"Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink..."

Do you remember that line from the poem "Robert of Lincoln," by William Cullen Bryant? I learned it when I was in the fourth grade, and it always stuck with me. When I saw these shots of the Bobolinks from the "rejected June" photos, that line kept running through my head...

"...Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,

Spink, spank, spink..."

A male Bobolink in the High Meadow at Voice of America (VOA) Park

Since I was going back to my childhood with this post, I pulled out my first field guide—"Teach-Me about Birds, Flash Cards in full color" to see how they described the Bobolink's unique and beautiful song. Their description is spot on: "A bubbling series of musical notes given in flight or from a perch." It's simple and perfect...."a bubbling series of musical notes..."

A female Bobolink is pretty. Just like a cardinal, she has that "understated elegance."

I like this photo because it clearly shows his pointy tail feathers!

...you can see those pointy tail feathers just a bit here, but this shot really emphasizes his strong feet and legs. For his size, they really are beefy!

"When you can pipe that merry old strain,

Robert of Lincoln, come back again."

I wanted to find the poem, so I looked it up and found a free eBook that has it. Click here for the online version of the book "Poems That Every Child Should Know—A Selection of the Best Poems of all Time for Young People," edited by Mary E. Burt (1906)

Robert of Lincoln
by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

Merrily swinging on brier and weed,
Near to the nest of his little dame,
Over the mountain-side or mead,
Robert of Lincoln is telling his name:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Snug and safe is that nest of ours,
Hidden among the summer flowers,
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest,
Wearing a bright black wedding-coat;
White are his shoulders and white his crest
Hear him call in his merry note:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Look, what a nice coat is mine.
Sure there was never a bird so fine.
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife,
Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,
Passing at home a patient life,
Broods in the grass while her husband sings,
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Brood, kind creature; you need not fear
Thieves and robbers while I am here.
Chee, chee, chee.

Modest and shy as a nun is she;
One weak chirp is her only note.
Braggart and prince of braggarts is he,
Pouring boasts from his little throat:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Never was I afraid of man;
Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can!
Chee, chee, chee.

Six white eggs on a bed of hay,
Flecked with purple, a pretty sight!
There as the mother sits all day,
Robert is singing with all his might:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Nice good wife, that never goes out,
Keeping house while I frolic about.
Chee, chee, chee.

Soon as the little ones chip the shell,
Six wide mouths are open for food;
Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,
Gathering seeds for the hungry brood.
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
This new life is likely to be
Hard for a gay young fellow like me.
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln at length is made
Sober with work, and silent with care;
Off is his holiday garment laid,
Half forgotten that merry air:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Nobody knows but my mate and I
Where our nest and out nestlings lie.
Chee, chee, chee.

Summer wanes; the children are grown;
Fun and frolic no more he knows;
Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone;
Off he flies, and we sing as he goes:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
When you can pipe that merry old strain,
Robert of Lincoln, come back again.
Chee, chee, chee.

Clouded Sulphur on Ironweed...on Labor Day!

Rick and I headed up to Fort Ancient today for a bit of birding, but when we arrived we found locked gates...d'oh! We forgot Fort Ancient is close on National Holidays. We forgot last year too, pulling up to the same locked gates. Apparently we like to bird on Labor Day, especially at Fort Ancient. Hopefully next year we'll remember. Last year we ended up birding the Little Miami River where it runs 240 feet below Fort Ancient (click here for last year's Labor Day/chickadee post), but this year we opted for VOA Park with hopes of finding Eastern Meadowlarks and molting Bobolinks. Birds were a bit scarce in the parched fields today, but butterflies were all around, floating and drifting from flower to flower, nectaring and sunning in the heat of the day.

Yellow on purple...yum!

A Clouded Sulphur nectars on Ironweed.

...the sulphur takes flight.

I love the action in the wings as the sulphur prepares for flight.

I'm guessing this fellow is a Clouded Sulphur. He has a touch of orange on his wings, but he seems mostly yellow. Orange Sulphurs are also common here, and I read they often hybridize with Clouded Sulphurs.

...much of the meadow was parched and brown due to the intense heat and lack of rain we've had this summer, which made the bright yellow of the sulphur against the deep purple of the ironweed even more striking.

Matty points out an Eastern Meadowlark as Rick watches. They didn't know I was watching them instead of the bird!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day!

The molt goes on...

Birding at Voice of America (VOA) Park near Mason, OH

..continued from a post last week on a male Bobolink molting into his Basic non-breeding plumage at VOA Park.

I stopped by the park late friday afternoon to see how far along the male Bobolinks were in their molts. It had only been five days since I was last there, but boy had they changed!

He has lost almost 50% of his black

feathers. The change is fairly quick!

If you look closely, you can see he is losing

the pigment in his bill. It's mottled black now.

Check my other side...I'm quite handsome in

my "tortie-shell transition phase."

He will molt all of his feathers including flight and

tail feathers. He does not lose them all at once,

so he is never rendered completely flightless

Click here for a post earlier this summer showing a male Bobolink in full breeding plumage.

While walking through the mowed areas of the meadow, I heard three Henslow's Sparrows in the middle...and a single Henslow's Sparrow in the area closest to the little parking spot by the big tree. There were also five Willow Flycatchers hawking insects using the big tree as a base. If you want to learn more about the Henslow's Sparrows of VOA, head over to my friend's new blog, Everybody Funny. He surveyed VOA from 2001 to 2007 weekly and accumulated a lot of research on the Henslow's Sparrows nesting there.

Male Bobolink starting to molt into his non-breeding Basic plumage

Birding at Voice of America (VOA) Park near Mason, OH

...continued from the Henslow's Sparrow post.
Before fall migration coaxes Bobolinks south to their wintering grounds, male Bobolinks start molting into non-breeding Basic plumage. It’s almost like the males shed their formal “tuxedos” for more relaxed and casual traveling clothes. The following male Bobolink is just starting to molt into his Basic plumage. By the time he’s ready to fly south, he will more closely resemble the understated females.

Looking a little scruffy, this male Bobolink

has started molting into his Basic plumage.

He was singing just as sweetly, but maybe

not quite as often as earlier this summer.

He did a lot of calling instead.

In addition to their molt into non-breeding

plumage, male Bobolinks will lose the

dark pigmentation in their bills.

He looks like he's ready to fly south right now!

A female Bobolink perched on a sapling--her

warm caramels and browns are every bit

as appealing as the male's flashy summer

tuxedo. In the fall, the male Bobolink

takes on the female's casual colors.

Sitting in the fading light, the female was gorgeous.

I need to go back and capture her in full sunlight.

Click here for an older post showing a male Bobolink in complete breeding plumage.

In our town, where there are Bobolinks, there usually are Meadowlarks…

…and the High Meadow at Voice of America (VOA) Park was no exception. After I had calmed down a bit over the beautiful music of the Bobolinks (click here for the Bobolink post), I started paying attention to the calls of the Eastern Meadowlarks. I waited for their pretty little song, but they were more intent on issuing that buzzy, harsh call instead. There were three males calling nonstop from different posts in the surrounding fields, sometimes staying very close to a female. This male was especially vocal and would fly between his post in the field and the top of a tree by the gravel road.



Beak Bit
Unlike Bobolinks who are long-distance migrants and make VOA their home only from April through October, Eastern Meadowlarks are short-distance migrants and can be found year-round at the park. But the birds you see perched amid falling snowflakes in the winter may not be the same birds braving the heat in the summer. Many of our wintering meadowlarks will migrate further north for the breeding season and will be replaced by more southern birds completing their short-distance migration.

Bobolinks at Voice of America (VOA) Park

Sunday evening as I stepped out of my car, I heard a bubbly, melodic, and slightly techno-sounding twittering coming from the tall grasses all around me. Strangely enough, the sound was reminiscent of R2D2 from Star Wars, and although not particularly loud, it was commanding (almost magical) and made me stop and strain to hear every note rising through the meadow. Slowly memories of the call from my bird song CDs started surfacing in my mind and “Bobolink song!” burst forth in that flurry of recognition we all know and love.




I had seen Bobolinks at VOA before, even earlier this spring, but never within earshot…and never in the High Meadow. Tonight was my first trip to this area. I didn’t even know this part of the park existed until a Cincinnati birder (thanks, Mike!) filled me in on its location. After taking in all the green of the large meadow, I started scanning the horizon looking for the familiar profile of the bird, but I couldn’t find one. I would hear the call bubble up in front of me, then to the left…then to the right, and with each new repetition I would freeze and just listen, slowing down my mind…sinking into each note. Slowly I realized they were hidden in the deep green, watching me through the endless thin blades.


Finally, one flew out of the thick grasses and onto a small snag. This meadow truly was a sea of grass with only saplings sticking up here and there. Repeatedly, I would see a Meadowlark grab one…then a Bobolink…and every now and then a Red-winged Blackbird would sneak in too, but when it came to song the Bobolink had no competition.


After doing a bit of research at home, I found many others had been captivated by his song over the years too. Mary Deinlein, from “The Prairie Home Companion,” writes

Their song has been vividly described as "a bubbling delirium of ecstatic music that flows from the gifted throat of the bird like sparkling champagne," "a mad, reckless song-fantasia, and outbreak of pent-up, irrepressible glee," and as "a tinkle of fairy music, like the strains of an old Greek harp."

Click here for a link to this article on the Smithsonian National Zoological Park website. It is  packed with lots of Bobolink facts and tidbits.

Beak Bit
The Bobolink’s beautiful, delicate song masks his incredible strength and endurance. Of all the neotropical migrants, the Bobolink has one of the longest migration routes, requiring almost 6,000 miles of hazardous flight time to reach their summer breeding grounds! This fellow flies all the way from Argentina to the northern United States and Canada (in Cincinnati, we must be at the very bottom of their breeding grounds…lucky us!). Like many birds, Bobolinks use the stars, sun, and earth-bound landmarks to help guide them north, but Bobolinks also have a little extra help. They have small quantities of the magnetic mineral magnetite in the tissues of their nasal cavity. This mineral helps the birds feel the earth’s magnetic field, working like a compass pointed north! Experience also helps the bird wing its way north. Miyoko Chu (from Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology) writes in a podcast on Birdnotes,  

“a nine-year-old Bobolink will have flown a distance equivalent to four and half times around the earth.”

Note: If you want to find Bobolinks, Meadowlarks, Savannah Sparrows, Vesper Sparrows, and even Henslow’s Sparrows in Cincinnati, head over to the High Meadow at VOA. The High Meadow is just past “Wiggly Field” (the special dog area) and marked with an Audubon’s “Important Bird Area” sign. Follow the one-lane gravel road that picks up after the dog park to find this amazing stretch of grassland—and be inspired by the songs of the prairie birds.

A very sweet Mallard couple…

…we are still stuck on last Saturday at Voice of America Park! It was such a beautiful day and the sun was so bright it made everything look extra nice, which meant I couldn’t stop clicking that camera (since then it's been horribly rainy and cold, so it's a good thing I did). This male Mallard was at the first turn in the lake. I don’t know if he thought he was hiding in the cattails, but with the sun intensifying the beautiful jewel tones in his feathers, he couldn’t have been more conspicuous, however, the lovely female was practically hidden in the reeds, and it wasn’t until she moved out into the open that we noticed her.

The males are such "dudes" with their flashy emerald 

heads, but there is something so sweet and beautiful 

in the female's face and camouflaged plumage.

Also on the lake was a small flock of American Coots swimming around like they owned the place. They were very entertaining and also very good at synchronized swimming. Near them was a cute little Pied-billed Grebe, diving, disappearing and resurfacing over and over. So cute…

I always enjoy scanning an empty pond looking for 

a solitary Pied-billed Grebe doing his diving thing! This 

guy, however, was sharing his space with the coots.

…a little later, a Horned Grebe showed up, just stopping off for a rest on his long journey north. I love it when I catch migrants passing through. It’s so exciting. These birds have so many miles to cover and so much to do when they arrive, I can’t help but marvel at them.

Not the best photo, but you can just make out 

his red eye and almost see his "horned" feathers.

Finally, when we were leaving, I noticed a small 

flock of Blue-winged Teal on the pond next to the 

lake. Not the best photo, but good enough for ID.

…and last but not least, a photo of Rick, the Spotter. I took this photo shortly before he spotted a Bobolink (our first of the year). He didn't know he was being photographed. With camera in hand, I'm slowly turning into a birding paparazzi.

Hi Spotman!