River Bird Blog

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.

A European starling—a species released in New York City in 1890 in an effort to introduce all birds mentioned in Shakespeare into America—whistles a shrill note from the hole the woodpeckers have used for two weeks. The starling flies out, and a red-headed chortles and swoops down, pecking, and the starling slips back into the nest-cavity, parts its bill, seems to hiss. More than 200 million starlings now exist in North America. The red-headed has declined by half since 1966, 4.6% per year since 1980, is one of eight woodpeckers on Audubon’s national watch list.

Starlings can evict at least six other cavity nesters at Aghaming—wood ducks, northern flickers, red-bellied woodpeckers, tree swallows, great crested flycatchers, eastern bluebirds. Starlings were once considered a primary cause of the red-headed’s decline; however they begin nesting about two months earlier, and their impact remains mostly unstudied. Here, a starling appears to start a second brood along with thousands of others in town, while two or three pairs of red-headeds make the first attempts to breed at Aghaming I’ve witnessed in nine-years.

Summer Solstice Week also sings the news of “neotrops” who, around the time of Fall Equinox, will migrate down the Mississippi Flyway and other routes to feed on hatching insects during lengthening days in the Southern Hemisphere.

An American redstart tsee-tsee-tsee-tsees. He flashes tiny, black, orange, low in an oak, high in a walnut. He flushes bugs, snaps them up, and I can’t figure his darts and dives, his song-bursts. He may change his perch 30 times per minute and sing five different song-types. When his mate starts to incubate eggs, he may fly out of earshot and sing a new song, advertising for a second mate.

A male redstart at one study site guarded three nests and guarded four territories simultaneously. This one may be foraging to provide 50% of the food trips to a nest. He may be feeding nestlings mostly sired by other males, or he may belong to a local population singing more than 100 different song-types.

Peee-ah-weeeee! The Eastern wood peewee sleepily slurs his name, tossing his head slowly sideways, showing a breast as grungy-gray as the clouds of mosquitoes he hunts, his wings pale and olive like the undersides of thirsty leaves. The species declined 35.6% 1966-1993 and continues to drop 1.78% per year. Its nest may be 65-feet up a tree and is so infrequently seen details of its construction remain unknown.

A yellow-billed cuckoo peers down from a treetop, a species that declined 95% in Wisconsin 1966-1996 and continues to drop 2.5% in the upper Midwest. It ticks out its knocker call, kow-kow-kow-kow-kow-kow, and its long-drooping wings, slender throat and ladder of white tail-patches vibrate in time.

The knocker call may coordinate nest-tending activities, and now a cuckoo drops from a grapevine mass. It gapes with its long-hooked beak, following my movements with red-rimmed gazes. Another shuffles behind my neck, passing between damp honeysuckle shrubs the moment after I do. The cuckoo’s longest song, slow-wooden kas, kows and kowlps, knock through trees as if the floodplain could hardly hold more this year.

A yellow-throated vireo also pulses its throat as it sings. A warbling vireo buzzes testily and winds up its nasal wheeze before scampering down a dangling branch, carrying a moth to its nest. Parent-orioles pipe, ak-ak and rattle-scold their way down tree-crowns while fledglings weet-weet-weet, begging behind foliage.

A yellow warbler tswee-tswee-tswees beside the marsh while an osprey plunges in, scattering the butterfly-egrets, flapping and bathing, tossing humid-glistening water behinds its head. Least bitterns call soft coos and tut-tut-tuts, but Summer Solstice also comes with silences, signs of absence.

American bitterns do not “thunder-pump” or call pump-er-lunk or dunk-a-doo at Osprey Marsh. The twee-twee-tweez of cerulean warblers does not whisper down from granddaddy cottonwoods or oaks. The cu-cu-cu-cus of the black-billed cuckoo have not been heard. As spring 2007 passes, not all species regenerate in available habitat to grow from summer resources.

SOURCES

Cable, P.R. 1993.  European Starling. (Sturnus vulgaris).  Birds of North America, No. 48 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.)  Philadelphia PA.  The Academy of Natural Sciences.  Washington D.C.  The American Ornithologists’ Union.  

Hughes, J.M. 1999.  Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus).  Birds of North America, No. 418 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.)  Philadelphia PA.

McCarty, J.P. 1996.  Eastern Wood-Peewee (Contopus virens).  Birds of North America, No. 245 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.)  The Academy of Natural Sciences.  Philadelphia PA.  The American Ornitholgists’ Union.  Washington D.C.

Sauer, J.R., J.E. Hines, and J. Fallon. 2005.  The North American Breeding Bird Survey, Results and Analysis, 1996-2005.  Version 6.2.2006.  USGS.  Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.  Laurel MD.

Sherry, T.W., and R.T. Holmes. 1997. American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla).  The Birds of North America, No 277 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.)  The Academy of Natural Sciences.  Philadelphia PA.  The American Ornitholgists’ Union.  Washington D.C. 

Smith, K.G., J.H. Withgott, and P.G. Rodewald.  2000.  Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus).  Birds of North America, No. 518.  (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.)  Philadelphia PA.