A big hawk and delicious death trumpets

The big excitement this morning was the huge racket from a troupe of Blue Jays who discovered a big hawk. The raptor, perched high inside the canopy, was a young Cooper's, probably a female judging by size; it was brown with a yellow eye, streaky on the breast and had a tail that was long, barred, rounded and white-tipped. It flew when I approached but the jays pursued it almost literally from one tree to the next until it finally left the premises.

There were a lot of Barn Swallows and a few Tree over the marsh this morning, a spin-off from the large swallow movements taking place along the beach. There were also at least two dozen Purple Martins in the air but whether these are the same birds from our colony or replacement migrants is impossible to tell (the swallows are probably new since the local Barn Swallows seem to have moved out a while back). The movements of the past few days have included the first Blue-wing Warbler of the season, a Black-and-white Warbler and an Eastern Towhee, all on Saturday. Yesterday there was a pair of Eastern Kingbirds -- at least one of them was a young bird -- also dueling with some local Blue Jays who, for some reasons, didn't like having them around. Northern Waterthrush, Common Yellowthroats and lots of Gray Catbirds have continued in the shrubs bordering the marsh. One of the Yellowthroats, a young male with a shining yellow breast, was developing his black mask and even attempting a sort of scratchy version of a yellowthroat song.

Although Royal Terns continue to frequent the creek, there is almost a complete absence of Common Terns. As we saw on Plum Island on Saturday, vast numbers of Common Terns, adults and young, have moved away from their breeding sites to concentrate at key feeding areas. On Plum Island, the young birds were mostly perched on large off-shore boulders while the adults were fishing in the Plum Gut (the channel that separates Plum Island from Orient Point), on the very visible line that separates Long Island Sound from Gardiners Bay or wherever the fish were running in the area. Adults with fish in their beaks would come in calling and make the run along the coast until they could find their offspring to feed. This is a major staging area (Montauk is another) for the terns before they commence their stupendous migrations south to South America.

There was a burst of Evening Primrose blossoms and Black Trumpets appeared for the first time this season along with the continuing emergence of Chanterelles. Black Trumpets also carry the ominous French name of Trompette de la Mort (or Trompette des morts) but in spite of that scary-sounding moniker, they are one of the best edible mushroom, related to the chanterelles and often growing the same places.

Eric Salzman