Overwhelmed by Bobolinks

They say you should pause and smell the flowers, but there are other senses to consider. Birds do not have that heart rending aroma, but their song and sight can take you to a momentary high. There is no downside to this natural joy, although you can't remain there forever.

Just being in the field before dawn on a delightful morning in May is pleasant enough. I was there for the entire day, walking the woods and fields to count every bird for the annual census of the spring migration in central Hampden County. Members of the Allen Bird Club have been doing this census every year since 1963.

The first walk was along South Provin Mountain in Agawam just as the sun was bathing the eastern slopes with the beginning rays of the day. The red-eyed vireos sang all around me, two or three heard at any one time. This abundant tropical species is small, as the warblers are, and they were also mostly hidden in the treetops. Over the next hour I made three jaunts on and along this wooded ridge and recorded 15 warbler species, three flycatchers, three vireos, four thrushes, plus the scarlet tanager, roes-breasted grosbeak, and Baltimore oriole.

All of these were tropical species that had migrated over a thousand miles during the previous two weeks, stopping here on this New England hillside. The warm sun and budding trees must have reminded them of their southern homes. I could hear the warblers sing their delicate courting songs, and sometimes I saw them as they poked their tiny bills into the foliage, finding the just hatched worms.

However, tropical birds are not just hidden in the forest. A few come to suburban yards, and one is hooked on grass. This is the bobolink, which every year makes a round trip of 4000 miles from the grasses of Argentina to the grasses of America.

Natural grasslands provide forage or hay for livestock. Early people in New England found grasslands along the coast or in river bottoms, and used these areas for their crops, enhancing them with deliberate burning. European settlers began clearing all the forests immediately. Now the trees have returned and crops are grown only in the richer valley soils. Hay is no longer the major crop, and the days of bringing it in with pitchfork and sweat are no more. Grass is now only the sterile, decorative lawn.

Even the few hayfields that persist are managed for maximum protein. Non-native grasses that grow and blossom quickly are planted, so that they may be mowed early and often. The native, warm weather grasses that blossom later are scorned.

There is a hayfield in Agawam that appears to have native grasses in abundance. There you can find the tropical bobolink. This bird has been in New England for a long time, but the clearing of the forest for hay allowed it to proliferate. Now it is scarce and scattered.

By afternoon on my marathon day, the knees were sore and the feet weary, but I strode out into this grassy field, flushing a couple of savannah sparrows, just what I was looking for. Something stopped me from rushing back to the car, and I was drawn out into the middle of the field, slowing to a stroll. I was mesmerized by the endless blue sky overhead and the rich green floor stretching out on all sides beneath.

I heard a few bobolinks calling and saw two males flutter across the field to sit on a wire fence. Their glossy black bodies were topped with bright white wing patches and a creamy yellow crown, like a halo of sun brightening the night. I expected them, but nothing prepared me for the treat I was about to experience. Suddenly the air was filled with bobolinks. They rose from their secret recesses in the grass and fluttered about me on stiff wings, each calling incessantly.

My senses reeled with the crescendo of song around me as thirty or more bobolinks belted out their interminable, bubbly song. They seemed like happy angels in heaven, taking on an elfin form to lift the spirit of the weary being bound to earth. I stood transfixed, and it was long before I could retire from that field of grass and return to the task at hand.