A child of the 20th-century, I have wonderful memories of “going out” to play. An inhabitant of the 21st-century, I am alarmed at the proliferation of screens in everyday life. From the giant screens that cover entire walls to the little screens that more and more people carry around with them 24-7, the screens are absorbing more and more of our collective time. I fear this is a terrible path that we are all following and I do my personal best to take the road less traveled (Robert Frost reference).
So, on a beautiful Sunday morning that marked the third consecutive beautiful day without rain, I woke up, grabbed a quick bite, filled a travel mug with coffee and headed down into the meadow. The thinking chair was cool but dry when I sat down, and I gave an audible sigh when I leaned back. My mission was to sit for two hours and see what I could see. I was particularly interested in assembling a comprehensive list of warblers that might be in the neighborhood, but all birds were welcome.
The first thing I noticed was just how quiet it was. Normally, I would have expected a dawn chorus of birdsong to help me identify the presence of birds that I would have no hope of actually seeing, but then I remembered that I had missed dawn by more than two hours. The males, all sung-out, appeared to be tending to their own morning ablutions. This was driven home by the appearance of a completely sodden male cardinal, which flew up from an area that is dependably wet. Apparently he had taken a morning bath and was enthusiastically fluffing and preening his feathers in the sunlight.
Half an hour passed by without a hint of any sort of warbler. The general quiet that I had noticed was dragging out and I decided to use a little trickery to provoke a response. I started “pishing,” which is accomplished by clenching your jaw shut and making the “shhh” sound accentuated by repeated use of the letter “p.” This does a fairly good job of imitating a scolding call from a small songbird and it worked really well. Suddenly, little birds were everywhere.
A male common yellowthroat appeared and gave me a real “verbal” thrashing. Next, his mate arrived and together they gave me six kinds of hell for my very existence. Then a male yellow warbler arrived and he took up a position atop a small tree nearby. After glaring at me, he was overwhelmed by the need to sing. I had my camera ready and waiting and got a wonderful shot of him with his head thrown back and his beak open.
There was still one more species of warbler that I hoped to see and I finally had to rely on technology to help me. I had an electronic device loaded with bird songs and I selected the song of a blue-winged warbler. Out came the quiet, insect-like “beee-buzzzz” that is characteristic of the species. I only played the song three or four times before a beautiful male zipped in like lightning ready for war. He gave me the most malevolent glare of the morning and I turned off the recording. He posed for a wonderful photo and then spent the next hour asserting his ownership of this particular patch of Earth; “beee-buzzzing” all around me.
Absolutely marvelous.
I will have to go deeper into the forest if I hope to find any additional warblers to add to my June list. I may also need to get out a little earlier, but that isn’t really a hardship. Spending time at dawn in a New England forest is time well spent. If you have the time and the opportunity to go out on such an adventure, I would highly recommend it. Give yourself a break from information overload and know what it is to be quiet. You may find it so enjoyable that you make a habit of it.
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 22 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service and the Massachusetts State Parks and currently teaches high school biology and physics. Visit www.speakingofnature.com for more information, or go to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.