This is for the birds…

We have been enjoying the birds this spring. Several weeks ago I walked 600 yards or so out into a soybean field to a drainage way to service an instrument platform that I use in my research. Just as I got to the instrument I was buzzed by some creature several times. It seemed too large for an insect but I couldn’t see it because it was so fast. Finally I was able to see it just as it landed on the branch above me…a hummingbird. I’m not sure what caused its behavior but after that initial attack it was content to sit on the branch and watch me work.

A week or so after that my wife and I were bicycling on the Holmes County Trail north of Millersburg when I spotted a Trumpeter Swan with a neck collar in an encounter described here. I submitted a report online but haven’t received any information on the banding location yet.

Closer to home, we have a wood thrush singing in the morning and evening down in the woods behind our house…in my opinion, one of the most beautiful bird songs. We also have Eastern Towhees and phoebes singing clearly throughout the day and Carolina wrens singing from our deck railings. Bluebirds are nesting in our backyard boxes and sit on an old grounding wire attached to the deck that rattles whenever they take off. Two flickers are active in the backyard as I write. Yesterday, a Baltimore Oriole made his appearance and, as a matter of fact just now, flew through the woods chasing another bird. A pair of yellow warblers were looking for bugs in the same tree.

The Barred Owl in the photograph flew up out of the ravine a few weeks ago in the middle of the day. I took one photograph through the deck railing before he saw me and returned to the deeper woods. Two days ago, I heard several crows coming through the backyard as I was working on the deck. I looked down on the crows as they chased a Barred Owl across the yard.

A barn swallow swooped around me as I was mowing on Monday reminding me of the joy they will bring later in the summer when I clip the pastures.

My sister-in-law considers birdwatching to be something that old people do. That’s her loss. I have enjoyed watching the birds since I was young and still do. And will continue to when I get old!

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