Common or uncommon?

'Common' and 'uncommon' have to be relative terms. Yesterday, Eileen Schwinn was talking about the 'less common' of the night-herons. Of course, she meant the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron which I see almost every morning. Early this morning, with the tide still quite low, it was on the pond and even after the tide started to come back in, it hung around on the grassy edges of the far shore. The night-heron that I have yet to see this spring is the 'common' species, the Black-crowned.

Chipping Sparrows are, of course, common enough in most places but the pair I saw this morning -- the Johnny One-Note trilling away and his apparent partner, hanging around the pines by one of the right-of-ways, was the first I've seen around here this year.

And, while the Common Yellowthroat is, indeed, our most 'common' warbler I don't often get to see and hear its flight song. This is when it moves out of its low, bushy habitat and takes a perch out in the open on a bare tree branch and then launches itself straight up in the air with an elaborate twittering song. The first time I saw/heard this display, I didn't know what it was. Only on the descent -- as the bird reverts to its signature WEETCH-ity, WEECH-ity, WEECH -- does it reveal its 'Common' identity.

Least Sandpipers on a mudbank in the open area in the middle of the marsh. Osprey flying and calling; Least Terns again on the creek but where are the common Commons?

Eric Salzman