[EBB Sightings] first singing warblers

Dear Birders:

Singing Orange-crowned Warblers yesterday at Jewel Lake affirmed that spring is unfolding apace.  Not just one Warbler -- a bright yellow bird ainging up in a budding willow -- but other warblers near and far in a surround sound of warbler song.  

Ten of us gathered yesterday at the parking lot in the cool sun for our first-Friday-of-the-month Audubon walk.  Once again the fruitful corner adjacent to the parking where lawn merges into elderberries and taller trees proved to be rewarding.  Almost immediately Dave Quady spotted several Golden-crowned Kinglets in Douglas firs.  In the elderberry, the usually retiring Spotted Towhee, displayed by snapping open his tail revealing more white spots.  A Nuttall's Woodpecker hitched up a taller tree while a diminutive Brown Creeper worked its way up another tree.  The always energetic Ruby-crowned Kinglets (revealing its red crown) both scolded and sang fragments of their sweet aria.

Along with the displays and song, the big news was water -- welcome water gurgling in culverts, turning low places into a morass of mud, and foaming in the stream making billows of white suds  (no, explained Corinne Greenburg, not detergent but a natural suds called saponin, an ingredient found in ceonothus, buckeyes, and soap plant). 

The lake, after last week's rain, roared over the dam vibrating the bridge that spans the cascade, and flowing into the spillway to race downhill toward San Pablo Bay.   

A fine morning and now for the April walk when other singers will be arriving -- Wilson's Warblers, Black-headed Grosbeaks, Warbling Vireos and no doubt a surprise a two.

Birding the same area over regular intervals is a fine way of witnessing the passage of the seasons.  I like to think of Jewel Lake as our local Walden.  

-Phila Rogers