It wasn’t a birding trip. I was supposed to be doing some serious biking on this, the nicest day we’d had in at least six weeks. I was in exercise deficit. It felt glorious, being on the bike and not feeling the resistance in the very air that has defined all of July, and half of August, with unrelenting heat and humidity. This morning there was almost a chill.
Birds are noticeably quiet here this time of year, especially compared to spring. You only hear the the pewees and phoebes who constantly say their names, the cardinals clicking to their mates, and the year-rounders like Carolina chickadees and tufted titmice. And always Carolina wrens and some mewing catbirds.
Several stretches of road in Washington, DC, have been closed to traffic (or only allow limited motor vehicle access) to encourage socially distanced exercise. I was sailing along a closed section of Beach Drive in Rock Creek Park when I heard what I thought were hummingbirds. (Here, we only have ruby-throated hummingbirds and an occasional straggler, not like the American West where several species co-exist.) The noise was constant and unusual, so I stopped, hoping to see babies.
I could see the tiny, fast-moving birds high up in the tree, but the way they perched indicated that they were something else. I was glad I’d brought my binoculars on this not-birding trip because I was able to observe a family of four northern parulas (pronounced PEAR-oo-lah), two parents and two recent fledglings who were hopping from branch to branch begging for food.
This is a tiny warbler with a song that sounds like a zipper being zipped (unless they’re infuriating you by doing an alternate song that sounds like several other birdsongs!). They were just chirping at each other, though, the babies and the parents back and forth. A woman stopped and asked what I was looking at, so I showed her. There was a downy woodpecker in the same tree and two northern (golden-shafted) flickers across the way, where the parula family finally flew. I got back on the bike and worked up some speed.
It wasn’t long before I heard the same sound again, and I stopped to look. There were indeed at least two parulas, one of whom was a recent fledgling, and also tiny blue-grey gnatcatchers in the same tree. I was watching them when I heard actual hummingbirds, and two flew up into the tree together before crossing the road again to sip the life-giving pleasures of a stand of orange jewelweed. It was a pageant of the tiniest birds we have, all in one tree. Before I moved on, several butterflies joined the hummingbirds at the jewelweed for a colorful feast – for them and for my eyes.
I then made some real progress on the bike, mainly because that part of the road was getting a little crowded and I had to pay attention to people. The next time I stopped was to peer way up into a very tall stand of trees when I thought I heard baby chickadees. It turned out that they were downy woodpeckers, recent fledglings. I’m good with bird sounds, but the babies can really deceive you.
I’d thought of looping back and doing more biking, but I needed to get home. I stopped again, though, when I heard
clickclickclickclickclickclickCA-oou. CA-oou. CA-oou. CA-oou.
It was a yellow-billed cuckoo, a bird that’s hard to find unless you see it land, and it was very close. I stalked it for quite a while before giving up.
I was almost at the park exit when I ran into a photographer I see a lot. We traded stories of what we’d seen, and he invited me to a virtual bird photography lecture he was doing the next day. While we chatted, families of barn swallows perched and flew, perched and flew, overhead. They nest under the bridge we were standing on.
I exited the park and was almost home when I had to make one final stop. In a small tree planted just near a residential street, I heard the familiar sound of baby mockingbirds: BEEEP! BEEEP! I didn’t have to get the binoculars out to observe two baby siblings, standing up on their nest, with the shortest, stubbiest little tails that would eventually grow into the characteristic long, swaggering tail of adult mockingbirds. I don’t even know if they had left the nest for their first flight yet.
I came home to find one of my goldfinches singing up a storm.
I do love to take photos of birds, but I hadn’t brought my camera, and I was glad. Observing is a completely different activity from documenting, and it is freeing to resist the urge to get a good shot. It was a typical August bike ride, except that we’re five months into an unprecedented pandemic and everyone is wearing masks and kids are going back to school in strange ways and everything is far from typical! !!
But I’m sharing this not-birding adventure with you because I want you to listen. I want you to look. I want you to stop worrying about the world for just a few moments and claim your right to pursue curiosity. I want you to take delight in observing something surprising and unpredictable, beautifully so, and let yourself be carried away by serendipity. Will you?
