Monthly Archives: August 2012

Not a Confusing Fall Warbler

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Black-Throated Green Warbler

Sometimes birds are named to describe what they look like, and the male Black-Throated Green Warbler is one of them. This is the time of year when a lot of birds don’t look like they did in the spring, but I could not have confused this fellow with anyone else. I was lucky enough to spend time with him this morning shortly before I had to head into work. I’d been walking around looking for migrants almost an hour and a half, and then he appeared, almost at eye level.

I got to thinking later about how it was when I first discovered birds and they began to let me into their secret world. I had never noticed them before, and suddenly, they were everywhere, unidentified. And because no one else seemed to be paying attention to them, I felt as if I had the key to a secret society.

Now I think about it: how many absolutely gorgeous birds there are on earth that we hardly ever see? Indeed, there are species yet undiscovered. And even when they do show up, how often do we really get to see them well? I’m not too interested in just checking a bird off my list. I want to feel as if we shared a mutual encounter. And that was how it was with this bird. I was special again: graced by his presence, by the moment just between us. No other birds, no other humans. It’s as if I, too, became magical, momentarily protected by his invisible shield. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Black-Throated Green Warbler. But for a moment I inhabited the same space on the planet with one.

Later this afternoon when I went out again, I encountered the same bird in the same location and let him be. But elsewhere in the park, I found another male, and managed to get a picture of him. You can see the “green” he is named for.

Crow Clash

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I went down to the lakefront early last week and brought the standard fare, hot dogs and peanuts, for the crows. The downside to feeding the crows like this is that now their population has increased enough for them to split up into tribes, and I am still not quite sure where the boundary lines lie. To complicate matters, I’ve been going down lately to look for migrants, so I haven’t been paying my usual attention to the crows.

As it turned out, there were hardly any migrants that morning, but I did capture this altercation between an intruder crow and a perhaps-lower-on-the-totem-pole crow.

How many crows IS this?

Hummer at Last

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Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

Every evening this week I’ve gotten home from work and the juvenile Ruby-Throated Hummingbird that has been visiting my feeder has returned several times. Since this is a record for my yard this year, I am always on the lookout for it, but waited until the weekend to attempt taking a picture.

All day today, I kept looking out at the hummingbird feeders and the hummer never showed up. I began to wonder if it had decided to move on.

Then this evening, right about the same time I’ve been seeing it every day, the bird came back. I suspect it does not like to show up when there are a lot of birds in the yard, which, if today is any indicator, has been all day long, of course, when there was better light. But if I put the feeders where there is less traffic, if there is such a place in my little yard, I’ll never see it.

So I stood out by the back steps this evening, focused the camera on the feeder, and waited. About 6:37 PM, I was rewarded and had just enough light to get a few images.

Warbler One on One

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Black and White Warbler

Fall warbler migration seems to be early this year, just as summerlike weather hit us in March and seemed to drive an early spring migration as well. I’ve been hunting for the brightly colored gems of the bird world and it’s been a fairly good week in spite of limits on my time.

But then I end up with too many pictures to go through and no time to do that. They’ll be dribbling in eventually.

I had my closest encounter yesterday morning with a Black-and-White Warbler that flew in to the green area at 155 North Wacker. He foraged in and out of the shade of the plantings, giving me several opportunities to appreciate his dapper plumage.

Chummy, In Memoriam

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A much younger Chummy.

I’m going to take a little break from the wild birds and write a post tribute to my budgie Chummy.

Chummy is second from left in the “blue” row. “Beau” is missing from this picture.

The budgie presence is dwindling in my house. Chummy, the last of four siblings, died this week. I got to know his softer side all too well in the last month or so.

A fledgling Chummy napping

Chummy and his nestmates were the one clutch produced by Buffy and Beau, who were brother and sister. I know, I know, I didn’t want to encourage this behavior! But Buffy had come of age and was starting to attack her mother, Blanche, who was still in the baby business, so I gave Buffy her own nest box to distract her.

The other three were named Chuck, Chewy and Maureen. Maureen was an aqua budgie, but I had already given the name Aqua to another budgie, so I named her Aqua Maureen and called her Maureen. Both she and Chewy have been gone for years. Chuck passed away earlier this year after a long struggle with liver disease, or whatever it was that made his beak grow intolerably long.

Chums on June 9, 2012

Both Chuck and Chummy had the distinguishing characteristic of little white spots on their heads, which made them easier to differentiate from too many blue budgies. Chuck and Chewy were of the royal blue persuasion, and Chummy and Maureen were more turquoise. Chewy’s distinguishing feature was an upper mandible deformity which grew out of control, so he had some trouble eating and was therefore eating all the time.

Chummy and his soul mate

At any rate, about two months ago I noticed Chummy, also known as Mr. Chums, had struck up a passionate love affair with a nameless female budgie who was in the royal blue family but more baby blue or sky blue, thereby making her look almost aqua when she was sitting up close to Chummy. In retrospect, I think Chums decided to go for it, as he saw his own mortality after Chuck passed away. Anyway, it was sometimes almost hard to look at these two kissing and fussing over each other, I felt like I was intruding on their privacy even though their displays were quite public. In the picture of them above, Chummy is hiding, his face buried in his rump, which had begun to torment him to the point where he eventually chewed his tail feathers off.

With his tail gone, suddenly Chummy couldn’t fly like he used to. You need a tail, it’s a rudder, it’s a prop, it’s a balance. I soon found myself picking Chummy up off the floor and carrying him around to wherever he might want to go. I knew he wanted to be up by the curtain rod with his girlfriend, but the one time we tried that he crashed to the floor, so that was no longer an option. She met him once a couple weeks ago when he happened to be on top of a finch cage, and they had a passionate reunion, but that was the last time. I know he missed her company terribly, but he couldn’t fly up to sit with her, and she wasn’t going to come down and sit with him because the curtain rod is where the budgies like to hang out. So as much as she might have missed Chummy, he was no longer fit to court her, and her loyalty was to the flock.

Chummy’s last days were spent trying to get places and failing at it. If I was around I picked him up  after he refused the back of my hand, which he walked right over, or my finger under his tummy, which he walked right past. We both hated it when I picked him up, but it was the only practical solution and he all too quickly got used to it. After a while if I was sitting at the dining room table and he was on the floor he’d wander over and start nibbling at my sandaled toes to get my attention. He needed a lift.

I came home from work Monday night and Chums was sitting on the floor by the dining room table, his back toward me, staring into space. I picked him up and knew by his total lack of protest he was almost gone. I put him in the bottom of the budgie cage because it was a quiet and safe place, even if one of the zebra finches has started building a newspaper nest in one of the food cups. Chummy listed to one side and stared at the bottom of the cage. I went down to the basement to clean the spare set of finch cages, my Monday night chore. When I came back upstairs, Chummy was flat on his back, stiff.

Maybe it’s time I gave his girlfriend a name. The other remaining female is Sweet Pea, but she’s a deeper blue. Somehow this little girl never got a name, but she has a sweet face. Maybe Baby for her shade of blue will do. It’s not a very original name, but it seems almost disingenuous to try to attach a distinguishing characteristic to her after all these years. She’s presently napping in between the curtain loops with three of the other four remaining blue budgies. We’re down to five blues (Zeke, the steel blue-grey dad or grandfather of them all, Beau, if that is indeed him, Sweet Pea, and another unidentified blue male, so I guess I’d better get around to naming him too, now that I can no longer use “too many blue budgies” as an excuse), and Buster, the one remaining white budgie. Now we are six.

Goodbye, Mr. Chums.

Introducing The Earl of Redcap

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A couple weeks ago I began noticing a new visitor to the peanut feeder. Still in some of his baby feathers.

The red crown patch started to fill in about a week later. This is Lord and Lady Downy’s son, I’m sure.

Now he’s a regular but he often has competition with all the juvenile House Sparrows.

Every day he looks more and more like the Earl of Redcap, which is what I’ve named him.

Unexpected City Visitors

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My encounters with birds in the city have been few and far between lately. But I have at least learned to carry my camera with me, after missing a couple opportunities to document something last year, and this year it has paid off.

Black-Crowned Night Heron

A couple weeks ago I saw this Black-Crowned Night Heron hanging out on the Chicago River just outside the train station. Last year I had one in the same vicinity but all I had with me at the time was my cell phone and although I was able to get closer, the picture wasn’t worth the effort. This year there has been a lot of construction on the bridges and streets so I could not get closer to the bird, but thanks to the super zoom feature on my point-and-shoot, I at least captured his essence.

And then on Tuesday I got out to Daley Bicentennial Plaza in the afternoon. I had goldfinches singing and juvenile crows. and a lot of huge dragonflies that refused to pose, but I wasn’t really expecting to see anything unusual, although vagrants and early migrants have started popping up at Montrose Beach which is a much birdier location. As I walked slowly through the park after feeding the crows a woodpecker flew into an ash tree right in front of me, quickly tucking itself around the backside of the tree. My first thought was Downy given the time of year, but in a couple seconds after it reappeared I realized it was a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker. That seemed pretty unusual to me, and as it turns out it was unusual enough to have my ebird report challenged. Luckily I was able to take pictures, even if the lighting and my lens left much to be desired. Confirmed early sighting of a female Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker.

Female Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker

Music and the God Particle

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Thistle Core

I wrote this over a week ago, lost my ability to think about anything except work, and am now trying to reunite with whatever mind I had before I go back and lose it all again tomorrow.

I am so happy that physicists have proved the existence of the Higgs boson. I can hardly wait to find out if it is in the key of G or the key of C.

Birds overwhelmingly prefer the key of G. But “C” is the “do” in “do-re-mi” so it’s important too.

House Wren in the Poke Weed

My own personal theory, which has no basis in anything except my lifelong musical orientation and this feeling in my gut that won’t go away, is that music precedes everything we know. I’ve often wondered if perhaps it even precedes the Big Bang, which can be compared to a cymbal crash. I don’t know the sound of atoms colliding but I wonder if it isn’t ever so slightly like yeast singing.

Green Darner

Rituals have been formed around music. Dance is everywhere. There is a lot of music we can’t hear because we’ve covered it up with our loud technological noise. Thus our music has gotten louder and louder, in large part because no one can hear quiet anymore. But if you ever get lucky enough to be away from some of that noise, just stop and listen. You will hear the music. Everywhere.

Female Ruby-Throated Hummingbird 9-5-11

I hope to be back next time with some music. I don’t know how to keep up with the blog at the moment, it might take cooler weather, longer nights and more rain, or less time spent during the day in front of a computer. On the bright side, after I came back from the slough and the Portage where I saw no hummers–the bird above was photographed last September at the Chicago Portage when all the jewel weed was in bloom, which it is not yet–I had a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird at one of my three hummer feeders today. I saw it a total of three times over the course of the afternoon. I have never seen a hummer drink from one of my feeders before, so to get repeat business is gratifying. Maybe eventually one will stay long enough for a publicity shot.

Swamp Rose Mallow