Thursday, May 14, 2009

Stunning bird life



I saw him! Yesterday morning, high in the tree canopy, in the early morning sunshine peeking over the hilltop--the elusive scarlet tanager sang in the treetops! Now I'm on the prowl every day, listening and looking. I wish that photo was mine! Unfortunately, he was way too high up in the trees.

Other spottings: two Baltimore orioles, great crested flycatcher hopping about in the maple, and the catbirds have returned.

Monday, May 11, 2009

May Songsters

With the arrival of May, an entire crop of warblers and songsters have returned to the woods and fields. The musical song of the mysterious wood thrush echoes through the woodlands, camouflaged by the newly open leaves. The oven bird hops around the forest floor, then flits up into the trees as I walk down the street. Out at the cabin garden, a black and white warbler wheezed in the trees, and a field sparrow accompanied our gardening with a pretty song from the apple tree. Tonight, I heard the elusive scarlet tanager--one of the birds I need to see for my life list--but no sign of him. Each day the woods become denser as the leaves pop open even more.