Waterthrushes, dead & alive

I found a dead Northern Waterthrush on the one of the trails yesterday morning -- quite a ways back from the water. It showed no sign of what killed it but, although it was a fresh specimen and in quite good shape, the eyes were gone and you could see right through the eyehole. This species is actually called the New York waterthrush (Parkesia or Seiurus noveboracensis) although the more common breeding waterthrush in New York is actually the Louisiana. Northern is a very common migrant and appears here on Eastern Long Island as early as mid-July (finding Louisiana, a bird that prefers rushing streams, is a much tougher exercise; I've never seen it on the property and only rarely in our area).

The regular warblers have been present yesterday and today (Common Yellowthroat, American Redstart, Black-and-white Warbler) and two Yellows, an adult and a young one, were working along the marsh edge early in the morning. Eastern Phoebe and all the woodpeckers have been prominent. Cardinals and Carolina Wrens, both especially numerous and very contentious, appear to be eating Pokeweed berries. The Catbirds prefer the berries of the Tupelo trees -- where available (not all the hard-hit Tupelos fruited this year).

A correction from a recent post: The Latin name for the Parasol Mushroom is Lepiota procera and not Lepiota rhacodes. As a couple of correspondents have pointed out, L. radoces is the so-called Shaggy Parasol which is classified as a separate species.

On the question of whether birds can be fooled, Jean Held suggests that the chickadees that I thought were pursuing a non-existant owl might have been stirred into action by a snake. She also suggests that these exercises might be teaching assignments for young chickadees to learn about the dangers of predators! Carl Safina also suggested that some of the chickadee or crow rackets might have been stimulated by Blue Jays imitating hawks calls (which Blue Jays are known to do). However at least one of the screaming Red-tails was actually seen; it was a big buteo hawk and not a pretend Blue Jay.

Eric Salzman