domestic bird affairs

A mild, humid, summer-like morning with damp and dew on everything.

Bird activity around the house seemed to have taken a domestic turn. A male Cardinal was feeding a strapping young bird. well out of the nest, neatly demonstrating that the Carolina Wrens are not the only early birds around here (like the Carolina, the Cardinal is non-migratory and can get an early start on nesting with an opportunity for multiple broods). Yesterday's Carolina Wren family is still in evidence right out the back door; this morning I counted three young and two noisy adults. A more surprising family group consists of a male and female Mallard walking around on the ground (!) near the house for the past two days. Is dry-land courtship? Ducks usually start earlier and the males, like most male ducks, do not hang around to help with the nesting; but maybe this is a late starting couple.

Northern Flickers have also been in evidence; in the past few days, I have been flushing them feeding in the tidal wrack between the woods and the shrub layer at the marsh edge and I hear them calling -- 'wicka-wicka-wicka-wick' -- quite regularly. Are these local birds or migrants? Maybe this is a Flicker comeback; att this point, they are more in evidence than the Red-bellied Woodpeckers that were supposedly replacing them.

The most striking sounds of the morning were two brief, loud 'sneezes' from an Acadian Flycatcher somewhere inside the woods. Alas, the bird did not call again and I could not locate it. If you can get a good look, Acadians are relatively easy to identify as they are the largest and greenest of the Empidonax flycatchers. The short, sharp song -- often written as 'peet-sah' -- is recognizably faster, sharper and higher in pitch than the buzzier 'fitz-bew' of the Willow Fycatcher so this was not the flycatcher I saw the day before yesterday (an Alder or a Willow which, however, did not call). Late May into early June is the typical time when flycatchers heading north -- mostly empids -- are moving through our area.

Eric Salzman