A Red-eyed Vireo came by yesterday, working his way through the oak trees and singing in a desultory sort of fashion. Vireos are neat birds to ornithologists and birdwatchers but almost unknown to the general public -- they even lack a common name. Vireo is their Latin name and it means "I am green". They hang out in the leafy treetops and are not very easy to see even with binoculars; the Black-whiskered Vireo, a close relative, was everywhere in Jamaica on our recent trip there but in almsot a week there, we had good gloimpses of it on perhaps two occasions. The Red-eyed Vireo is also a very common woodland bird on Eastern Long Island and generally in the northeast (Roger Tory Peterson once called it the most common bird in North America!) but it turns up on our place mostly on migration. Yesterday's bird was probably a bachelor male but if he was looking for love, he didn't seem to be trying very hard. Vireos, being so visually retiring, communicate by sound. They are normally obsessive singers and they sing well into the heat of day and well into hot summer weather; their incessant question-and-answer call -- "I am here. Where are you? Look up here? Are you there?" -- is one of the most common sounds of the late spring and summer woods and provides the real clue to the presence of the birds. I can remember first hearing the song and struggling to figure out who was singing where! Now I find the song easy to recognize but I have to say that yesterday's bird was not a vireo songster at the top of his game. I suspect that, if the Red-eyed Vireo ever becomes a local breeder here on the property, it will require a better display of musical abilities!
I think I know where the Great Crested Flycatchers are breeding. It's in a little patch of woods on the opposite side of Bay Avenue. The birds often call from there and I found dead tree limbs with suitable woodpecker holes. Unfortunately, although I tried to watch patiently from a distance, I was not able to observe the bird going in and out of any of the holes. Speaking of flycatchers, I did see the Eastern Kingbird soaring over the creek and doing amazing antics to catch insects. Instead of the flytrap method used by swifts, martins and swallows, he did a series of quick somersaults in midair, apparently to snatch his prey out of the thin air.
Yet another raccoon spent the day in the crotch of the big old pitch pine where Rocky Raccoon used to hang out. If the recent occupant of the spot was Son of Rocky this one might be son of Son of Rocky. He's a fairly good-sized animal with wooly or fuzzy and very light colored fur that appears to suggest a different animal, perhaps a young one. The nocturnal prowling of these animals -- sometimes quite noisy -- sets off Rimsky, our Wheaten terrier, on a middle-of-the-night barking spree and invariably wakes me up. To no one's surprise, Procyon lotor is thriving in these parts.
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