Requiem

This morning, looking out my front door, I saw something tumble into the leaves below the building across the street.  I went to have a look. Splayed in the leaves was this hermit thrush.  It must have struck a window in the building and been killed instantly -- one of the millions of birds killed annually by collisions with buildings.  The unnerving thing is that there is nothing particular about the windows of this building, a three-story brick apartment building of the most anonymous kind.  When we hear about buildings lethal to birds, we tend to imagine tall buildings with large sheets of plate glass.

But the sad truth is, any window can be a fatal one.

One fine day

Yesterday, walking down by the Mystic, as I often do on Sunday, I saw an unusual diversity of birds, and in unusual abundance.  Being between seasons, we still have summer birds here, but winter birds (juncos and white-throated sparrows) have shown up, a bit early, and meanwhile you have a large number of migrants passing through.

The photos below show a sampling of what I was able to see.  This isn't the complete roster -- it's more the complete roster of what I was able to get an adequate photo of.

First up, golden-crowned kinglet:

And its tyrannical cousin, the ruby-crowned kinglet:

Let's not neglect sparrows.  Here's savannah sparrow:

And dark-eyed junco:

Flycatchers are represented by eastern phoebe:

Turning to warblers, pine warblers were present in some numbers, many of them flocking with white-throated sparrows and kinglets.

The other typical late migrant is yellow-rumped warbler:

And finally common yellowthroat:

Then we have herons.  Great blue heron is here in season and out, though they're generally less morose than this:

But black-crowned night heron is a more episodic character.  I haven't seen them much lately, and the few I've seen have been juveniles like this one:

And then finally, because Sunday is the day for puzzles, I have this:

I can't even swear this is a bird.  If you have any ideas, leave them in the comments section.

Better late than never

I was pretty pleased with myself to get a picture of this yellowthroat with my phone.  Usually yellowthroats are pretty retiring and hard to photograph, but this one was being loud and proud in a backyard on Willow Ave. 

Warblers in general were very late this year.  I saw the first one (Wilson's, unusually) on the 15th, though admittedly I was away the previous three days.  I haven't seen a single ovenbird or black-and-white, which is a departure from previous years.  Today in the yard I had a redstart...

as well as a Swainson's thrush:

And then there was this creature, which, on a good hare day, may be perceived as a bunny rabbit:

Chewink

Ah, spring.  Hence this chewink, a bird not viewable in Somerville except during the migration, and rarely at that.  Hence also this hermit thrush...

...and this phoebe.

These latter two are regular spring visitors, particularly the hermit thrush, which appears like clockwork in mid-April.  Of the three, the phoebe is the only one I know to nest in Somerville, near the banks of Alewife Brook.

Eagle

This photo won't win any prizes, but it shows a conjunction of two Somerville rarities: bald eagle at left, and common loon at right (along with both common and red-breasted merganser, also at right).  I don't know if this is the same eagle that was here last year, and I haven't checked to see if it's still around, but it may well be.  It came onto the ice (this was last weekend) to peck at a scrap of something loathsome.

At the eagle's approach, the gulls all freaked out and took to the air, but interestingly, the ducks seemed completely unfazed, and approached without fear:

(These are mostly mallards, with a few black ducks and mergansers thrown in.)  I read in Wikipedia that certain populations of bald eagle prey heavily on mallards -- but our local ducks appear not to know, or not to care.  Certainly to my eyes they looked vastly more appetizing than whatever the eagle was busy with.