Just wanted to share a few updates on the county, starting at home with the farm. I have had more orioles than I typically see here this year, with the feeder still out with jelly. I kept getting customers so I left it out. I have had a pair of orchard orioles still visiting as of yesterday, as well as what appears to be two pairs of baltimores coming along with a variable female with a partial hood. The last two days it looks like there are two fledglings also coming in. Last week I was late getting the feeder out in the morning (bears here) and when I looked out the kitchen window, I had not one or two but three first year male orchard orioles fighting to get to the hummingbird feeder. I have never before seen that many at once, I knew there had been two different ones at the jelly but not three. I have had orchards also singing at two more northern blocks in the county as well. I expect them to show some more expansion this atlas.
A brief hummingbird story as well.. I found what appeared to be a young hummingbird on the deck below the feeder early one morning, I assume taken down by an adult male in their many fights over the feeder. He was on his back but otherwise didn't seem injured other than stunned. After I got him resting on a chair for a bit, he flew a short distance, started to look more alert and preen and when I returned later in the morning he was gone, hopefully recovered.
Ovenbirds were still doing their evening flight song and display most days until last week, wood thrush are singing more steadily, prairie warblers still singing in the field, and carolina wrens on their second nest in the hanging basket, their first being inside the chicken coop. Pewees also sing their plaintive songs every evening and the red-tail that fledged from across the road is calling away many days looking for food and attention.
Best atlasing adventure was in a block near Corsica on the eastern edge of the county. Within earshot and almost in sight of I-80 I came upon a beautiful grassland for a point count, with meadowlarks, bobolinks, grasshopper and savannah sparrows. On another count just several miles distant, I found a forgotten pine and hemlock ravine, with blackburnian, black-throated green, and magnolia warblers, hermit thrush fluting their song and a winter wren down along Little Millcreek. What a little gem of a road ! It's the best part of atlasing, discovering these beautiful places that never get seen by birders, and just another reason I retired when I did...
Last story but best, the screech owls are still around back by the barn, and in the past week the adults and at least one young have been roosting in the barn or nearby again. Today for the first time, both adults and three young were all roosting inside, adult gray female, red male, and what looks like two gray young and one red. As I write I hear the robins and wood thrush starting their scolding so I assume one of the owls is being mobbed. Always an adventure when you are watching the natural world !
