Baby Blue isn't a baby any more!

On the 14th I visited the heronry again only to find the Sycamore leaves had opened almost overnight. The huge trees had been very obliging up to this point by being the last to open, but now they too were budding out. On top of that, the babies had grown! They were so big now they were practically pushing mama and papa out of the nests. Some nests had three and even four chicks in them. How these babies stay put and don't fall out is anyone's guess. While I was there the wind was very strong, and it looked as if one baby would be buffeted out of the nest, but he held tight, taking the winds in stride. Mama and papa didn't seem too worried either. 

For Heaven's sake Baby Blue...get down and stay down. 

It's windy out, and you're standing on the edge of the nest!

It looked like there were two babies in this nest, but as 

the back baby settled down in the nest, two more chicks 

popped up...four babies in one of the smaller nests.

I have no idea how Great Blue Heron babies fledge. I've never been able to witness it in past years because the leaves always come out in full force and obscure our views. Do they hop from branch to branch after climbing out of a nest? Do they jump and soar after mama? Tomorrow morning I'm heading back over to see if any of the babies are ready to leave the nest. Maybe I'll get to watch one fledge! I've read it usually takes three months from the start of incubation to fledging. In this past post,  we can see that on March 6, 2009, four of our Great Blue Herons were sitting on eggs, so it won't be long now!

Poor papa. He no sooner landed in the nest than all 

three babies popped up mobbing him (or her, maybe 

it's mama) for food. They would thrust their bills high 

and sometimes catch their parent's bill in theirs. 

p.s. You may notice the photos are a little blurrier than usual. This is because the nonstop winds kept tossing me around too, making it hard to stand still and get a crisp shot. I guess on very windy days, a tripod would be much better than a monopod!

It's all about cuteness tonight...

After dinner, I thought I'd check on the Mute Swan couple to see if their babies had hatched. When I arrived at the small pond, I was disappointed to see an empty nest with two very large eggs on it. Something must have gone wrong because the couple was no where in sight. Then I looked up again and mama and papa slid gracefully from around the bend...and five little cygnets followed behind!




They were about 25 feet from the shore, so I went to the water's edge and sat very still hoping they would swim over to their nest. After almost 15 minutes, they started working their way over, and mama led them right into the little cove where their nest was hidden! The water was shallow and thick with algae, and she started rocking back and forth using her feet to churn up the algae and mud. The babies were rocked around a bit in the turbulence, but they seemed to be having fun and were getting very dirty in the process. It was exciting to watch. It looked like they were taking a great big mud bath, but my guess is mama was helping bring algae to the surface to make it easier for the babies to eat.

Click to enlarge for a better view of the messy little cygnet (you could almost 

put a little bowl on this one's head and pretend the algae was spaghetti).

After another five minutes or so, they slid back out to the open water, stopping to take little baths along the way to wash the mud and algae from their down and feathers.

Common Nighthawks, Bats...and Wild Turkeys on the Trail!

...I just need to sneak in a quick little post. Tonight, Rick and I took a walk at dusk on the trail. It was getting late, so we knew we wouldn't be able to get in much birding, but the rain had cleared and the breeze was nice, so over went at 7:40 p.m. I wanted to show Rick the Indigo Buntings. Since they always hang out in the same place and are VERY vocal, I knew it wouldn't be hard to find one. We were lucky and saw a brilliant blue Indigo Bunting within seconds of hearing him sing...and sing...and sing! As I was getting my last glimpse of him, Rick exclaimed, "Wild Turkeys on the trail!" I turned just in time to see five of them cross over and work their way into the undergrowth of the heavily wooded hillside. I haven't seen a turkey on the trail in over nine years, so what a surprise. We walked up to where they had crossed, but they had already slipped deep into cover and were out of sight.  

The sun was setting quickly and light fades fast in the understory, but with darkness comes...bats! It was so fun looking up and watching them zip and flutter around. We assumed they were Little Brown Bats because Little Browns are common in our area and these bats were pretty small (and very cute). A huge colony of them must be sleeping in the abandoned Peter's Cartridge Factory during the day, because there was an endless stream of them filtering through the corridor just under the treetops at dusk. They were very cute nabbing insects on the wing and squeaking now and then. Higher in the sky, visible straight up between the branches of the trees, were Common Nighthawks. In the binocs I could see the white bars on their wings, but their form is so distinctive we knew what they were right away. I noticed the bats at 8:45 and the Common Nighthawks shortly after. By the time we made it back to the car it was 9:10. I wonder if you wait at the Cartridge Factory for the "witching hour" if you can see a mass exodus of them skitter out of the powder factory? 

Other birds found/heard along the way: 2 Swainson's Thrushes, 3 Wood Thrushes, 1 Veery, 1 Ovenbird, 1 VERY beautiful Prothonotary Warbler, heard 3 Black and White Warblers, 1 Northern Parula, and 1 Tennesse Warbler, saw many Robins, several Northern Cardinals, four American Goldfinches, many Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, 2 Downy Woodpeckers, 1 Pileated Woodpecker, numerous Tree Swallows, 1 Tufted Titmouse, heard Starling babies in a nesting cavity and 3 Red-eyed Vireos...also heard a Black-billed Cuckoo and a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, and 3 or 4 mystery birds with unfamiliar calls and songs (I'm still working hard at learning all the songs of our neotropical migrants).

Evening activity at the wetland area of VOA Park (from my field journal, Friday evening, May 15, 2009)

The evening sun, low in the sky, highlights these two gentle mallards as they weave in and out of the tall grasses and reeds growing in small channels of water in the wetland area of VOA Park. Never separating, they move into my camera's view for a moment and then out for another as they quietly go about their business, soft little quacks going back and forth between them every now and then. The female is more wary of my camera than the male, usually keeping her head held high, checking to make sure I keep my distance.


In a couple of months, these little channels of running water will be gone, baked dry in the late July and August heat, but now, nothing but new green lushness and silky pools surround the ducks. To the southwest, the sky has turned dark blue and grey. I hadn't noticed the approaching storm. Rain will arrive soon, lasting through the night and into the morning. The little watery wetland will stay flooded for a while, and shorebirds will visit. Right now, three Spotted Sandpipers are foraging on the bank of the small pond, and I've seen Lesser Yellowlegs bobbing up and down where the mallard couple is floating right now.


In the small pond across the path, tree swallows chase insects and each other through the heavy evening air. They are busy hawking their almost invisible prey, occasionally splashing in the water and coming in for a closer look at Rick and me as I hold my camera, trying to capture the beauty of this moment.

Yard Birds Gone Wild!

It’s always fun to catch yard birds you normally find at the feeder out in the wild. I don’t know why, but when they're in the scruff at the edge of a forest, they seem just a touch more exotic.

This American Goldfinch kept dropping down to 

the grass on the Little Miami Bike Trail near 

the abandoned Peter's Cartridge Factory to nip 

at dandelion seeds with his girlfriend. 

There’s a chance he’s just a feeder bird out 

trying to impress the chicks. I don’t know…

Slow down and watch the ordinary become the extraordinary

Matty and I hit the trail on Tuesday right after school. It was warm and very sunny. We were hoping for one more day of spectacular warbler sightings with birdsong sweeping through the forest and us chasing after each trill, but we should have known better. It was 3:30…sort of an off-hour, and we were both a bit tired and hungry, and the height of migration was definitely over (but we refused to admit it). Right off the bat, however, we heard the loud, beautiful song of a Baltimore Oriole and saw him high in a Sycamore…promising! But as we stepped further down the trail, the woods fell strangely quiet. After having experienced the nonstop birdsong of the migrants over the past couple of weeks, the hollow emptiness was foreign. In response, I could feel us picking up our pace, searching for something that was not there, fueled by just a touch of frustration...but then we saw Red sitting in a shaft of sunlight. The saturated color in his feathers was so striking it made us slow down to take a longer look, and finally, as we stopped and watched him, we felt Sweet Nature melting away the frustration (and slight sadness) of knowing spring migration was just about over.




Stepping off the trail and into the grass, we became more engrossed in the Northern Cardinal's extraordinary beauty. Drawn in, we watched him move from branch to branch, Matty with binocs and me framing him in the camera lens. Then we noticed the wriggly green caterpillars in his bill, and even better, we noticed he wasn’t eating them. He was just carrying them around, which could mean only one thing…Papa Red must be delivering the juicy green things to a few hungry mouths! Slowly the male worked his way into the hollow, continuing to hop from branch to branch towards what we hoped would be a nest full of baby Reds. He definitely knew we were watching him, and I felt a bit guilty and wondered if he was taking the long way home trying not to give away the nest’s location, but we couldn’t resist and soon he flew into an overgrown honeysuckle bush and rustled around a bit. When he hopped back out, his bill was empty! We wanted to go down there and peer into the nest to see the babies, but instead, we got back on the trail so the male, who was now chipping loudly, would feel comfortable about leaving the nest site to find more caterpillars for his offspring.




So “ordinary” Red, the same bird who started it all for me with a peanut at my Aunt Mary’s house so many years ago, saved the day and reminded us that there is birding after spring migration, and all you have to do is slow down and observe and you will see the extraordinary.

Mama Ruby-throated Hummingbird Sitting on her Nest

Walking on the trail today, I looked up just in time to see a tiny bit of movement in the leaves. Something was there. Something small. I put the binocs up to my eyes and spun the focusing dial slowly until a tiny lichen-covered nest topped by a lovely female Red-throated Hummingbird came into view. So tiny and sweet, she had decorated her nest with a beautiful display of lichens, locking everything in place with spider web silk. Although not visible, the inside of her nest would be lined with plant down. If you look closely, you can see the down from a dandelion seed stuck in the spider web at the base of the nest.

(Click photo to enlarge to see the detail in the lichens.)

Right now, at home as I write this, a storm is rolling through. Rain is pouring in torrents and thunder and lightning are reminding me it’s spring. I think about the little female sitting tight on her nest protecting her eggs from the wind and rain and am very glad I was lucky enough to spot that tiny movement and catch a glimpse of her world of tiny perfection.

Beak Bit
The female builds her nest after the male finds a suitable location. She collects strands of spider web silk and wraps them around plant material and lichens. The lichens adhere to the sticky cobweb as the female pushes the small flakes into the silk using her bill. She also traps bits of lichens under strands of silk she has woven around and around the nest. Very small, the nest is only one and a half inches across, a hummingbird itself, being only three to three and three quarters inches long. She usually lays two white, bean-sized eggs and incubates them for about 14 days, sitting on them 60-80% of the day. After the eggs hatch, the male often will fly off and find another mate, taking no part in rearing the young.