Brown-headed cowbirds and guinea hens were pecking
Birds have been a preoccupation since I was a young woman and spent a few summers as a counselor at a camp in Northern New Jersey, where I learned to recognize many species and their songs. I am not sure if science would bear this out, but it seems to me that there was a greater variety of birds back in those days than there is here today on the East End; whether this might be because the inventory has diminished over all in both places since that time I cannot say.
As a child spending summers at a family farm in the Catskills, the only bird I knew by name was the whippoorwill, whose call at dusk meant it was time to go to bed. There were also bats, which the female adults in our circle feared might swoop low, land on their heads, and get stuck in their hair. I just read that the latter myth may be based on bats’ extraordinary eyesight, which allows them to get awfully close to people to feed on hovering mosquitos. I’m happy to report that a bat never did get stuck in anyone’s hair.
When I was a counselor at that camp in New Jersey, I learned to recognize thrushes, among them the veery thrush, whose remarkable song is described as a downward ventriloquial spiral. You can hear it on YouTube, as I just did (hearing it for the first time in many decades). I also just listened to the song of the Carolina wren, a pretty bird that is a frequent visitor to my East Hampton backyard.
In Larry Penny’s Star “Nature Notes” on June 20, he reported that his and Stephanie Krusa’s search for whippoorwills had been somewhat successful, although he said East Hampton Airport had taken a toll on their former prevalence in Wainscott. I’m told that down on Cranberry Hole Road in Amagansett, the whippoorwill, which had been a nightly presence in the 1960s and 1970s before disappearing for a long time, has once again been calling at dusk outside my son’s house.
As time passes, the birds you consider exciting and newsworthy shift, as some birds go silent and new ones (like the less-than-charming turkey vulture) make their presence known. Of course, I am delighted that ospreys are again prominent in the local aviary; it is also thrilling that bald eagles seem to have come to stay.
Driving on Shelter Island just after Fish Hawk Day‚ which is what, I’m told, some old-timers used to call the first day of summer, my husband and I were excited to see osprey after osprey carrying fish in their claws to the nests for the young, who had not yet begun to fly.
For me, backyard birding is a morning ritual, which takes precedence over my other morning-pottering routes (surveying and watering the houseplants, making coffee, looking over The New York Times). I don’t often see cowbirds, brown-headed or otherwise, but if I am lucky a Carolina wren or two, with its repetitive song‚ da da da da, da da da da, quite loud for such a small bird, will join the chorus of jays, cardinals, chickadees, and the other usual suspects. The song of the wren gets the day going beautifully.