In Highlands, NC, a few weeks back, mid-morning, I heard a bird singing from the crown of a tree in a clearing across the road. It was a pretty song–three or four phrases, slightly varied, and repeated insistently enough for me to pick up my nocs and walk across the road to investigate.
A robin. Cheerily, cheer-up, cheer, cheerily, cheer-up. Yep. That standard rendering is close enough, once I had finally put the actual bird and its song together. I wrote in The Armchair Birder that, deep in my woods, I don’t see summer robins and so never hear them sing. I’m about to decide that that’s OK.
I’m writing this in Charlottesville, VA, where we’re attending the wedding of a friend of our daughter Ruthie. This morning a cardinal started singing at 5:00 a.m., then, perhaps realizing that it was still well before daylight and that there had been considerable human bibulosity the night before, he had the good manners to shut up. But at 5:30 (still black-dark outside our open window) the robin tuned up. If my two recent experiences are any indication, once robins start, they don’t stop.
In fact, with the robin going full-out, the cardinal apparently decided to throw decency aside and joined in, and the two birds continued their a cappella concert until the rising sun completed the job of rousing the household.
I’m kinda looking forward to getting back to my woods, where the morning songs of wrens and titmice begin early, but not criminally early.
2 Responses
July 9th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Robins are much in evidence in our Marietta backyard and keep us entertained (we don’t get out much). For one thing, they seem to run more than they fly. Typically, they sprint across the yard, stopping so suddenly that they tip forward from the arrested momentum, then dashing onward. Also, they are bathing fools; they are in the birdbath more frequently and for longer periods than any other bird. They seem to get great pleasure from their wallowing and splashing in the cool water.
July 11th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Hi John! When we first moved to Sagamore Hills, I had never heard so many cardinals in the mornings, and loved watching them at the feeder we’d inherited with our new house. But soon, there were just too many cardinals and they all talked too much. They do get up very early and like to sit outside (feels like inside, frankly) the windows and call to each other. Now that we have many more kinds of birds turning up, the morning cardinal symphony has eased off, thank goodness.
Just wanted to share with you that we have a nest of chimney swifts in our chimney. Rather, perched in the V of the damper, where I think it may have dropped at some point.Awfully close to our fireplace logs, actually. The babies must have survived the fall, as they all sound healthy when they are begging as one – certainly as you describe in your book “as loud as a thousand nighttime crickets.” What’s the time frame for them to fledge? Will we need to have our chimney cleaned before we figure out how to keep them from coming in again? Or is it best to provide a refuge for them once a year?
PS: This blog is so wonderful. How have I survived, not reading your writing all these years?
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