On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
It’s going to be 92 degrees here this week, but it’s still spring in flyover country with Albatrossity. Benw shares some gorgeous photos from the NY Botanical Garden, then we’re in Maine with JanieM and in France with Steve from Mendocino! We have a treat from BillinGlendale mid-week!
Friday was a crazy day for me, so I never got to thank way2blue for the wonderful 6-part series! It was really enjoyable.
Albatrossity
Week two of our Spring 2022 series is still a lot of the more drab birds (with a spiffy duck in the mix, however), since the arrival of warblers, tanagers, orioles and other colorful dinosaurs is delayed so far this spring. Maybe next week!
Mostly underappreciated because of their lack of bright colors, sparrows are an acquired taste. But they are migrating through here right now, and some of them pause to pose for a portrait. This is a Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus), with a bright eye-ring and a subtle rufous patch just at the bend of the wing (this species was once known as the Bay-winged Bunting). This bird and its ethereal song is mentioned several times in the journals of Henry David Thoreau. “While dropping beans in the garden … I hear … across the fields the note of the bay-wing (which I have no doubt sits on some fence post or rail there) & it instantly translates me from the sphere of my work–& repairs all the world that we jointly inhabit between me & it.” – May 13, 1857
Some sparrows are a tad more colorful, like this Lark Sparrow (Chondestes grammacus). Mostly found west of the Mississippi, this large and long-tailed sparrow is unmistakable, even if you only get a quick glance at it as it flits and hops along the edges between forest and grassland. And it reportedly has a unique courtship behavior, which I hope to see someday. During copulation, the male passes a twig to the female. Don’t try this at home!
Not a sparrow, and not confined to this continent, the Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris) is found all across the Northern Hemisphere. There are 99 members in the family Alaudidae, but this is the only one found in North America. Soon there will be baby Horned Larks in the pastures here again, because these guys get started early on the business of making the next generation.
Everybody loves owls, but lots of people have never seen one. Here in Flyover Country it is not unusual, particularly during fledgling-feeding season, to find a Barred Owl (Strix varia) sitting in the open in the morning hours, hunting for breakfast, or hoping for another snack for those baby owls. If you do see one of these, you might find them to be quite calm. I’m not sure of the reasons for that, but it may be that they are usually so well-camouflaged that they assume you can’t see them, even when they are decorating a fence post like this one.
This predator always hunts in the day and likes to sit in the open, however. Loggerhead Shrikes (Lanius ludovicianus) are one of only two shrike species on this continent, although there are thirty members of the family Laniidae worldwide. Also known as the Butcherbird, this elegant killer is also renowned for its habit of impaling prey items on thorny branches or barbed-wire fences. Given the thorny perch chosen by this one, it appears that the butcher is open for business.
Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) reflect their dinosaurian lineage dramatically in flight.
Migrant shorebirds are known to be opportunistic feeders, as they need to rapidly and repeatedly fatten up for the next leg of the trip. This Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca) seems to have found a very unfortunate waterlogged White-lined Sphinx Moth, which it quickly gobbled down before moving on to more typical breakfast foods.
Unlike the yellowlegs above, which is still heading north, there are some shorebirds which stay in Flyover Country for the breeding season. One of these is the diminutive Snowy Plover (Charadrius nivosus), which was formerly lumped with the oddly-named Kentish Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus), a Eurasian species. This is a male, based on the black ear covert and rusty cap, but there were some females in the vicinity as well. Both are quite adorable, but the babies of this species are just so damn cute that you might swoon at the sight of one.
A shorebird which lives without a shore in sight, the Upland Sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda) usually arrives in this part of Flyover Country on or about Tax Day. Their wolf-whistle calls ring out across the prairies, and you know that spring really has arrived.
The final bird today is quite colorful, and a hint of colors to come later in the spring. This drake Ruddy Duck (Oxyura jamaicensis) was one of a flotilla of conspecifics, some of whom, unlike him, had not quite developed the full blue breeding-season bill yet.
HeartlandLiberal
A professor we once knew termed all sparrows “just another little brown bird,” but then turned around and explained to us the variety of forms among them.
eclare
Great heron photo!
OzarkHillbilly
The orioles showed up here this week, about a dozen of them (it’s usually just one or 2 at a time, but we have managed to espy 5 males a couple times, 4 females s few more, but it’s always possible there is another 1 or 2 out in the woods). It’s been an ongoing struggle to keep them happy with full feeders but I intend to meet the challenge for as long as they deign to grace us with their presence. It will be just 1 or 2 weeks before they head down into the valleys for the serious business of nesting. Last year we missed them altogether as we were in the Black Hills when they came thru. Damn, did we ever feel their absence.
I’ve been listening to the summer tanagers for a week or 2 as well, have yet to spot one but I will. I can be certain the scarlet tanagers are around too, but they are a lot shyer. The Indigo Buntings can’t be far behind.
My eldest went floating on the upper Big River this wkend and he tells me the warblers were all over the riparian woods.
Albatrossity
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes, our Summer Tanagers are back, Scarlet Tanagers are very scarce here, so if I see one it will be a bonus. And the orioles are definitely back in good numbers, as well as the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Here we don’t get a lot of warblers; and if we do they only linger for a day, so they are very easy to miss.
zhena gogolia
The photographs are so beautiful, and your commentary sparkles!
JR in WV
Love esp the owl and the heron, which I at first thought was some kind of pelican. We have lots of barred owls in our specific hollow, and I talk with them in dusky evenings some days. Wife got to stare at one outside our solarium for nigh a half hour one afternoon. There’s a hollow beech tree nearby where they can shelter from the murder of crows that sometimes molest an owl.
OzarkHillbilly
@Albatrossity: Here’s hoping you get the bonus. Few things excite me so much as catching a glimpse of a scarlet tanager. They are electrifying.
sab
We have a little creek running behind our backyard. Pitbull went nuts the other day. I looked out and there was a great blue heron cruising up the creek into the Metropark where the mudbugs are bigger and more numerous.
Those guys in flight do look like dinosaurs. ( Herons not mudbugs. Mudbugs don’t fly.)
sab
Albatrossity,
I know you are not an epidemiologist, but what do I do about my bird and squirrel feeders what-with the avian flu warnings from the CDC?
SteveinPHX
Thank you again for the wonderful photographs. Look forward to them!
Albatrossity
@sab: I’ve left my feeders up. My understanding is that the greatest threat is to domestic poultry flocks, some threat to waterfowl that hang out in large flocks (as well as the raptors that might eat a sick duck or goose), and very little threat to feeder or woodland birds that do not hang out in large numbers together. That is based on reported cases, and yes, testing in wild birds is pretty spotty, but so far it does seem to be true that very few wild non-waterfowl have been infected
I do think it is also a good idea to avoid wildlife areas where the flu has been reported, to lessen the possibility that you might transport the virus (e.g., on your boots) to your neighborhood birds.
Hope that helps
Yutsano
Gah! I can’t really pick a favourite here. The owl is wonderful but all these birds are beautiful. Lovely pictures!
sab
@Albatrossity: Yes it does.
sab
@sab: Albatrossity: My sparrows and a squirrels are hungry.
RaflW
Very cool!
We are tying an experiment here in the next few days. Woodpeckers are a huge problem. They make holes in many of the houses in this area (SE Wisconsin), including ours. The classic deterrents like mylar streamers and such are not effective, and woodpeckers are protected so, whaddaya do?
A neighbor on our community page said she’s had good luck using a photo of an owl head with very brightly visible eyes, just taped up in a window near the pecker’s favorite spot on her house. We’re putting one up today!
eta: I think we’re going to replace our cedar plank constructed posts on our porch, which have made nice pecker-condos, with hardy plank. The rest of the house is not susceptible. But with the contractor shortage around here, it’ll be a while!
mvr
Thanks! Nice photos as usual. I have trouble distinguishing shorebirds so this was helpful also as usual.
Albatrossity
@OzarkHillbilly: No Scarlet Tanagers today. But the most colorful of our local dinosaurs, the Painted Bunting, did put in an appearance. And that was very welcome!
ellenr
I’m in the far northern tip of Michigan’s UP. The sandhill cranes migrated through here two/three weeks ago, and the family that lives along the river across from my house has settled in. The snow finally melted away 90%, so the juncos have left, along with the white-throat sparrows and red finches (house or purple, didn’t look closely enough) that were traveling with them.
JR in WV
I once saw a great Heron launch vertically from a creek while driving home after work one day. It was in a location where the hollow is so narrow that the road barely fits against a rock wall, and the bird appeared like a missile in the headlights… was stunned and drove the next few seconds on total autopilot.
Also, later on in a newly built facility in town a killdeer laid her eggs (not really nested, they just drop them somewhere…) in gravel between two concrete parking lot curbs, too soon after construction for any grass, even.
And in the long ago, on a rockhounding trip to Colorado and Wyoming (with a brief swing thru Utah to Dinosaur National Monument) my rockhound buddy and I camped out on the banks of the Green River in WY, and got to see snow white pelicans floating down the deep swirling waters of that stream. Amazing! All I knew about were the coastal Brown Pelicans of FLA and the Gulf Coast! Birbs, so amazing, so wonderful!!
Thanks for the pix and educational material.
Albatrossity
@JR in WV: Yeah, lots of folks in the central flyway are amazed to see flocks of white pelicans passing through, spring and fall!