Confused? Who's confused?

I received two interesting explanations for yesterday's apparent mobbing of nothing by a group of Tufted Titmice. One idea came from Bob McGrath who suggested that the titmice may have been mobbing a spot where an owl had been seen recently -- a kind of "just-in-case" mobbing by memory. But this morning I observed another such mobbing incident in a completely different spot where the titmice were focused on the base of a dead tree which was overgrown and covered with debris from Irene; not a likely place for an owl (and no sign of a cat). This time they had more company including several B-c Chickadees, a House Wren, a Black-and-white Warbler and Song Sparrows. I'm leaning to Bob Adamo's suggestion that they were not confused at all but were mobbing a snake -- invisible to me but certainly an object of interest to a titmouse or, for that matter, any bird!

This morning dawned warm, wet and clear. The wet was, of course, dew which condenses in copious amounts on this early fall mornings when a cool overnight is succeeded by a warm humid day. As the sun comes up, the moisture condenses out of the air and covers everything. Not much showed up in this warm wet early environment but there was more activity as the sun rose higher. Aside from mobbing titmice, there were at least two excellent B+ birds: a Clapper Rail running around the open area in the middle of the marsh and a medium-size, very swift falcon, almost certainly a Merlin, that flew into and then out of the trees. Curiously enough, the Crows and Blue Jays that normally mob raptors, did not even notice this swift bird whose long, thin, knife-like wings sliced the air as the bird went one way and then, after perching for a few moments, up the head of the marsh before disappearing into the trees beyond.

As the day warmed up (and dried up), another small flurry produced a Northern Waterthrush and a tail-flicking empid in damp disarray: no visible eye-ring, buffy wing-bars and a lot of white-edging on the flight feathers. Either a Willow or, more likely, a young Alder Flycatcher. I have my eyes out for a Yellow-bellied, the only one of the Eastern empids that I haven't seen so far this season.

Eric Salzman