This morning in Forest Park I walked around the waterway between the skating rink and the Victorian footbridge but didn’t see or hear the Red-breasted Nuthatch. Because of a lunch engagement I had no time to retrace my steps when I left this afternoon.
I did have some luck, though, and was able to get some snaps of this beauty with its kill:
As I opened the garage door this morning I remembered that I didn’t have the camera, which I had planned to bring with me every day. No matter. Once I got to Forest Park, I was going to take the short way to the office. Ha! On the way in, I came face to face with the most gorgeous immature Red-tailed Hawk I had ever seen—on a low bare branch in a pine tree just 20 feet in front of me.
OK, I told myself, just take a deep breath, relax, and enjoy the moment (advice from a birder wiser than I am). So, I took in the sight: rusty buff breast feathers above the deep black belly band, orange head… Beautiful bird and a good moment (I still wish I’d had the camera). The hawk seemed fearless—good for watching but not good for it.
The heat was vile, but I decided that 10 additional minutes of exposure wouldn’t kill me (and might even make me stronger!), so I took the path around the river on my way to the car. Something was calling, a nasal vocalization that sounded familiar but that I couldn’t place. And then, right in front of me, a female Red-breasted Nuthatch. She was foraging on a limb a few feet away. I watched her for several minutes during which I heard calls that didn’t seem to be coming from her—two birds or was I simply not pin-pointing the sound accurately?
She flew, and as I was trying to find her I spotted an adult male Orchard Oriole feeding one of his adult-sized young.
A good day to take the long way back. And tomorrow I’ll have the camera.
Although the plan had been to look for Swamp Metalmarks on Saturday afternoon and Prairie Warblers and Henslow’s Sparrows on Sunday, it didn’t work out that way. I see my family only a few times per year and like to spend time socializing with them when I’m in the Ozarks for visists that are always too short.
Dan and I did drive the perimeter of the hay field on Sunday morning looking for birds and butterflies. His son-in-law hadn’t yet hayed, and Purple Coneflower and Common, Purple, and Butterfly Milkweed were blooming. We saw Orange Sulphur, Great Spangled Frittilary, Common Wood Nymph (a life species for me), Spicebush Swallowtail, Eastern Tailed Blue, and Silver-spotted Skipper. There were Wild Turkeys along the hedgerows, and we were thrilled to see five immature (birds that surely would have been killed by the haying, had it been done on schedule) fly from the field into the bushes.
There were more Pearl Crescents around the houses and gardens than I’ve seen anywhere.
I drove down to Wright County on Saturday to visit family, float the Gasconade with my brother, and look for birds and butterflies on the farm.
Saturday was a beautiful day for a road trip, and the drive was, as usual, mostly uneventful. There was a bit of excitement, though, in Falcon when a Red-shouldered Hawk carrying a black snack in its talons shot across the highway toward the windshield. It appeared suddenly—there was nothing I could do to miss it. It swerved upward—I heard a thump and looked in the rearview mirror expecting to see the elegant bird crumpled in the road behind me. But, I was thrilled to see it flying into the trees, clearly unharmed. It had been the snake, still clasped in the hawk’s talons, that had struck the car.
Since my brother, Dan, bought a canoe several months ago I had been looking forward to my first float trip. Early Saturday afternoon, he, his granddaughter / my grandniece, and I put in at Jerktail and drifted down to the Kinchloe access, a two-and-a-half hour trip. What a blast! Apart from a group in three canoes that paddled quickly past us and out of sight, we had that stretch of the river to ourselves.
Wildlife was abundant. We saw gar, sunfish, and others that we couldn’t identify, crayfish, snails—and a swimming snake that submerged when we paddled over for a closer look.
I had been hoping to see birds, of course, and wasn’t disappointed. I was very pleased to see two Yellow-throated Warblers, a Prothonotary, and a Northern Parula (a female near the end of the trip, who was feeding from dead vegetation that had caught in over-hanging branches during a high-water stage), as well as two Yellow-billed Cuckoos. Northern Rough-winged Swallow youngsters perched on a limb overhanging the river begging to be fed were a treat. We heard Common Yellowthroat, Indigo Bunting, and White-breasted Nuthatch and were never out of earshot of singing Tufted Titmice. We also heard Northern Bobwhite and saw Great Blue and Green Herons.
The two-and-a-half hours went by too quickly for my brother and me (but not for my grandniece, who at six-almost-seven found the trip to be far too long and uneventful).
One of the cuckoos we saw on the river was vocalizing, and Dan said that he had heard one calling at the house. After we got back, the family was sitting under the trees in the yard and we heard, but didn’t see, a cuckoo overhead. I’m hoping that they’ll get a look at it before long.