flocks and singletons

Hundreds of Yellow-runped Warblers greeted the new day this morning. As the sun hit the woodland edge as it rose over Pine Neck, the Yellow-rumps (a.k.a. Myrtles or Butter Butts) came out of nowhere, streaking by me, occasionally pausing to nibble on Red Cedar berries or to give chase to a near relative but always quickly moving on. Quite a spectacle! This is the season for birds in flocksl. Several gatherings of Red-winged Blackbird came over -- the biggest consisting of forty or fifty birds. Blue Jays and Crows, although not always in big flocks, are sociable birds and communicate with each other by sound. One bird that does move in flocks and that I see every morning (but neglect to mention) is the Common Rock Dove or Pigeon. These birds come from I know not where in groups of four to a dozen or more. They are good fliers and, in tight formation, they head out over the creek and bay where they circle about and return over the marsh to whereever they came from. Why do I never mention them? Well, no matter how well they fly, they're just Pigeons and -- fairly or not -- like most birders, I tend to ignore them. Other birds that come in numbers but separate over a wider area to feed include both finches, Gold and House, still around but in diminishing numbers. Not all birds are particularly sociable and they tend to appear as singles. These include Eastern Phoebe, Ruby-crowned Kinglet (but not Golden-crowned which usually turns up in numbers) and Brown Thrasher. Oddly enough, today's new bird, which usually comes by in small groups, was a singleton: a first-year White-crowned Sparrow with brown-and-white rather than black-and-white head markings. Eric Salzman