[EBB Sightings] March Observations

Dear Birding Friends:

With the recent postings about newly-arrived birds, I am reminded how
mid-March is truly a crossover time in the local bird year.  Putting
aside my deep unease about this prolonged unseasonable warmth, I note 
what I'm seeing and hearing about me in my Berkeley Hills garden.  Most
obvious is the behavior of that vivacious winter resident, the
Ruby-crowned Kinglet.  Now, just before leaving, it's singing a joyful,
spirited song issued with such exuberance that the notes almost trip
over each other -- a song which Kenn Kaufman describes as "all out of
proportion to the size of the bird." Once the kinglet starts singing,
it will be only a few days before it departs for the lodgepole/fir
region in the High Sierra.

And soon it will be time to start listening for that other common
winter resident the Hermit Thrush as it begins rehearsing in soto-voice
those ethereal spiraling melodies which always fills me such deep
feeling when I hear them in the mountains.

Because my house and garden is on an open, west-facing slope I have to
go to a nearby stream canyon to hear most of the local singers of
summer -- the grosbeaks, Swainson's Thrushes, and the vireos. 

But my solace is in the dawn robin serenades which began a week ago. 
Wherever the robins nests -- in High Sierra meadows, in inner city
neighborhoods, or in the prosperous, manicured precincts of suburbia --
the robin is the first singer of the day, singing up the sun, often
before dawn has colored the eastern horizon. 


 Phila Rogers




 
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