Kay’s Birding Blog

This week, our House Wrens fledged, moving first to the brush pile across the trail from their nest box.  There must have been a lot of insects in that tangle of branches and grasses; the little birds stayed there for several days.

One of our young catbirds is still calling for food from the serviceberry bush outside our living room window and a male rose-breasted grosbeak continues feeding his offspring berries from the same bush.  But the best fledgy sightings of the week occurred when one of this year’s orioles joined them to feast on the ripened fruit of this native plant.  The other best sighting of recently fledged birds was the family of kingbirds hawking insects over the our wetland.  Nothing could possibly be better than seeing a successful new generation of these wonderful Neotropical species fattening up in preparation for their upcoming trip back to Bolivia, Costa Rica, Venezuela and other places south of our border.

And then there was the bunting.  Monday morning I opted to walk the road up to my office, rather than taking the trail.  Heavy dew still covered the grass.  Although the trail was recently cut, my feet would have been soaked from the dew.  It was a fortuitous decision.  As I rounded the corner onto Putnam Road, a brilliant blue bird bolted across just in front of me.  This beautiful sapphire of a bird, a male indigo bunting, sat on a low branch of a white birch and scolded me.  His behavior suggested that there was a nest in the low, dense brush to my left. If so, we can add another successful migrant nesting on Charter Sanctuary for the year, and in a week or so, baby buntings will join the other youngsters on our property in search of food.

One might have expected that by this time of year (third week of July), most nestings would be over and young songbirds from Charter Sanctuary would be on their own.  Not so.  Blue Jays and robins are being followed around the yard by their fledglings.  It’s not that they nest late, but that they have renested and are now finishing off their respective second efforts.

Gray Catbirds are feeding youngsters, which (I suspect) is also the result of a second nesting.  One of the newly fledged babies has been screaming for food outside our living room windows.  The same goes for Brown Thrashers, which are very early nesters, with their current crop of young.

Plump baby Rose-breasted Grosbeaks have been begging peanut bits from their parents and fledgie goldfinches are following mom and dad around, hoping for an easy meal.

While our Tree Swallows, American Woodcock and Killdeer were finished with their parental roles weeks ago, there are still birds with hungry youngsters.  And a few, like the Common Yellowthroats, are just setting up shop for a final go at bringing another generation online.

From early April through late June, my days begin with the sweet melodies of Tree Swallows belting forth their bubbly song from a nest box just outside my window.  I love these lovely little aerial acrobats, and am saddened by their departure immediately after nesting.  But their absence does not mean my mornings begin in silence.  Many other birds are still busily building nests, feeding young and just hanging around on Charter Sanctuary – not least of which are the House Wrens.

There are, in fact, two wren pairs this year.  One is nesting north of our home, where they are easy to hear from the bedroom, and another is nesting in a bluebird box between the trail and Jimmy’s garden.  The wrens outside my window sing from dawn.

Because we never search for nests, we don’t know which nest box this pair is using.  But because the other pair has chosen a box we pass every day, we have watched them from the beginning.  It did not seem to bother them that we regularly passed their chosen site.

Once they began feeding young they were unhappy with our passing presence.  They hopped around on nearby branches, raising the alarm by scolding and chattering.  We don’t want to draw in nest predators like jays, so we have altered our route away from the box.

House Wrens are miniscule, engaging little songsters.  We are happy that they come here year after year to nest and we hope they continue to do that.  But for me, they will never be a substitute for my beloved Tree Swallows.

From the time my husband and I purchased this property sixteen years ago, Gray Catbirds and Brown Thrashers have nested here.  As the brushy, shrubby habitats expanded, so did the numbers of these “mimids.”  Catbirds and all thrashers (there are 8 species of thrashers, but only the Brown Thrasher nests in our area) are mimidae, which is the avian family that includes mockingbirds.  For the beginner, it can be difficult to distinguish between the songs of mockingbirds, catbirds and Brown Thrashers.  This can become easier by remembering that catbirds typically sing each phrase once, Brown Thrashers usually repeat a phrase twice and mockingbirds just go on and on with their favorite phrase of the moment.  All are fairly vocal, especially during courting and early in the nesting season.

Acceptable nesting habitat for both species occur on Charter Sanctuary in upland areas as well as along the wetland associated with Weaver Creek that dissects our property.  This year, we have hosted more nesting catbirds and thrashers than we would ever have imagined when we first bought the land.

That is especially true of the catbirds, a pair of which nested, among other places, right outside the window of the small library in our home.  The parents did not seem to mind that the cedar where they built their nest was near our front door, which even though used rarely, still sees some activity.  We were able to watch them from the library as well as through the window in our laundry room.

We did make some accommodations to our nesting catbirds by keeping the lights in the two rooms off as much as possible.  With screens on our windows, which reduce visibility for them, the birds were not aware of us in the darker inside rooms.

The youngsters of both species are now out of the nest, and thrashers have given up their singing for the year.  But our catbirds can still be heard from every corner of Charter Sanctuary, as well as on SBTH property.