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.
A pair of red-headeds mounted, called from the hole, were watched by a wood duck hen June second. A pair reverse-mounted and popped in and out of the hole continually the 10th. A pair scolded a starling in the hole, and a wood duck hen flew past the treetop the 17th. No bird of any kind occurred at the hole the June 24 or 25.
Red-headed woodpeckers declined 50% 1966-2000 and continue to decline 4. 5% per year in the Upper Midwest. Have they disappeared suddenly from Aghaming this year? Did their breeding attempt fail?
Initially, the species called from multiple directions simultaneously, indicating two or three possible territories. Red-headeds may have appeared undetected in May, may be dispersing already with young from successful cavities, but I saw no food trips to the hole. Both sexes incubate, so perhaps one was inside the cavity on eggs yesterday. And the other?
This morning I tuck myself against buttonbush one-half mile from the red-headeds’ hole, checking a warbling vireo nest in an overhanging maple between forest and marsh. Tsew! Tsew! Tsew! Yellow-bellied sapsucker nestlings cry from a hole 25-feet up a black willow, adding a squeak to the juh-juh-juh adults uttered in April as they flapped frantically around trunks, pair-bonding.
Now a mama sapsucker lands by the hole, and tsew-tswe-tsews get louder, sweeter in tone, faster. Lawrence Kilham called the nestlings’ message “hurry, hurry, hurry,” noting that feeding had better happen fast, since the sounds might draw predators as well as birders.
As the sapsucker tips in the hole, a yellow warbler fills a bill with bugs from leaves right beside it, gathering food for nestlings. A brownish-bluish bunting hops and perches to a branch-edge, its breast mottled gray and blue, likely the young of the adult Indigo bunting singing atop a nearby maple.
Fledglings of two species of special concern in Wisconsin flutter suddenly in a walnut tree. A yellow-billed cuckoo pumps an undeveloped tail, shows fuzz around its hooked beak, slips as furtively as an adult cuckoo into foliage. A prothonotary warbler booms peet!tsweet!twseet!tsweet! The bright-gold male bends with mosquitoes crosswise in his bill, and a fluffy head arches up, the fledgling’s breast splotched gray and Creamsicle-orange.
Rattles, churs, hisses, buzzes come harshly from the buttonbush. A house wren points its flesh-colored bill at me, tosses up its tail, braces its wings aggressively. Another gushes and intensifies its bubbling song. A third quivers its wings, gapes, begs. The buttonbush moves–a redstart fledgling darts and forages, its tail-patches and shoulders yellow like an adult female’s, its olive wings splotched sloppily white, its head-crown as soft and downy as a puffball.
Switch grass waves beside a game trail. Chee-chee-chee! Chee-chee-chee! A Baltimore oriole feeds a stubby-winged, short-tailed young and flies up to two more fledglings flapping awkwardly in a cottonwood, looking very prone to hungry crows, hawks or the barred owl perched 30 yards away.
Four more oriole fledglings fly full-winged across Prothonotary Trail and down to the backwater I call Cuckoo Slough. They perch on bare-branches rising above the slough, begging. They splash down into fermenting bubbles and mucky-green algae blooms. They flap water over their backs, and as their mother descends a grapevine, an Eastern wood peewee fledgling turns away, hiding. The mama oriole lowers her bill with a wad of moths. The fledglings splash on. Bathing suddenly looks too good to stop to eat.
The warbling vireo nest? The species sang here May fourth, arriving from as far south as El Salvador, rarely Nicaragua. A pair gathered bark strips from a rotten trunk May 19, brought grapevine shreds and cottonwood seeds to the nest May 25. A bird sat low on the nest June eighth. It brought worms and moths June 23, and though warbling vireos are the smallest-known species to evict brown-headed cowbird eggs from a nest, a cowbird chick begged, and I saw no other nestlings.
Warbling vireos do not attempt second broods in the eastern U.S. The pair must shed old feathers and grow new in the comimg weeks. They will leave the nest-area as early as mid-August. The birds must survive another winter and next year’s spring migration before trying again.
SOURCES
Gardali, T., and G. Ballard. 2000. Warbling Vireo (Vireo gilvus). In The Birds of North America, No. 551 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America Inc. Philadelphia PA.
Kilham, Lawrence. 1983 by Nuttall Ornithological Club. Woodpeckers of Eastern North America. Dover Publications Inc. New York.
Sauer, J.R., J.E. Hines, and J. Fallon. The North American Breeding Bird Survey, Results and Analysis, 1996-2005. Version 6.2.2006. USGS. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. Laurel MD.
Smith, K.G., J.H. Wittgott, and P.G. Rodewald. 2000. Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus). In The Birds of North America, No. 518 (A.Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America Inc. Philadelphia PA.
www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/er/working_list/taxalists/birds.htm. (The Natural Heritage Inventory Working List: Rare Birds).
You made this birding experience come alive, I actually felt I was in the forest experiencing what you were reporting. Thanks for bringing this alive for all of us through your prose.