Redstart Riot - American Redstarts

Yesterday was a hard day. I was grieving the loss of  our little dog, Easy. Someday, I'll tell about that, but for today, I can't. I'm just too raw. After we buried her, I went off to Weed For Dollars to get my head out of some of the pain. I hoped that I would see some birds or beasts that might help to heal my broken heart. Nature never disappoints me; it was a terrific birding day here in The Burg. I'm only showing the American Redstarts for this post as to show all of what I saw would be just plain gushing. My father always used to tell me that anything worth doing was worth doing to excess. I subscribe to that most of the time, but if I showed the whole day's birds, you'd all think I'd gone on a birding bender to drown my sorrows and you would worry about me.

   At Alliquippa, here in Phippsburg, along the road is a hedgerow. It's an enormous, sensuous tangle of honeysuckle, lilacs, sumac and wild black cherry, all in bloom right now at once. The fragrance is deafening, yes, deafening. You heard me right. It's like trying to breath honey, an elixir of the sweetest, vanilla scented kind. Standing in it, I was awash with the perfume and couldn't quite tell if the buzzing I heard was the honey bees working or that feeling that precedes a faint or when you eat too much frosting and your fillings sing. The Cat birds were rustling and calling from within and there must have been at least six American Redstarts, males and females. They worked that area of heaven on earth for at least six hours. I left long before they did. I did get photographs of everybody, which was no easy feat trying to shoot in a thicket with high contrast of dark and light and hoppy flitty birds. The males called unrelentingly to the females that chatted back, jumping coyly ahead and out of sight whenever the males got close. I could have stayed there for many hours working for perfect shots. It was the kind of focus I so desperately needed to be able to apply to stop myself from sobbing uncontrollably, and a couple of times, I did anyway. The birds didn't care. They kept moving, darting, calling and enticing me to them. They lifted me from my despair up into the sky, up into the air. 

Honey bees love the wild black cherry blossoms. Those trees get that gnarly, black virus that mutates their branches and makes them hideous in the winter, as if they are festooned with gobs of tar. It would be tempting to hack them all down, but look who lives on the blossoms. 

American Redstarts are a type of wood-warbler. They are migratory and glean insects from the trees. This yellow one is the lady. The singer below is the male. They are about 5" long from head to tail.

For the couple of hours I worked for photographs of these guys, a male perched out of the canopy of leaves only this once.

American Redstart

This is an American Redstart. It is either a first year bird, or a female. I participate in a Maine Audubon on-line list service. Members enter sightings of birds around the state to a web service which in turn, distributes the information to participants. Part of the objective is to give birders locations of rare or unusual birds in a timely fashion so that they can jump into their vehicles and go have looks for themselves. It's kind of a birders tornado chasing service. I have gone to see birds based on the information provided myself. I have also developed some fun and interesting friends this way. Most of these relationships are on-line only, but none the less richer. I learn a tremendous amount from reading the posts folks submit. One of the beauties of the posts is that it gives a reader a finger on the pulse of local birds. By paying attention to what birds are being seen on a daily basis, a reader can have a pretty good idea of what is around. Even the ordinary can be useful. Canada Geese, for example, are not around in the winter where there isn't open water. I've had January 1st sightings of Canada Geese because I live on the ocean in a cove that is shallow, but does not freeze (Oh please, don't let THIS be the year!).  I have also learned from reading the list serve posts that other geese that are rare often hang out with Canadas. So, when I see Canadas, I always look to see who's in the gaggle with them. I haven't seen anything unusual, but often people do. Lately, there have been rare Pink Footed Geese seen in Cumberland. Many people have come to Maine to see them based on the information provided on 'the list.' I have learned that some birds are not necessarily rare, but the time of year of a sighting can be very rare. This Redstart is a good example. I posted a question about it on the list serve and recieved all kinds of responses, many of them pointing out how rare it is to see them this late in the year here. Usually, they have all migrated. My identification of the species was confirmed by the list members, but not whether or not it was female or 1st year. Sometimes, it can be frustrating to a beginner like me when the most knowledgable people around, who are on 'the list,' disagree about an identification.
     At first, I found this urksome. Now, I'm sort of glad because that means that there is room at the table for a rookie. I have posted here a lot of shots of this bird for identification reasons, in case someone doesn't believe me, or wants to pick a fight. Birding people can be like that. At one point, there were three of these birds here all at once. These photos could be different birds, actually. They were very cute and spritely, hopping quickly from branch to branch and then dissappearing. This made it difficult to photograph them, even though I saw them frequently over a four day stretch. This is another reason I posted all of these shots. I am using these darling birds as pawns to pat myself on the back.