willets, songbird song and a butterfly correcdtion

I have yet to figure out what's going on in the Wonderful World of Willets. This morning a pair of Willets came barreling across the marsh flying in what looked like formation. As they swooped across the spartina a third Willet popped up from the grass and moved in behind them. Was he following them or chasing them? The two formation flyers continued over the pond and then detoured over the creek and across while the following flyer landed in the scraggly cedar on the pond edge.

Most of the resident birds have stopped singing or cut back noticeably. The Common Yellowthroats, the most persistent singers of all, have virtually shut down. Ditto the Baltimore Oriole. Even the N Cardinal is mostly silent. On the other hand, the Carolina Wren, after a few days of relative quiet, has started in again. Loud singers at this stage of the season may be unmated wandering males, looking for love. I even heard what I believe was a young wren practicing an amazing collection of songs -- soft, rhythmic, melodic, insistent, some sounding like the traditional Carolina Wren, some so completely different that I wasn't sure who was singing. Normally the Caroline Wren sings a very sterotypced song and switches songs only once in while. This bird was composing a whole medley of song, only occasionally recognizable as Caroline Wren and wandering off into strange musical territory. I've heard the Carolina Wren called the 'mocking wren' and perhaps this kind of practice song (?) explains why.

Yesterday, I wrote about a butterfly that I called the Pipevine Swallowtail. This was a very strange lapse. As Jim Ash points out, it must have been a Spicebush Swallowtail. This is the local woodland butterfly that feeds on sassafras and it is, I protest, what I really meant to write.

Eric Salzman