Acadian Flycatcher on the Little Miami Bike Trail

I was about a quarter mile down the trail when this little Acadian Flycatcher caught my attention. His song burst through the trees, loud and short and familiar—practically demanding that I look for him! As I slowed and started focusing in the leaves of a tree just off the trail, he suddenly plopped down on a branch out in the open and started singing. A plain little bird that looks like so many others, there is no mistaking his song, especially when he tosses his head back to sing it.

When he sings he tosses his head high, and if you're standing

below, all you can see is that little yellow lower mandible.

In the summer, I hear Acadian Flycatchers all the time on the Little Miami Trail. The heavily wooded riverside path is their textbook-perfect breeding habitat. In this stretch of the trail, four small creeks tumble down the hillside and feed into the Little Miami River. Our little migrant was staking his claim very close to one of those feeders.

The sun was so intense on Saturday that as it filtered

through the green leaves it cast a green glow on the bird.

Acadian Flycatchers are fun little birds to watch because they often sit still for a few minutes, and that gives you ample time to study them (unlike those cute little warblers that seem to be here, there, and everywhere). Our fellow, in between singing and looking for bugs, liked to preen, and he was very good at it too, doing it a lot!

You can even see his lower yellow bill while he preens.

What a cutie!

No matter how tolerant a bird is to the clicking

of my camera shutter, every now and

then he still has to give me the eye!

Pileated Woodpeckers on the Little Miami Bike Trail (BPW #39)

I hear Pileated Woodpeckers almost every time I go to the trail, but I don’t see them that often. They are just too shy; however, in the past 3 weeks I’ve seen a male and a female foraging together six or seven times…and at close distance! It’s like they’ve moved in and set up house or something, which is probably exactly what they’ve done. I doubt I’ll ever see their nesting cavity though, because there is no way the secretive birds would have excavated a cavity in one in the trees along the pavement (of course I can always hope...). I think they are anchored up the hillside because I hear them calling from that spot almost every time I go there.






One of my best Pileated Woodpecker memories happened earlier this spring at Spring Valley Nature Area. As I was walking down the path west of the lake, this monster bird came up from behind, sweeping overhead and directly down the corridor of trees in front of me. At 17 inches, he is a force to reckon with. Hearing the air under his wings and feeling the energy he left in his wake (being only four or five feet over my head) is a sensation I’ll never forget. Then watching him sail straight down the woodland path at about eye level was a spectacular sight.

To tell a male and female Pileated Woodpecker apart, just check 

out their mustaches. The male's is red and the female's black. 

The above photo shows the male's red mustache.

Click here to see some great bird photos from around the world.

For a baby heron, practice makes perfect...

The babies are getting closer to fledging. Lots of them are now exercising their wings, practicing and getting strong enough for that first flight. This baby flapped his wings over and over...then rested. His brothers and sisters weren't interested in exercising.






In another nest, this fellow took his inaugural flight. He raised up and flew about five feet to another branch. It was so funny. When he landed he sort of looked around like, "What just happened?" His brothers and sisters watched from the nest, but no one else dared to try the "wing thing!" 


In yet another nest, this little family of much younger chicks was content to just sit and watch, waiting for mama or papa to return to feed them lunch.

In our town, where there are Bobolinks, there usually are Meadowlarks…

…and the High Meadow at Voice of America (VOA) Park was no exception. After I had calmed down a bit over the beautiful music of the Bobolinks (click here for the Bobolink post), I started paying attention to the calls of the Eastern Meadowlarks. I waited for their pretty little song, but they were more intent on issuing that buzzy, harsh call instead. There were three males calling nonstop from different posts in the surrounding fields, sometimes staying very close to a female. This male was especially vocal and would fly between his post in the field and the top of a tree by the gravel road.



Beak Bit
Unlike Bobolinks who are long-distance migrants and make VOA their home only from April through October, Eastern Meadowlarks are short-distance migrants and can be found year-round at the park. But the birds you see perched amid falling snowflakes in the winter may not be the same birds braving the heat in the summer. Many of our wintering meadowlarks will migrate further north for the breeding season and will be replaced by more southern birds completing their short-distance migration.

A secret window through the green…

Walking along the familiar wooded corridor of the Little Miami Bike Trail, I paused for a second to look through the heaviest of green, listening. It’s always when I slow down that I see the most amazing little things. Secret things. Actions not made for us, but that we are compelled to watch and admire…and marvel at. Quietly.

These two young squirrels were eye level from where I was standing. They did not notice me (or at least the pretended they didn’t). Perhaps siblings, they were grooming each other, companions totally at ease.

Bobolinks at Voice of America (VOA) Park

Sunday evening as I stepped out of my car, I heard a bubbly, melodic, and slightly techno-sounding twittering coming from the tall grasses all around me. Strangely enough, the sound was reminiscent of R2D2 from Star Wars, and although not particularly loud, it was commanding (almost magical) and made me stop and strain to hear every note rising through the meadow. Slowly memories of the call from my bird song CDs started surfacing in my mind and “Bobolink song!” burst forth in that flurry of recognition we all know and love.




I had seen Bobolinks at VOA before, even earlier this spring, but never within earshot…and never in the High Meadow. Tonight was my first trip to this area. I didn’t even know this part of the park existed until a Cincinnati birder (thanks, Mike!) filled me in on its location. After taking in all the green of the large meadow, I started scanning the horizon looking for the familiar profile of the bird, but I couldn’t find one. I would hear the call bubble up in front of me, then to the left…then to the right, and with each new repetition I would freeze and just listen, slowing down my mind…sinking into each note. Slowly I realized they were hidden in the deep green, watching me through the endless thin blades.


Finally, one flew out of the thick grasses and onto a small snag. This meadow truly was a sea of grass with only saplings sticking up here and there. Repeatedly, I would see a Meadowlark grab one…then a Bobolink…and every now and then a Red-winged Blackbird would sneak in too, but when it came to song the Bobolink had no competition.


After doing a bit of research at home, I found many others had been captivated by his song over the years too. Mary Deinlein, from “The Prairie Home Companion,” writes

Their song has been vividly described as "a bubbling delirium of ecstatic music that flows from the gifted throat of the bird like sparkling champagne," "a mad, reckless song-fantasia, and outbreak of pent-up, irrepressible glee," and as "a tinkle of fairy music, like the strains of an old Greek harp."

Click here for a link to this article on the Smithsonian National Zoological Park website. It is  packed with lots of Bobolink facts and tidbits.

Beak Bit
The Bobolink’s beautiful, delicate song masks his incredible strength and endurance. Of all the neotropical migrants, the Bobolink has one of the longest migration routes, requiring almost 6,000 miles of hazardous flight time to reach their summer breeding grounds! This fellow flies all the way from Argentina to the northern United States and Canada (in Cincinnati, we must be at the very bottom of their breeding grounds…lucky us!). Like many birds, Bobolinks use the stars, sun, and earth-bound landmarks to help guide them north, but Bobolinks also have a little extra help. They have small quantities of the magnetic mineral magnetite in the tissues of their nasal cavity. This mineral helps the birds feel the earth’s magnetic field, working like a compass pointed north! Experience also helps the bird wing its way north. Miyoko Chu (from Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology) writes in a podcast on Birdnotes,  

“a nine-year-old Bobolink will have flown a distance equivalent to four and half times around the earth.”

Note: If you want to find Bobolinks, Meadowlarks, Savannah Sparrows, Vesper Sparrows, and even Henslow’s Sparrows in Cincinnati, head over to the High Meadow at VOA. The High Meadow is just past “Wiggly Field” (the special dog area) and marked with an Audubon’s “Important Bird Area” sign. Follow the one-lane gravel road that picks up after the dog park to find this amazing stretch of grassland—and be inspired by the songs of the prairie birds.

A Great Crested Flycatcher at the Rookery

Today at lunch I headed over to the heronry to check on the babies, and although none had fledged, I was lucky enough to see a few practicing! Although intrigued with the herons’ behavior, when the knocking of a Yellow-billed Cuckoo broke through my concentration, I couldn’t resist ducking out of the cover of the windbreak to try to find him! He sounded like he was over by the edge of the woods near the creek and for a few moments I saw him. The spots on his tail feathers were a dead give-away as I watched him through a small break in the branches.  As I started to walk back to the windbreak, I saw a bird with a yellow belly sitting on a dead branch in the brush pile. Yowsers! A Great Crested Flycatcher! I had heard him sing earlier, but hadn’t recognized the song. Now I knew it. I’d never been able to photograph a Great Crested Flycatcher before, so my adrenalin was pumping and I almost couldn’t focus.

This photo shows the reddish tones in his flared tail.

I was too excited and moved a bit too fast trying to adjust the monopod (why was I even using this thing anyway!). He took off, but only flew a few feet away and dropped to the ground where he hunted through the grass clippings. In the past, I had only seen Great Crested Flycatchers higher up in the canopy of large trees. Why was this guy in the grass?

Maybe he was looking for suitable nesting material 

and the grass clippings looked promising...

Too soon, he flew to the copse of trees by the pond and landed on a dead branch. His mate, absent before, joined him briefly before flying higher in the tree. He soon followed to the top. I’d never been that close to a Great Crested Flycatcher before…and I liked it!

This guy was having a really good hair day because 

his crest almost always was nice and smooth.