sunrise: before & after

I was awake before sunrise this morning -- it must have been about 4 or 4:30 am. The noise of squabbling raccoons and the reaction of our barking dog woke me up and there was just enough light to suggest that dawn was not so far off. As I lay in bed with the window open, I could hear the first bird songs of the day. The Cardinal was number 1, shortly followed by a distant Robin and a persistent Pine Warbler, a bird that seems to have regained its voice in the past few days (it was very vocal early in the spring but has been silent for the past week or so). Then, somewhat to my surprise, there was the loud and unmistakable chirping of a Purple Martin overhead. Do martins really fly and sing (for surely their elaborate chirping is a kind of song) in the pre-dawn darkness? I've heard this before at this magical hour out the bedroom window; in fact, I am under the impression that it happens every morning. We are far enough away from the colony so that the singing bird or birds has had to make a dedicated flight to come overhead. Might this be some kind of courtship or territorial display? In the weak light of the pre-dawn? When I go down to the pond after breakfast -- usually a half an hour to an hour after sunrise -- it's the Barn Swallows that are active over the marsh while the Martins just seem to be waking up!

I dozed off again and, when I awoke, the sun was up. A quick trip down to the pond revealed that, across the marsh martins were flying but just from the martin houses up into the neighboring trees. These looked like young birds on their first flights, flying up just far and high enough to land on the treetops. It's early for a neotropical migrant that returns at the end of April but maybe time enough for the young to hatch out, grow up and learn how to fly. And not just one or two but perhaps a dozen birds.

Eric Salzman