Urban Birder: Reflections, notes and an occasional rant from St. Louis

I took off work a couple of hours early on Wednesday, November 21, with the goal of getting some last-minute grocery shopping done before the crowds hit. But a flock of sparrows feeding just west of Steinberg Prairie in Forest Park tempted me to take the birder’s direct route (Torrey Berger’s apt phrase describing the meandering ways of our kind), which brought me across a late Orange-crowned Warbler. A nice surprise.

Another nice surprise was the Thanksgiving Day bird that had been on my yard wish list: a Fox Sparrow. This one was especially beautifully plumaged, with the rust being quite red. It stayed in the yard for several hours before moving on.

Over the long weekend I replaced the old upside-down finch feeder with a new one that I put out of the path the House Sparrows take from the dead tree to the sunflower seed feeder. The goldfinches seem to like the new location much better; numbers went from one lone goldie to three to eight. No siskins in the yard yet.

On Saturday Jim Z. and I took a trip to Horseshoe Lake. Birds of note were Sharp-shinned Hawk (111 side, Bruns/Bischoff Rd. area) and two Great Egrets and a few American Tree Sparrows (203 side). The egrets were soaring with a few hundred gulls over the borrow pit; they almost seemed to be playing or imitating the gulls.

Sunday during my feeder watch I watched a large raptor fly out of sight into a tree on the side of the house at the south entrance to the alley. Although it was certainly a Red-tail, I went outside and walked to the end of the alley to verify. A couple of hours later from my window, I saw the bird (an immature) in a tree across the alley and a couple of doors up. It had prey, a pigeon. I didn’t need binoculars to see the feathers fly as the hawk plucked its catch.

The yard

Sparrows in the yard at last!

They flew in at ten to seven this morning. Clearly not House Sparrows, not that early. At least two stayed in view: White-throated Sparrows. It took roughly 20 minutes to get a good look at what turned out to be a Swamp Sparrow.

Sparrows weren’t the only arrivals; the yard was alive with birds from 6:50 to 7:30, including two yard firsts: Orange-crowned Warbler and Nashville Warbler. There were also two Indigo Buntings and one very brown House Wren.

The list:

• Rock Pigeon
• Mourning Dove
• European Starling
• House Wren (1)
• Nashville Warbler (1)
• Orange-crowned Warbler (1)
• Northern Cardinal (1 ♂ and 1 ♀)
• Indigo Bunting (2 ♀)
• White-throated Sparrow (2)
• Swamp Sparrow (1)
• House Sparrow

A couple of aggressive House Sparrows chased the female Cardinal, who had stopped in the poke stand in front of the garage.

Forest Park

Of course I had to walk the loop in to work. A partial list:

• Pied-billed Grebe (2)
• Mallard
• Mourning Dove
• Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (1–2; an imm. was in a bush eating berries)
• Eastern Phoebe (3+)
• Empid sp.
• Blue Jay
• Carolina Chickadee
• House Wren
• Marsh Wren
• Ruby-crowned Kinglet (2)
• Brown Thrasher
• Gray Catbird
• European Starling
• Nashville Warbler (2)
• Common Yellowthroat
• Song Sparrow (1 singing)
• Swamp Sparrow (6+)
• White-throated Sparrow
• House Finch (4+)
• American Goldfinch (6+)

There were also at least two Yellow-rumped (Myrtle) Warblers on the slope north of Jefferson in the afternoon.

Fall at last

I was so pleased to see the White-throated Sparrows in the yard this morning. They’ve been in the St. Louis area for at least a couple of weeks, but these were my firsts for the season. They are for me the sign that fall has arrived. Maybe tomorrow will bring a junco.

The forecast, a low of 50° tonight and a high of 67° tomorrow, is promising.

The Argiope that resided in the yard since at least August 25 is gone.

She was in her web when I got home from work on Wednesday, but on Thursday morning she wasn’t in the web, which hadn’t been repaired from the previous day. I was hoping she was merely out of sight for the time being, though I thought then that I’d probably seen the last of her. I’m certain now that I have.

University of Michigan’s Museum of Zoology Animal Diversity Web has an informative page about the creature here: Argiope aurantia: black-and-yellow argiope. Apparently, the function of the stabilimentum isn’t well understood.