fog, wrens & turkeys

Monday's post-Jose weather brought back almost all the birds which had seemed to disappear during the high winds and extra high tides: the flocks of finches, Gold and House, Gray Catbirds, Song Sparrows, chickadees and titmice, all four woodpeckers, etc. On the creek and marsh there were Forster's Terns as well as Royals (haven't seen Forster's in a while), Belted Kingfisher, Greater Yellowlegs, Great Blue Heron and the two egrets. Also at least two Merlins, confirming Carl Safina's statement Saturday that this is the Merlin's migrational peak time. Yesterday morning was, in contrast, completely socked in; not only was Dune Road and the bay invisible but I couldn't see Pine Neck or Weesuck Creek and even the nearby Aldrich Boatyard and the Town Dock had vanished. The only close-up warblers I could find were some of the many Common Yellowthroats and a couple of Northern Waterthrushes, both responding to my 'pishing' and popping up right in front of me. As I doggedly continued making my rounds (getting wetter and wetter in the process), the fog began to lift and the regulars cited above began to reappear. This morning's fog cover was not as low or heavy as yesterday but its windless silence was overwhelmed by the roar of the ocean surf. Early morning humid air is a great conveyor of sound, it seems! Surf sound perhaps but not bird sound. On the land side, everything was quiet with the Carolina Wrens being the only singers left from the bird chorus. And there are a lot of them singing from both sides of he creek, both sides of the marsh and all sides of the woodland edges. Sometimes two of the wrens seem to butt syringes as they challenge a rival with their loud songs; I'm sure these song contests are territorial combats. One strange feature is that, unlike their breeding season songs which are repetitive and sterotyped, these birds show a wide repertoire of wren tunes and challenge their rivals to duplicate them. There are at least two Wild Turkey flocks visiting us. One has five or six young and a single big fat hen. The other has fourteen birds of almost the same size with (I think) two hens, distinguished by their slightly heavier, fatter bodies and more alert behavior. The young ones are almost grown and may even be able to fly. Although the past few weeks have not been exceptionally rainy, there have been plenty of mushrooms including some good edibles (russula, lactarius). But the most amazing mushroom event was a huge fruiting of a yellow Tricholoma. White-spored mushrooms with yellow caps, yellow gills and yellow stems are not so common and this one was either Tricholoma equestre or T. flavorvirens, a mushroom associated with sandy soils and pine/oak woods. Lorna insisted that the raw mushroom smelled of horseradish but I could barely detect this; in any case the smell disappeared in cooking. It made a superb mushroom soup and there was enough left over to make a creamed mushroom dish and freeze the rest. Eric Salzman