swanson
A luminous-yellow warbler-head pokes out a hole in a stump. Tiny black eyes glisten brilliantly in dark forest-shadow. The prothonotary warbler sings Cheet!-weet!-cheet!-cheet!-cheet!-wee! He ducks inside the hole, sings invisibly, pops out, flashes white tail patches, cranks up his cheet!-weet!-cheets! He goes in, and a female–a paler yellow–clings by toes to the hole’s rim. She tips her head in, and he pushes his face out between her tarsi, bird-ankles. She can’t squeeze past him, he can’t dart out. He sings beneath her belly, and both finally squirm down into the possible nest-site. The next morning a house wren pushes a four-inch twig across the two-inch hole, the stick bending, not fitting until he pokes it straight and drags it. Now his potential mate follows him in. Continue reading ‘Warbler and Wren, 5-20-07′
Published by Richie May 17th, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
Copyright 2007 by Richie Swanson
There’s dry-hollow knocks like an ancient-wooden clock, and then a yellow-billed cuckoo hides high in an oak, leaning, turning, and another flies up, and they blur behind leaves, and he bobs atop her, both slender like doves, grayish in cloudy light. The science says the male cuckoo reaches over the female’s shoulder, placing a twig in her bill, and the two hold it jointly until finished mating. But he hops off and dives down before I see any twig, and then she skulks forward, stares down after him and dives too, flashing rufous wings. Ka-ka-ka-ka-kow-kow-kow-kow-kowlp-kowlp-kowlp! The cuckoo utters a deliberate song vanishing swiftly from the Midwest, already gone from Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. The species declined 95% in Wisconsin 1966-1996 and continues to drop 2.5% per year in the upper Midwest, Region 3, USFWS. Continue reading ‘Clock ticks for cuckoo, 5-13-07′
Published by Richie May 10th, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
Copyright 2007 by Richie Swanson
The south wind blows all day, gusting almost 40 mph, and the lazy-brown river suddenly rolls like surf, heaving backward, hurling spray up-channel. Leaves slap noisily on treetops, and birds from South and Central America dart around low in dense cover of exotic honeysuckles and buckthorn, foraging on leeward banks and dikes. Seventeen species that winter in mature forests in the tropics use Aghaming this weekend. Sixteen warblers use it, four considered conservation priorities by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, rare or declining. A Canada warbler spins on a branch, revealing a black necklace, and a prothonotary pokes its bill into a knothole, a possible nest site. A blue-winged forces his softly-sung beee-buzzzz into the wind-rattle, and a Cape May gleans bugs from river-birch catkins, flashing electric-chestnut ear-patches on yellow cheeks. Continue reading ‘Warblers in, 5-6-7′
