I hope to be able to get back to this page soon but I have been working so hard at the day job I have barely had time to do basic chores, let alone write blog posts. I’ve been taking pictures though and attending to the important things, like keeping the crows happy.
I’ll be back.
Birds are finally starting to arrive in numbers. Because of the early leafing out, it seems like we’ve been waiting forever. New songs and bright colors fill the air.
Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker
I could fill a book with photographs of Yellow-Bellied Sapsuckers. but I don’t think I’ve ever run into one with this much personality before.
Chipping Sparrow
I love Chipping Sparrows. They’re so dapper!
Hermit Thrushes have been here a couple weeks but it’s still nice to see them.
White-Throated Sparrow
White-Throated Sparrows didn’t all leave, but the migrants are everywhere now. And they’re singing their Old Sam Peabody-Peabody-Peabody tunes a lot.
I heard a wonderful White-Throated song Wednesday afternoon. The bird singing sang it in two parts. The first part went down, but the second part was a different tune, in that he turned it upside down, went up with it and then down a half step. Very original.
Northern Waterthrush
A surprise, a Northern Waterthrush in Millennium Park Monday afternoon! I have seen Northern Waterthrushes outside the tennis courts in Daley Bicentennial Plaza after a rain, but I have never seen one in Millennium Park. I wish I could have gotten closer for a sharper picture.
A couple female Red-Winged Blackbirds at the edge of a tennis court. You can just barely see that they have red feathers on their shoulders too.
This male Red-Winged Blackbird was singing for peanuts. I guess he figured he could afford to squander his song on me now that the girls have arrived.
This Northern Flicker must have found a very good ant swarm because all my picture-taking could not distract him.
A Brown Creeper showing off his creeping abilities.
An elusive Yellow-Rumped Warbler.
A rabbit, one of many seen regularly. There must be more rabbits this year! All that early vegetation gave them a boost.
And there’s always a crow willing to pose.
Wednesday morning I was making my early lakefront-before-work birding rounds, not finding much of anything new, but ran into a human friend who runs in the park and also feeds the crows (obviously the crows have the upper hand in their relationship with us, but we remain amused by it). Anyway, we were standing there talking when I realized there was some commotion a few feet away and I just started shooting the sequence here. I don’t think I could have gotten these photos if it had just been the crows and me because the dynamic would have been different, i.e., the crows would have been focused on courting me for more handouts. But by talking to my friend, the focus was off either one of us and these two had a chance to tussle.
White Wing is often the butt of aggression so I was surprised to see that she was the aggressor. I believe her target is the youngest bird of the four, though, so maybe that explains the heirarchy. But to see a crow on its back – this is the ultimate in submissive behavior!
But then he decides he’s not going to take it lying down anymore.
And goes after her.
She utters what must have been a silent protest.
And starts sinking lower herself.
Crow with Cookie
Maybe there was too much sugar in the cookies this time.
Not sure if this was the end or the beginning, but the crows always have the last word.
Crows, Grant Park, 4-13-2011
I started feeding birds so that I could observe them, get to know them, even try to imagine what it is like to be a bird, I suppose. Birds that possess the phenomenon of flight are wondrous for that alone. Their ability to fly symbolizes freedom, just as the horses I loved in my youth accomplished a land-based form of flight, enabled by power and speed.
Entrance to the bird world with food is common, of course. It’s about the only way you can get a bird’s attention long enough to bother with you. Who can blame birds for not being too curious about us? If anything, we have been creatures to fear. So when I have been feeding birds long enough that they come to trust me, I feel blessed that I am welcome to cross the barrier temporarily that must remain between us, however fleeting the moment. There is nothing more remarkable to me than the velvet sound of a crow’s wings passing close over my head.
Or the direct eye contact with a Robin who stands his ground as I acknowledge his presence.
As I was writing part of this, my zebra finch Pietro landed on my head to check out my hair. Was he only looking for nesting material, or does he sometimes entertain the thought of preening me?
I was wandering about the park on my lunch hour last week, looking for migrants even though it’s too early to expect them, almost having to remind myself to take photographs anyway, even if they were of the same birds I’ve been seeing all year. As I walked up the hill on my way back to work, a woman stopped to ask me if I was a birdwatcher or a photographer and I said a bit of both. That one sort of drives the other. We had a short conversation about my engagement and her lack thereof, I suppose, as I had inadvertently distracted her from her tennis game with my pursuit of birds. I apologized, only to have her thank me. Perhaps tennis was not her calling that day, but she was definitely aware following birds around was mine.
It doesn’t happen too often, but I have affected people before. Years ago when I used to feed the pigeons that followed me around like a train, it was when I was sitting hanging out with them as they clambered over each other to get at the bird seed or landed on my hand or my head (I never, ever got pooped on!) – from time to time a student from the Art Institute would come to draw me or take a picture. Pigeons were my easy entry into the bird world; they have accompanied human settlement for millennia. But they also taught me how to read expression that went beyond that pale orange eye. And I learned to recognize some of them by their distinctive coloring or behavior.
I have to say most of the people I work with who know I am interested in birds usually come to tell me about birds they have seen, and in this I feel as if I have made a contribution. If I have managed to get one more person to pay attention to something in nature that they otherwise would not have bothered, then I have done my job. This week, however, a superior ran into me leaving one afternoon in my usual garb: Chicago Audubon baseball cap, binoculars around my neck, camera slung on my shoulder. She said, “I suppose it’s a nice hobby.” I am sure she was trying to be nice or more like trying to find a way to deal with my get-up, but I took silent offense to the word “hobby” and her lack of curiosity. My obsession with birds, if you will, is more a way of life than a “hobby.” Being in nature is not a hobby. A hobby connotes something someone has taken up because they decide to do it, not necessarily because it picks them. Here’s the dictionary definition: “an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation.”
It’s true, I am not “paid” to pay attention to birds but I think of it as more of a main occupation than my paying job, so I guess it’s a matter of interpretation.
With birds, it has been more of a calling. At the start of my association with the avians, when the birds came to hear the music, they chose me to tell a part of their story no one else had told before. If it meant telling people they sang in key with the music, maybe that would let people know that birds had something in common with us. As I attempt to do justice to the birds’ story, I am always in discovery, never knowing where the next sentence is coming from.
White-Wing 4/4/12
it was still seasonably chilly, the trees were bare. Hard to find color anywhere –
except maybe in the lake. It was full of Horned Grebes in their spring finery.
Horned Grebe
Here’s one living up to his name. These pictures were taken on March 28, 2011.
And here we are, barely a year later, and the trees are in full bloom
or leafing out. The grass is green, and we have had no rain.
Very few divers remain in the lake, mostly gulls among the buoys. Are the buoys out earlier this year?
A Ring-Billed Gull this morning, coming in for a landing.
In the parks, there are lots of Common Grackles…
and Red-Winged Blackbirds,
but much of spring migration has not yet caught up with the weather and the flora. We have another month or more to go before we see the warblers.
Magnolia Warbler, Grant Park, May 22, 2011
Cape May Warbler, May 10, 2011
I’m looking for some way to get my head around the high temperatures we have had for the past 7 days. I’m sure there is a meteorological explanation, but even the weather forecasters seem to be surprised by a heatwave in March that feels more like June or July, so I’m going back to February 2 when the official groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, predicted six more weeks of winter, but the Illinois groundhog predicted an early spring. We skipped spring, however, and went straight to summer.
Then I wonder if we are seeing what climatologists predicted if the planet continued to warm at its present rate: eight months of summer.
Of course this is Chicago and we could still have snow in April. But it doesn’t look like we’re going to get any more in March.
Downy Woodpecker in my yard - two weeks ago!
At this rate, the City can’t plant bald cypress fast enough.
With all this heat, we could really use some rain. I caught this American Robin refreshing himself in the birdbath this afternoon.
Last week, this crow was panting, even with a whole lake nearby.
About this time of year, the trees would be showing buds, but not bursting. From the looks of it, my flowering crabapple will be flowering tomorrow.
And my redbud is, well, budding.
And whatever this is that planted itself by the side of the house, it’s blooming.
It was nice to open the windows today, at least until it got too hot. I bought the last fan at the hardware store this afternoon. And two pairs of sandals online…
Spring comes to the lakefront in many forms, but none so noisily as the arrival of Ring-Billed Gulls. It’s an opportunity to teach the new crows a life lesson.
The juvenile crows thought they had everything figured out and the parks and the lakefront were theirs for the taking, but now these guys have arrived like gangsters.
This crow can't believe what's happening.
I had even gotten careless with these puny pieces of shelled peanuts: piled up, they were irresistible. The gulls descended upon them in less than a second.
It’s my theory that the gulls time their arrival for the festivals and parades, beginning with St. Patrick’s Day this weekend. The highlight of their visit will be the Taste of Chicago in July.
"How COULD you?"
A few peanuts won’t be missed, but the crows and I will have to be careful, especially when there’s hot dogs. The crows will learn to be silent instead of calling to each other when they see me, and they’ll stop following me around. Instead, they’ll meet stealthily at some predetermined location, their choice or mine: it doesn’t matter, we’ll put our heads together. Because if the crows attract any attention to me whatsoever, they’ll lose their monopoly over me. As it is, I hope the gulls have been distracted over the weekend, because they’ll remember me forever if they start associating me with food. And I gave up starting riots a long time ago.
White-Wing never speaks. Her peers caw incessantly, but she always arrives in silence and gets her point across with her presence.
So when all the cawing in the world didn’t seem to be pulling me away from trying to find migrants in the park yesterday…
Fox Sparrow foraging in the yews
as I finally turned to walk back toward the crows, White-Wing flew toward me and landed just a few feet away. Her body language conveyed, “don’t worry, I’ll get her attention.”
So why doesn’t she talk?
(a) She’s mute;
(b) She’s low in the hierarchy;
(c) She’s too cool;
(d) None of the above.
One thing’s for sure. She doesn’t mind the one-on-one, in fact, she invites it. But as soon as she’s ready to leave, she tries to beat the camera.
And she wins every time.
Monroe Harbor 3/1/2012 7:45 a.m.
The days are getting longer, but a lack of sunshine is a reminder that winter is not over yet. Birds have begun singing and setting up territories in what can be attributed to a purely hormonal response to the longer days. My juvenile crow friends aren’t mature enough to have those kinds of longings, but I imagine they share the same sense of promise and preparation, as our part of the planet begins to wake up from a long sleep.
Instead of complaining about the lack of color diminished sunlight affords, I decided to embrace it and see what the world looks like without color.
The crows willingly lent themselves to my experiment…
and instead of finding their images lacking, to some extent, less was more.
For instance, I can appreciate the arrangement of this crow’s feather tracts more clearly than with the distraction of color.
I wonder why this crow’s posture looks more serious to me…
and this crow’s intelligence demands my wonder and awe.
What can I say? The Grant Park juvenile crows are glad to have me back in town.
The Ring-Billed Gulls are beginning to assemble and they are the crows’ biggest competitors.
I used to feed gulls until the crows got curious enough to reason with me. When I switched to crows it involved a lot of hard thinking to keep the gulls at bay. The crows finally suggested I put hot dogs under the trees, because the gulls prefer wide open spaces. You can see why the crows like me; I’m trainable.
But the gulls are savvy city birds as well and can be seen careening through the glass and steel canyons of the Loop. Some of them aren’t cowed by a few stands of trees in a park, and it only takes one gull to start a riot.
It’s going to be an interesting summer for the juves who are still trying to figure out squirrels.
This squirrel isn’t reacting at all to White Wing’s threatening stance.
Guess she’ll have to cache what she can.
