May mornings are full of sound. Read More
May mornings are full of sound. That, I’m sure, is not a startling revelation to anyone who steps out into the world at around 5 in the morning. Sound carries well in the usually still, cool air and the rumble of traffic or planes flying overhead can be heard even from miles away. But at
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May mornings are full of sound.
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That, I’m sure, is not a startling revelation to anyone who steps out into the world at around 5 in the morning. Sound carries well in the usually still, cool air and the rumble of traffic or planes flying overhead can be heard even from miles away.
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But at this time of year, the most abundant sound isn’t coming from man-made things. It’s coming from birds.
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That was what I heard as I hit the road just after dawn Tuesday morning. Lugging my camera gear out to the truck I was serenaded by the magpies across the street — they have a nest there — and robins high in the treetops. There were sparrows, too, and a couple of other birds I didn’t recognize.
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Such a lovely way to start the day.
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I was headed east with no particular destination in mind, maybe have a look at the crops just springing to life in the fields, see what I could see out in the open country before the day heated up and the light got harsh. Mostly I just wanted to watch the day begin out where the mountains don’t block the view.
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So I rolled toward the big basin where Serviceberry Creek and the Rosebud River drain the landscape. There’s always something interesting out that way.
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I really dawdled, though. When you don’t have a destination in mind there’s generally no rush to get there so I ambled along the gravel roads with the cool air blowing through the open windows and the morning sun sparkling on the cracks in the windshield.
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I saw ducks flying up from puddles in the ditches and pheasants pecking at the roadside grit. Geese grazed on the new grain in the fields. Calves bounced around pastures, their yellow, green and blue ear tags flashing bursts of colour.
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Every patch of cattails I passed was topped by yellow-headed and redwing blackbirds. A couple of the bigger ponds held cormorants and pelicans. At a slough just on the edge of the sandhill country east of Irricana, cattle were wading out for a drink while flotillas of ducks and other waterbirds swam by.
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And, yeah, at every place I stopped, I could hear birds.
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I recognized a lot of their voices. There were the obvious ones like mallards and geese, magpies, crows, ravens and meadowlarks. The meadowlarks I could hear even while driving and when I stopped to take a picture of a coyote on its morning hunt one landed on a fencepost right beside me to belt out a chorus.
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But it was when I stopped to take pictures of a bit of hair hung on the barbs of a fence line by a patch of buffalo beans that I really began to get curious about what was making all those sounds.
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I heard a song sparrow and a clay-coloured sparrow, the buzzing call of the one countering the melodious song of the other. But there were more voices there, ones I didn’t recognize at all. Who were these guys?
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At a copse of aspens just up the road I stopped and grabbed my phone to find out.
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I’ve had this app called Merlin Bird ID on my phone for quite a while but I haven’t used it much. I’ve looked up the occasional bird I wasn’t sure of but mostly it just sat there taking up space. Then, a couple of weeks ago, my friend Mike — I know, confusing — texted me to ask if I’d used the bird sound section of it. Nope, I knew it was there but I’d never tried it. At Mike’s urging, I gave it a go.
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Unseen by me but heard by the app were the usual sparrows and robins but also flickers, chickadees, a chipping sparrow, a ruby-crowned kinglet and even a rosy finch. All of these were in my mid-city yard and around my front porch. I’d heard their songs but had no idea who was singing them.
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Say what you will about modern tech, some of it is pretty darn good!
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So as I parked by this little aspen oasis, I fired up the app, set the phone on my truck’s window ledge and let it listen.
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The names began to scroll. Yellow-throat, goldfinch, downy woodpecker, yellow warbler and the similarly named yellow-rumped warbler. It picked up a meadowlark — loudest of the bunch — and the various blackbirds. It heard a savannah sparrow and white-crowned sparrow. A bird called a water thrush showed up. Looking at the picture I recognized it but had always thought it was a female blackbird of some sort.
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If only I could have gotten pictures of all of them. Unfortunately, though I did catch glimpses here and there, they were mostly hidden among the branches and brush and cattails. But it was still pretty cool to know what was there.
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Better luck at the pond down the road. I didn’t actually need the app to figure out what was a black-necked stilt or an avocet. The killdeers were easy, too. A willet flew by, hollering the whole way. A pair of blue-winged teal sat on the far shore.
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Next pond over — lotsa ponds in this sandy country — the app found another water thrush and a marsh wren. Never saw either. But it found an eared grebe and a pie-billed grebe — both dove before I could get a pic — and heard a clucking coot that stayed hidden among the cattails. Gotta be a nest there.
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A ruddy duck was displaying for its mate while a Wilson’s snipe yammered from a fence post close by. Bold birds, both of them. A cloud of bugs was hatching on the water of a smaller pond and a trio of phalaropes was catching as many as they could.
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The app was still fired up even though I wasn’t looking at it and it caught both a redtail and a Swainson’s hawk, ravens and a sora rail. Leaving the pond behind, it picked up bank swallows that swooped in as I pulled over by a nest of tent caterpillars. I know they’re destructive and some folks find them a little creepy but I think they’re fascinating.
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I needed more birds, though, so I headed for the close-by Rosebud River valley. Lots of different habits to explore there.
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Just before Rockyford I found a badger by its den. Nice to see one of those guys. And in the green shade of a stand of poplars, a group of mule deer. They were still pretty shaggy with winter hair but a couple of them had fuzzy antlers starting to grow. Gotta say, they looked pretty funny overall.
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The other side of Rockyford I followed Serviceberry Creek down to its junction with the Rosebud River at Redland. A farmyard there at the joining has a big stand of cottonwoods surrounded by osier dogwood, caragana and chokecherry thickets so I stopped on the road beside it to give a listen.
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Here, there were all the birds I’d heard before plus kingbirds and little least flycatchers, a pileated woodpecker and a bird called a redstart. That’s a new one on me. I saw one of the flycatchers but wasn’t quick enough for a photo and the yellow warbler I did get aimed at took off just as I shot. No good.
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There was too much activity for birds at Rosebud so I passed it by and hit the river valley again a little ways downstream. The app found mourning doves and I got a picture of a pair of them, as well as chipping sparrows and those little flycatchers. I shot a video clip of a goldfinch and played a game of hide-and-seek with a catbird. The catbird won.
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By now it was noon and the heat was building. A pair of antelope bounced across the road in front of me on the flats south of Wayne and then stopped on a rise. I shot pictures but with all that heat rising they don’t have a lot in common with something that is in focus.
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Down at Drumheller I grabbed a splash of gas — cheaper than the city — and then rolled on toward East Coulee. This quiet little community hugs the Red Deer River right by the old Atlas Coal Mine and, being riverine forest, is full of birds. Pretty place with all those big cottonwoods and elms and sweet-smelling chokecherries and wolf willows.
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The app went crazy. The page with bird IDs filled up and overflowed as the rain of avian voices poured down. There was nearly everything I had heard before, even a couple of the ducks, plus things like Eurasian collared doves — not native — a three-toed woodpecker, more redstarts and both red-breasted and white-breasted nuthatches.
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All of which were very well hidden by all the fresh foliage. The robins were easy, of course, as were the house sparrows. But even though I managed to see the more exotic birds, I just couldn’t get the camera aimed in time. Frustrating but still fun to know the birds are there.
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But I did get pictures of the first roses in bloom and the wolf willow smelled heavenly. Back out on the road I spotted a pair of turkey vultures circling high in the sky over the badlands. Meadowlarks sang from the sagebrush.
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I headed back up onto the flats now to start circling back to town. The sky was filled with feathery clouds and a light breeze was blowing. Near Dalum I stopped to check out a muddy pond covered with bird and animal tracks. Lost feathers lined the dry shore. Across the road avocets and stilts waded in shallow water.
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But it was hot now and I was getting weary so I rolled on across the Wintering Hills and back into the Serviceberry Creek valley south of Rockyford. More geese in the green fields, hawks overhead. Meadowlarks on fence posts. All singing, all making some sort of noise. Stopping to see what the app could pick up, both it and I heard the squawk of a pheasant. I looked up in time to see it striding across the road.
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Back home, I gathered up my gear and headed for the front door but before I walked in, I fired up the app again. And it heard the rosy finch. Long lens ready, I looked for it and there it was, right on the top of one of my unkempt Manitoba maples. I aimed.
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And it flew away. But I heard it. And I saw it.
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And that’s just fine for now.
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