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http://www.riverbirdblog.com Just another WordPress weblog Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:58:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://www.riverbirdblog.com/?p=39 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 ... http://www.riverbirdblog.com/?p=38 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 ... http://www.riverbirdblog.com/?p=37 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 ... http://www.riverbirdblog.com/?p=36 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 ... http://www.riverbirdblog.com/?p=35 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, ... http://www.riverbirdblog.com/?p=34 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' ... http://www.riverbirdblog.com/?p=33 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 ... http://www.riverbirdblog.com/?p=32 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 ... http://www.riverbirdblog.com/?p=31 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, ... http://www.riverbirdblog.com/?p=30