Thrushes everywhere!

 

A Swainson's Thrush perches on a spruce bough, in a driving drizzle.

I had a meeting near Columbus's fabulous Green Lawn Cemetery this morning, and following that headed over to the cemetery to see what birds might be found. The cemetery's 360 acres is a magnet for migratory birds, especially given its position in a very urbanized landscape.

Today dawned with heavy clouds and intermittent showers. By the time I reached Green Lawn, the rain had become steady, ranging from mild drizzle to hard showers and precipitation fell the entire time that I was there.

It didn't take long to realize that the thrushes must have really been on the move the night before, and scores had decided to use the cemetery's lush grounds as a way station. Swainson's Thrush was most common, and many were feeding in the grass like robins. Some would flush as I drove by, hopping atop headstones.

A wet Veery, on a wet rock, in a very wet patch of woods.

After birding around for a bit, I decided I wanted to try and photograph birds in the rain. Keeping one's gear dry can be an issue, but not when there is a convenient bridge in the middle of some of the cemetery's best habitat. The bridge is out of service, and the gravel lane underneath it is no longer accessible to vehicles. So I made a dash for it, and got me and my rig under the cover of the bridge.

And there I stayed for an hour or so, while it rained on. While a Hooded Warbler - and better yet, a Kentucky Warbler - were bonuses, it was the thrush parade that mostly captivated me. Perhaps a few dozen Swainson's Thrushes were in the vicinity, and I was pleased to see two Gray-cheeked Thrushes. Several Wood Thrushes were nearby, as were a few Veery.

All of them would make regular forays onto the gravel lane, allowing for easy viewing, sometimes at close range as with the Veery in the photo above.

A Hermit Thrush takes a bath just a short distance from my post. He must have figured it wasn't possible to get any wetter, so why not take a dunk. At least half a dozen Hermits were still present. It is the earliest migrant of our speckle-bellied thrushes, and many have already passed through. We at or near peak migration for the other speckle-bellies. I would have loved to have photographed one of the Gray-cheeked or Wood Thrushes, but alas, none came into range.

Here is a short video of a Hermit Thrush that perched near me. Make sure your volume is up, to get the full aural sensation of the rain falling.

Sometimes people ask me: "What do birds do when it rains?"

Pretty much this. They get wet. Don't feel sorry for them, though. Feathers are remarkable objects, and the outer feathers are basically overlapping shingles that prevent water from percolating down to the bird's skin. These thrushes and other songbirds can easily ride out rainstorms such as we had in Central Ohio today.

Sumac creates biological hotspots!

Your narrator's car, perched along the verge of a Jackson County, Ohio lane, deep in the boondocks. I was down there yesterday to participate in the Beaver Christmas Bird Count - about the 20th year that I've done this count. Tis the season for bird counts; the count period began Saturday. I started doing CBC's when I was just a young lad, long before I had a driver's license, and have participated in nearly 100 to date.

The weather isn't obvious in the photo, but it was dismal. The temperature at 8 am was 34 F, and rose to only 37 F. Frosty temps are no problem, but the nonstop rain that ranged from light to moderate showers was an issue. To me, there are no worse weather conditions than drenching rain at temperatures just above freezing. Makes it much harder to find birds.

One unfortunate aspect of covering the same turf for many years is the negative changes one sees. Last year, the open area above was a wet thicket buffered by goldenrod meadows. For many years I pulled Swamp Sparrows and many other species from this plot. No more - cleared, and drained.

Sorry for the dreaded white sky background in these photos, but there's nothing I could do about that. White skies are the absolute worse for photographic backdrops, and we get a lot of those skies in Ohio winters.

On a more uplifting note, I was cruising this backwoods lane when I came across a nice thicket of Smooth Sumac, Rhus glabra. It's the plants on the left, adorned with reddish-brown clusters. Sumac is a gold mine for birds in the winter.

Here's a closeup of the fruit of Smooth Sumac. Each panicle is loaded with (apparently) tasty and nutritious fruit, and come lean times, frugivorous (fruit-eating) birds dig into them with gusto.

As I trolled up to the sumac, window down, I quickly heard and saw American Robins. Lots of robins. I estimated about 95 birds were flying around, dropping in to pluck sumac fruit, whisper-singing, and generally greatly enlivening the woods. This first-year robin stands guard by a nice cluster of sumac fruit.

One effect of having a big flock of active robins in a large woodland is that their hustle and bustle attracts lots of other birds. The sumac entices the robins. Their conspicuous activity draws many other birds who then forage in the vicinity even though the hangers-on aren't necessarily after the sumac's fruit. I probably had at least a dozen species in the mixed flock with the robin nucleus. In the songbird world, plants ultimately orchestrate the show.

Our young robin digs in. He and his brethren plucked many a berry in the time that I hung out and watched. Some of the fruit will probably pass through the ravages of the birds' digestive tracts intact, and thus new sumac colonies may spring up elsewhere. Birds do not get their due as avian Johnny Appleseeds.

The robin sates its hunger, one berry at a time. Just that one sumac panicle hosts hundreds of fruit.

In winter, this is the species that I key in on the most around sumac thickets, the Hermit Thrush. Sure enough, it wasn't long before I heard the distinctive low chuck call note. Shortly thereafter, the thrush flew in and also began harvesting sumac. Were the weather not so unpleasant, I probably would have found more than this one Hermit Thrush. They are more common than is generally thought in winter; searching sumac is key to finding them.

Every yard would benefit from having an assemblage of sumac. Native plants such as these are incalculably more valuable to birds and other animals than the all too common nonnative garden fare. In the sumac world, at least in this part of the world, the best bang for the buck probably comes from the aforementioned Smooth Sumac, and Staghorn Sumac, Rhus typhina. See if you can find some at an enlightened nursery, and stick 'em in the yard.

In the above photo, we see Smooth Sumac in full flower in mid-summer. The oceans of tiny greenish-yellow flowers attract legions of interesting pollinating insects. When I am out and about, camera in hand, and spot flowering sumac I always veer over for a look. I've obtained many a great insect image at these flowers.

By mid-August or so, the sumac thickets are sporting bright reddish-brown candelabras of long-lasting fruit. Come winter, it is there to provide sustenance to robins and other thrushes that are trying to ride out the northern winter.

Keep in mind next summer's Midwest Native Plant Conference in Dayton, Ohio: August 1st thru 3rd. That's an awesome venue to learn more about native flora, buy quality plants, and generally have a great time.

This you must hear: a Catharus guttatus aria

A Hermit Thrush, Catharus guttatus, peeks shyly from dense cover. What this speckle-bellied thrush lacks in visual pizzazz is more than compensated for by an awesome set of pipes.

The incomparable nature recordist Lang Elliott has produced a masterpiece of Hermit Thrush song, and you simply must listen to this work. Lang took an eighteen year old recording made by Ted Mack, and remastered it by slowing, stretching, stitching and compressing, and ended the melody with a flourish by a White-throated Sparrow (which was a background voice on the original recording).

Listen to Lang's Hermit Thrush aria RIGHT HERE. Keep in mind that complex tunesters such as thrushes and many other songbirds hear in ways that we don't, and Lang's remix may be far closer to what Hermit Thrushes hear, as compared to what our tin ears detect.

Check out Lang's and Wil Hershberger's always interesting blog HERE. You'll want to bookmark this bit of the Internet.

This, you must hear

Lang Elliott is one of the most accomplished recordists of the natural world, of all time. His skills are all the more amazing considering he was partially deafened by an errant firecracker in his youth. If you like birds and nature and have made much effort to learn about it, you've heard Lang's work somewhere along the way.

The following recording should strike most people dumb, at least for a few minutes. Lang made it some time back, in upstate New York along the margins of a peat bog. Taped at that transitional time when darkness gives way to light, it captures the dawn songsters heralding a new day, while creatures of the night sing their final night songs.

Hermit Thrushes are the indisputable stars of the show. Their haunting, ethereal melodies create a rich tapestry of sound so melodic it is hard to believe mere feathered creatures could create it. A pack of coyotes in the distance add eerie but somehow fitting ambience, as do the raucous hoots of a Barred Owl. Lesser songsters punctuate the sound track: soft chew-beks of a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, the ornately jumbled complexities of an Ovenbird singing its dusk/dawn song, the nasal banjo-twangs of green frogs.

There's more, too. Have a good listen to one of the finest symphonies on earth, RIGHT HERE