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.

Questionable anser

Yesterday, doing some back-to-school shopping at the Assembly Square Mall, I went and had a look at the river, and there was this goose.  It was there again today, among a dozen-strong flock of Canada geese.  Now, there's no question about the identity of this bird:  It's Anser anser, the greylag goose.  But after that things get a bit murky.

The greylag goose is not, after all, an American bird.  It's a Eurasian species that nests in the northern half of Europe and Asia, and migrates to the south of Asia, the Mediterranean, and North Africa.  Occasionally a vagrant fetches up in North America.  Is the bird above one such?  Maybe, but it's impossible to say.  It happens that the greylag goose is the ancestor of the domestic goose, a certain number of which have gotten loose in this country and gone feral.  The domestics are usually white -- like the notorious Charles River white geese -- or splotched with white.  But not always; some have the coloration of wild greylags.  The domestics are also said to be heavier-bottomed, but again, it's hard with an individual animal out on the river to assess its bottom-heaviness.

Just based on the probabilities, this is a feral animal, maybe some generations removed from the barnyard.  And in a sense, the question is purely academic, because wild greylags and those of domestic stock are the same species anyway.  But this is the first one I've ever seen in Somerville.

What are the chances?

Today there was a really weird assemblage of birds in my neighbor's tree.  The first one was this kinglet, above.  I usually see kinglets in the yard, but in April, not late May.  This bird didn't get the memo, apparently.

Then, a few minutes later, this:

This one is Wilson's warbler.  'Tis the season, I suppose, but I hadn't seen one in years.

Cue the next one:

Cedar waxwing, which I see singly basically never, and in my yard basically never.

And then finally, way in the top of the tree, for only a minute:

I'm pretty sure this is some kind of tyrant flycatcher, but it's hard to narrow it down beyond that.

This says something about the value of a single mature tree, even of a despised species like Norway maple. This particular tree looms over my yard and rains branches down on it, and moreover produces a million seedlings every year.  But I still would hate to see it go.