The Magnificent Acre - Butchie Update & Common Yellowthroat

These Common Yellowthroats were on The Magnificent Acre July 24, 2010. The male and female were together in the alder scrub. There is a strip of shrubs on the west side of the vast salt marsh. It seems to be almost a giant net 'catching' birds when they cross the marsh. The strip of alders, honeysuckle and choke cherries is backed by the road. After crossing the marsh, the birds land in the small trees before crossing the road. I can sit in my car listening to the radio and just wait for them. But, why do that when I can sneak around trying to find them while suffering mosquitoes and walking amongst the Poison Ivy? That's how I roll!

    I visited "The Magnificent Acre" yesterday to check up on The Butchie Boys. When I arrived at the nest, my hear sank. "Oh no! They've flown away and I missed the send off!" I lamented aloud to no one,  my words trailing off into the woods. I wondered how I could have been so dense as to miss a huge cue that they were taking off. Since their parents had been spending so much time enjoying the Totman Cove Take-Out, they were not taking fresh meat to the boys. That meant that the boys would be hungry, thus provoked to try to fly.
     But, then, I saw them. They were sitting up in the tree away from the nest. They looked like big, chocolate lumps hidden in the White pine boughs. It was difficult to photograph them, or even get a clear view due to the pine needles.They had each moved far enough out onto the limbs that if a good wind comes up, they'll plummet to the ground onto their fat cans. The two of them are bigger now than their Mom, Madame Butchie. Eaglets surpass their parents' size just before they fledge. They've been sitting around not moving while getting fatter and fatter gorging on fish and chips delivered.
     When I watch T.V. shows on obesity in children, I'm appalled by the co-dependencies of the parents. After all, an obese child is being supplied with lousy, pork-butt producing food by its parents. They don't get there on their own, at least not to start with most of the time (there are some disorders where children are obese unrelated to consumption). Watching these eagles balloon over the past month has made me realize that this may be more of a natural phenomenon than I have realized. We are humans. One thing that separates us from the animal kingdom is that we ascribe values to end results, like socially unacceptable,fat children.
     Eagles fatten up because when they leave the nest, they don't have hunting skills, yet. The fat has to carry them until they get good at catching food or spotting, say a dead seal carcass. So, maybe there is some valuable outcome for rotund children leaving home barely able to walk. Hopefully, the Butchie Boys will be chubby enough to one day fly down the Kennebec River for dinner at the Totman Cove Take-Out. I'll be open and learning to be less judgemental.

  This is The Butchie Boys' junk food diet remains. Think of it like fast food wrappers lying around a sofa. Under the nest were these uneaten parts of a Herring gull. The gull would have been caught and brought to the boys by the parents. The bone was the leg (I think). Birds have hollow bones to lighten them for flying. There were other bits of bone around and loads of feathers.

THE END.

(No, I mean it, literally the end of the Herring Gull)

Uncommonly Common - Common Yellowthroat

Today, while I was supposed be folding laundry and paying bills to make use of a rainy indoor day, I was stalking birds. If you don't think it was wet, look at these photos. You'll see the water dripping from the Spruce needles. I was concentrating on a fledgling Chipping sparrow whose parent was feeding it. I was not moving, in spite of the rain because I wanted the adult Chippie to come along so I could photograph the feeding (I was successful and will post that later). In the mean time, this Common Yellowthroat warbler almost landed in my lap. That will give you an idea of how still I had been and for how long. Black flies like this same kind of weather,too. I had to let them bite me. They especially like going for the area around the eyes. So, now I look like a boxer on the wrong end of a hard right-left combo punch. Maybe I could borrow a mask from one of these little guys. Common Yellowthroats are just that: common. However, they are not so often seen because they are secretive and favor thick brushy areas. They are insect eaters and prolific breeders. The females are yellowish all over and don't have the black head nor this snazzy mask. I've seen male Yellowthroats before, but never this close. It was only about fifteen feet from my face! This New World wood warbler is migratory wintering in Central and South America. Seems like there should be more to say about a little bird that's this flashy but that's really all there is to it. Now, I must conduct a thorough tick check as I think I feel something crawling on me inside my clothes. David is not home, so he is neither the source of the sensation nor the solution.

Thanks to David Allen Sibley, The Sibley Guide To Birds, Wikipedia and allaboutbirds.com for some of the information.