the Q&A bird

Red-eyed Vireo paid us a visit this morning. This is not an exotic but a common woodland bird; Roger Tory Peterson once claimed that it was the most numerous bird in North America (although that was in the days when N. America was probably more forested than it is now). But it is a common breeding bird in the back woods and we usually see some of them in migration. This could have been a late migrant or, more likely, a local wandering male, singing his little syrinxes out as he wandered through the oaks just now coming into full leaf. Red-eyed Vireo is not an easy bird to ID by looks but once you recognize his song, you can't miss. It consists of short monotonous phrases in succession, usually alternating rising and falling as if the bird were in a Q&A dialogue with itself.

A lone Least Sandpiper shooting across the marsh (an easy sandpiper to identify in flight because of its hunch-backed, stiff-winged flight style). Around the edges of the marsh, Yellow Warbler and at least two Common Yellowthroats continue to steal the show. A Blue-winged Warbler singing somewhere 'off' and our regular Pine Warbler making his rounds complete the warbler picture.

The most common woodpecker around the place is now the Flicker. The Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers are probably sitting on eggs so there is only one quiet bird out at a time. Are these Flickers late migrants coming through or local birds that have not yet gotten around to nesting. The other woodpeckers are here all winter and get an early start on nesting while the Flickers are migratory and move south in the winter so it is logical that they would nest later than the other 'peckers.

First Box Turtle of the year! There was one seen on the Faunathon in the Manorville area but this was the first East Quoguer I've seen -- a good-sized handsome yellow-and-black specimen. Deer are all around the place in the daytime and Raccoons at night; both drive my dog Rimsky crazy.

Eric Salzman