The Kellogg Columns

The gregarious and noisy goose is usually not hard to find, except on migration. Then they ascend to an invisible world, becoming citizens of heaven for a time. Sometimes you can glimpse them from earth as you scan the sky with binoculars. On the last day of March this year thousands of geese flew up the Connecticut Valley on their way north to the Arctic tundra, and I was fortunate enough to see some of them.

They were not Canada geese, but snow geese, the most abundant member of this family in North America. As more and more of the flocks passed overhead it became clear that most of the eastern population, about a million strong, was moving from the wintering grounds on the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays to Lake Champlain or the St Lawrence River. Just the fringe of the flight was passing over central New England.

If they are low enough you can hear them calling in chorus, but this was a day to only see them. As they came overhead the mid-day sun shone through the wings, and each bird shimmered with a ghostly glow, almost blanching out the black of the wing tips, which usually contrasts starkly with the snow white of most of the wing and the entire body.

They flew in formation, not the tight sharp vees of the Canada goose, but in a rounded, undulating chevron, the leading birds constantly changing and smaller groups breaking off to form their own chevrons, then recombining again. In one group of over 500 birds, there were a dozen or more separate chevrons stretched across the sky, yet close enough to be one flock. They looked like waves breaking apart as they roll upon the shore, giving rise to the nickname "wavies." This day they were silent spirits, angels or ghosts wending their way across heaven.

All is not well with the snow goose because they are too abundant. On the breeding grounds of the tundra, vast areas are denuded of vegetation as the bands of geese graze the ground, pulling up the plants by the roots. Sport hunting in the south has been expanded, but it is not enough. Perhaps the native American method of harvesting both birds and eggs on the northern nesting grounds must be expanded.

We have similar overpopulation problems with the Canada goose in New England. Last week a few of us searched for a rare pink-footed goose reported at a golf course in Dennis on Cape Cod. It turned into the classic "wild goose chase," because the bird had already left for Greenland or Iceland to join its fellows, but there still were several mated pairs of Canada geese there, unable to find an unoccupied nesting site.

Several hundred had spent the winter there, and we noticed how the fairways were literally covered with goose droppings. A golfer struck up a conversation and told how one goose had been killed by a speeding golf ball. We assured him that birders would love to see fewer of these geese, but we prize the rare ones. He was amazed that one fellow from California had flown all the way east to see the rare pink-footed goose, also in vain.

The trip was not a failure, however, as we visited the nearby bayshore and saw three flocks of another goose flying by low over the surf. This is the famous "sea goose" of Cape Cod, the brant. It is smaller and much darker than the Canada goose, its name derived from the old english form of the word "burnt," indicating the sooty color of their plumage.

The brant rarely comes inland and much of the population winters on Cape Cod, feeding on the eel grass that grows on the bottom of shallow ocean bays. This grass had a sudden massive die-off in the 1930s and the numbers of brant crashed, but both recovered nicely in the last four decades.

We watched the birds fly by out over the waves, black ghosts this time, but still bent on that distant destination. We were glad to see them. If the snow goose is a bright angel of heaven, then the brant is a dark angel of the sea, but both are welcome - in numbers we can all live with.

Migration has been slow, very slow. Day after day is bright and spring like, but winds are from the north as a fair-weather system blocks the warm fronts from moving up the east coast to bring southwest winds and tropical migrants riding those winds. As far as the birds are concerned it is no problem at all. The nights are fairly calm and the moon is full, ideal conditions for a nice, paced, easy passage. They can move a hundred miles each night and find budding trees with worms and insects waiting in the morning. A following wind only pushes them north too early.

Second Spring is well along with kinglets, blue-headed vireos, winter wrens, hermit thrushes, towhees, flickers and sapsuckers all arriving to fill the air with song and paint the fields and forests with color and movement. Even the early warblers are here by the end of April, the myrtle (yellow-rumped), the pine and the palm. But these all come from their winter quarters in the southern United States. Where are the star players from the tropics?

In true Spring the warbler family takes the stage. There are twenty-one species of tropical warblers that have New England as their destination, and all are a delight to the eye and ear. I am waiting for one of the earliest of them to arrive and I am getting impatient. The large willow tree in my back yard is already in full bud, but there is no yellow warbler to grace its drooping branches.

The yellow warbler is the standard of its family, the basic warbler that is widespread throughout North America and even has look alike cousins that remain in the tropics to breed. They are very common along streams and in wet areas with a mix of tall and small trees and low bushes. A pair has nested in my back yard each year, the male using the tall willow as its favorite feeding and singing tree. The first day he sings is the first day of third Spring, the true Spring.

At the end of April the yard was still devoid of his song, so I decided to go in search of Spring. There were many places where the yellow warbler could be found and I stopped at some of them. Everywhere the robins sang, but the loud greeting of true Spring did not reach my ears. It would be so "sweet, sweet, sweet to meet you." Those are the words some use to remember the song of the yellow warbler.

Finally I reached a place in Feeding Hills that used to be a farm run by the county. Now it is abandoned and grown over with small trees and brush as well as groves of larger trees. The invasive multiflora rose is the dominant plant. The land is very low and wet with Philo Brook running through the center, a wild eden amidst the suburbs of Springfield.  

On a May census I visit this wonderful hundred acres, and it is always loaded with yellow warblers, usually about twenty or more males all vying for the prime habitat. This offered the best chance for one male to have pushed himself harder and reached home ahead of his rivals.

A hedge of solid rose bushes lines an upper meadow, but along the way down the hill a few taller saplings line the hedge. You can look across the valley from here to see the towers of downtown Springfield and the Wilbraham hills beyond. As I paused to look at the view and bask in the bright warm sun rising above, the notes of Spring reached my ears, as clear and perfect as any ballad.

Not one, but two yellow warblers were chasing each other from tree to tree, each stopping briefly to issue the vocal challenge. This is mine, one said. No, mine the other replied. How ironic that only two birds had returned early among all the hundreds that are coming, and these two were sparring neighbors from the previous year.

There was no need to show their color, since they are almost all yellow, but the bright red streaking of their breasts was flashed as they threw up their heads and sang. Spring had come from the sunny south to claim this New England hedgerow as its home.

In May the banquet of tropical songbirds is served, in your backyard, as well as in the forest. The hummingbird feeder went up on the first day of May. There was no hummingbird that day, which was the last of nine consecutive days of sunshine and northerly winds. On May 3 clouds and showers took over and continued for five more days with the wind northeast. Migrants were held back in the face of these northerly breezes.

On May 8 the weather broke with a light south wind during the night. The next day our valley was flooded with migrants and arrivals. They practically dripped from the trees and filled the dawn air with a merry chorus. A Mother's Day walk through Robinson State Park in Agawam by members of the Allen Bird Club produced 44 tropical songbird species, including 21 kinds of warblers.

We estimated that three to four hundred individual tropical birds were encountered in the park that day, well over half being warblers. They were found in flocks of 5-30 birds, busily feeding in the tall treetops, which were only partly leafed out. It was still hard to get a good look, as we craned our necks back and scanned the high twigs for these tiny bundles of energy. They were feasting on newly hatched worms, getting ready for another night's flight farther north.

It was worth waiting for this spectacle. Especially delightful were the over thirty noisy and beautiful Baltimore orioles in the park. The nesting oriole of my yard had arrived on the 2nd, calling out his own distinctive set of clear, pure whistles over and over all day long. The oriole likes suburban yards, because they often provide the right mix of scattered tall trees with plenty of open space. If their black and orange colors grace your yard, put out oranges for them to dine on, or pieces of thread for them to weave their hanging nest.

Our eastern hummingbird, the ruby-throated, also came to many yards for the first time that day, although feeders had been hung with hope and care on May 1. To attract and keep a hummingbird, the nectar feeder should be in a mostly shady spot, filled with a mixture of one part sugar to four parts water. Do not add any coloring. Most any style feeder will do, with ease of cleaning and filling the most important feature to look for. If there are flowers in your yard or neighborhood, and woods not far away, the hummingbird will come.

On Sunday, May 2, there was a hummingbird at a feeder in our valley, but she did not come from the south. It was release day for Rufie, the rufous hummingbird that has spent the last three winters at a Northampton greenhouse. The previous two releases the bird has disappeared almost at once, presumably eager to get on its way to the far northwest.

At noon the greenhouse door was opened and her feeder was placed outside. After a few minutes she flew out and perched in a tree in the yard. Over the next hour she returned to this feeder again and again. Was she stoking up for the long journey? Apparently not, for although she was not seen the rest of the day, nor the next two, on the third day a rufous hummingbird was present at one of the feeders. Had the poor weather delayed her departure as well?

The fruit trees are in full blossom now, so hummingbirds have plenty of food in the wild, but it will not be long before more than one will be trying to defend the feeder in your yard against other hungry tongues.

A third tropical arrival to look for from your windows is the rose-breasted grosbeak. The males have black backs with patches of white, and a crimson breast sandwiched between the black head and white belly. The females are giant sparrows, streaked brown with fat bills. They sit quietly at your sunflower feeder, munching away at the seeds.

You can take a walk on the wild side and find many beautiful tropical birds in the woods, but even the tame human yard will attract some of that beauty. Have a taste at the banquet and enjoy the month of May!

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.

People like to play games. Play seems to be a universal urge for all living things, but for humans it has been raised to an art form. Every conceivable physical and mental challenge has been turned into a recreational game which people play, from trivial pursuit to golf. Even birders like to play, and finding and enjoying birds has been turned into a kind of sport, with scores and teams and rules.

The trick is to temper the game so it does not become a competitive obsession, and I think birders have done that well. In the birding game the competition is less with others than it is with yourself. The soul of the game is the score, and we like to test ourselves by seeing how many different species we can find in a lifetime, a year, a season, or a day. We restrict ourselves to a particular place where they are found, usually a state or a continent, but it can be as small as a yard.

The ultimate test of your skill and knowledge in finding birds is the "big day," when a team or person can spend up to 24 hours in the field, and try to record as many species as possible within a state. New Jersey Audubon sponsors the "World Series of Birding," a big day event in which teams from all over the world come to the state in May to participate. Our team stays in Massachusetts, so we can test our knowledge of where birds can be found as well as our identifying skills.

My teammates and I are old and wise enough to start our day at 3:30 in the morning rather than midnight, and we end at nightfall somewhere on the coast, where we enjoy a celebratory dinner. This year we tried two big days, because the score for our first one did not meet our standards. Our luck was no better the second time.

The first time, after we heard our third species of owl, we stood before dawn on the edge of a marsh in Granville, listening for the American bittern. We plan our route based on where we had found each target species in the course of our individual excursions over the previous few weeks. The bittern is rare and secretive, but one had been present here less than a week before. This day he remained silent and hidden in the marsh.

On our second try we visited another marsh in Blandford, and this time we played a tape recording of the bittern's call. This is a standard and almost always harmless way to bring a bird into view. One has to be careful and sparing with this method, because, for the bird, the mating call is a matter of life and death, not a game.

The player emitted the call of the bittern, and within seconds a large brown bird rose from the middle of the marsh and came toward us, landing in plain sight two hundred feet away in the shorter grasses. There he rose to his full three feet of height, aiming his frog catching bill to the sky, then crouched low and started to gulp in air to inflate his huge throat sack.

After three preliminary thunks, he brought forth the full sound, "thunk-a-chunk, thunk-a-chunk, thunk-a-chunk." With each "chunk" the throat deflated and the head snapped up with a mighty motion. We stood in awe for many minutes, savoring the sound and sight as he repeated it several times. The route and the schedule were forgotten for a time, but eventually we went on to the next stop.

By the end of the day we were standing on the edge of Nauset Marsh in Orleans on Cape Cod. The rain was pelting down and the sandpipers were barely visible through the wet binoculars. We had persevered to the bitter end, and it was time to dine and dry out. At the table the four of us drank a toast to our team, tested and not found wanting. The memory of an adventurous day in the field is always sweet. Nevertheless we had a name for our team, the "Bittern Enders."

When May is done, so is the Spring migration of songbirds. Most birds have now settled into the business of raising young on a plot of land they have claimed as their own for a time. The male maintains his vigilance against other young males who may still be wandering around, unattached to both a female and a site. Both parents are vigilant against predators who will rob their nest of eggs or young.

This vigilance may give rise to what may seem weird behavior at times. Many is the call that now goes in to Audubon Sanctuaries about a robin or cardinal fluttering and banging at a window over and over, so that the homeowner fears for its safety. Try not to be alarmed, because the bird is unlikely to harm itself, and it will stop doing it in a few weeks.

A large glass surface can be a menace to birds if they fly unheeding and headlong into it. Birds who only flutter and peck at a window, bumping their bodies into it, do see the window, but they also see their own reflection there. At some point they have wandered close to the window at that exact point, seeing a rival suddenly appear to challenge their ownership of the nesting area. So they revisit the spot over and over, always finding the intruder there, and always attempting to drive it away.

Last week we were dining with friends at a hotel restaurant with huge, two-story plate-glass windows that looked out upon a lawn and a heavy grove of woodland and brush. I was on the alert for birds flying by, so I immediately noticed the large dark shape that sailed by the window, close enough to reach out and touch if the glass had not been there. To my surprise, it was a crow.

Its flight went along the windows and turned the corner into a courtyard out of sight. A moment later it returned along the same path and I turned to watch it glide past and around another gradual corner to the last panel of windows, where it slowed, came even closer to the surface, and rose up to the top, just under the large overhang. Then it banged into the window and fluttered there several times before breaking off the engagement and diving down and away.

It returned to its patrol right past our position, out of sight briefly and then back to repeat exactly its amazing performance at the top of the last window panel. After several repeats the waitress came by and said, "I see you have met weird Harold. He usually does this in the morning, over and over again." It was unusual entertainment for dinner guests, but Harold was not weird. He was just doing his job.

Crows are reputed to be intelligent because they can imitate human words fairly well. Their vocal cords are capable of an amazing variety of sounds, but most of them are confined to the nest area when the male and female greet each other. They have a larger cousin, the raven, and a slightly smaller one, the fish crow, both wholly black, and both equally adept at strange sounds. They are present in our area, but are not so common as the crow. If you know their normal calls, you can tell them all apart.

This year some crows have been coming to my suet feeders for the first time, clinging to the small vinyl holder with wings beating furiously for balance. This is another weird but welcome behavior. Crows are opportunistic feeders and will eat anything, including nestlings.

That is why you will often see a blackbird chasing a crow now, diving on its back to drive it away from the nest site. Kingbirds got their name from just such bold attacks on any passing bird, and they have the perfect, loud scolding call to go with this habit. Probably all species do this occasionally.

One morning a clear single note was loudly repeated outside my window. When I went out, there was the crow on a perch eyeing the suet, but nearby was a scolding oriole. Usually an oriole chatters when alarmed, but this single whistle note was new to me. The crow took off and was followed by the oriole, diving on him as he flew. If the crow can manage a swinging suet feeder, he may be able to hang on to the orioles usually unassailable nest.

There is no such thing as a weird bird, only clever behaviors you have not yet observed or understood.

The days are long now and at noon the sun is high in the sky, another cycle of new life granted to the northern earth. If you are outdoors a lot, you understand why ancient peoples prayed to the life-giving sun as well as the planet and plants that bathe in its glory.

There is a sign on the way from Colebrook to Pittsburg, New Hampshire announcing that you are crossing the 45th parallel, the halfway point between the equator (zero) and the north pole (90-degree line). Here near the Canadian border you find a climate and vegetation called "boreal," typical of northern or mountainous regions.

This was the first ever bird club outing to this area, and as leader I had been hoping for decent weather. Those mountain gods do not listen to prayers, but the day was warm, the winds calm, and the bugs few.

The sun rises even earlier here, but does not rise as high. The extra time of daylight comes from its rising and setting farther north. It was already well past dawn when we assembled outside our lodging at 5:30 a.m., but soon we were at a place called East Inlet. The spruce and balsam forest surrounded a small pond where a few fishermen launch their boats. Around us on all sides were vistas of forested hills, no sign of habitation, and no jets flying overhead.

We were here to search especially for four species that reside all year in these boreal forests, one grouse, one jay, one woodpecker, and a chickadee. The first one we found is aptly named, the boreal chickadee. We heard the softer, more whiny notes of this northern cousin of our familiar black-capped chickadee, and followed them to the trees where two birds fed.

This species used to be called the brown-headed chickadee, and we could see why. It is a chunkier bird than our black-cap, but has the same friendly disposition. The two birds ignored our presence as they fed and followed each other from branch to branch in the small trees.

Our caravan of four cars wound slowly along the dirt logging roads, stopping at likely spots to listen and look. We found some of the tropical thrushes, flycatchers and warblers that pass through southern New England on the way to these boreal nesting grounds.

Three times a grouse was encountered on the side of the road, but each time it proved to be a ruffed grouse, which is a common species nesting throughout the Northeast. The much rarer spruce grouse we hoped to see is restricted to these forests and is not so abundant. Either one is secretive and wary, staying in the thick underbrush as much as it can.

The next day we drove south to the White Mountain National Forest and climbed a trail up the side of Mt. Jefferson in the Presidential Range. Here the forest is thick and not recently logged. At about the 4000-foot elevation the trees open up to a vista of the slopes below and above.

We sat on a huge rock carved by the wind and rain, hoping to see the extremely rare Bicknell's thrush in the small stunted trees this bird favors. The wind blew so hard on this exposed part of the mountain that the thrushes stayed down and hidden in the tangle of brush. Time was also running out on our chance to see any of the other three target species. Then fortune smiled on us.

Suddenly two large birds appeared in the low dead spruces next to the rock. They peered at us and poked at their perches, expecting a handout of chips. It was the famous gray jay of the high boreal forests. Even here in these haunts where they stay year round they are quite scarce, but they are also tame and often visit campgrounds or picnic areas to beg for food. After a few mild whistles and murmurs of disappointment at our stinginess, they moved away.

They were replaced in these same trees a few moments later by a bird that is always hard to find, the black-backed woodpecker. It was a male with a bright yellow crown patch contrasting with the jet-black back. We held our breath and enjoyed this special gift from the mountain gods. This day they were not as fickle as they usually are.

For most species the frenzy of singing has subsided a bit. Only the very tardy and very early are still spilling their hearts out. The mockingbird was sorely missed while he raised his first brood, but now he has returned to his perches, sending out a cascade of notes in endless enthusiasm.

He has talent and brass to spare, but what of his mate? She may be hidden and demur, but she has a skill to match his singing voice. While he was quiet for a time, she was indulging an instinct for nesting. Sometimes men pretend not to understand this nesting drive, but we must admit it to be as marvelous and necessary as any manly pursuit.

The male bird helps a lot in building the nest, but for most species the female is the fine craftswoman. He may fetch and carry, but she does the weaving and the final touches. She does it out of sight for the sake of her young, choosing the safest place she can find, but others cannot. It may be deep in the thickest bush, high in the tallest tree, buried on the forest floor, or dug in the hardest wood.

When all her endeavors fail and the nest is found, then desperate measures are employed. During a long walk on the Appalachian Trail in Tyringham last weekend, many male ovenbirds were belting out their loud two note song around us. Suddenly an ovenbird flew up from near the trail only a few feet from us. It began chattering its harsh call note in rapid succession, fluttering along the ground and spreading its wings. A second joined in this display, trying to distract us from the nearby nest.

She had worked hard to build a small structure beneath the leaf and needle litter, and was not about to let it be lost to marauding mammals without a struggle. This bird gets its very name from the nest it builds, which looks like a small oven, arched over with a roof and a tiny side opening. The ground nest is the easiest for predators to find when a strange scent is left at its door, so we quickly walked on without searching.

The easiest nest to both find and protect is the tree cavity, and we can even help provide places for the few species that use this technique. I made a check of the sixteen boxes scattered throughout the fields behind my house the other day and found all were occupied.

The first one was a used bluebird nest. I suspected they were done with the first brood when the male started singing again in the yard. The bluebird is a neat nest builder, just a woven layer of grasses at the bottom of the box. A second pair of bluebirds was just beginning in another box where three pale blue eggs were laid.

Twelve nests were tree swallows in various stages of incubation and hatching. Five of these contained fully feathered young all flattened down into the cup, the edges of their yellow bills showing brightly. When a parent comes, they lift and open, but to my peering eyes they are still and shut. One nest had naked birds just hatched, hardly visible within the several large fluffy feathers the tree swallow always steals from larger birds to decorate its home.

Six nests had adults sitting on eggs, as quiet and subdued as a bird ever is. When a bird first enters its nest it makes a few twists and turns rocks its breast before settling down in picture perfect comfort. Once down, they are reluctant to leave their settled estate. Except for the extra feathers, the nest is similar to the bluebird's nest, but the swallow is poor housekeeper. When these birds leave the nest it will be a fouled and encrusted mess.

The last two boxes had house wrens, one with young crouched down in a tiny grass cup surrounded by woody twigs. Their heads are smack up against the roof, because the wren fills the entire cavity with these twigs. This tiny comic bird works twigs through the opening that are twice its own length. The second box had a nest just finished without eggs, and the chattering couple were close by, worried for their new creation.

Have no fear little ones. I may be a male, but I have learned not to interfere with the nesting instinct.

I lifted the cover off the large box and peered over the edge. There had been no rustling or other signs of life from inside. What it contained was a mystery, although the little kestrel pair had been perching here and flying about the field for two months. The box was twelve feet high and set in the center of an eight-acre hayfield. It was the jewel in a crown of several smaller houses scattered through the field.

The American kestrel is a rare nester in New England, and becoming rarer every year because of a loss of grasslands. Would this pair nest and raise young in my field? I was about to find out. The insides of the box were coated with a white stucco material, a solid splat from four little eating machines huddled in the bottom of the box staring back at me. Their black eyes shown brightly and no precious opal could have raised my spirits more.

The bird bander had asked me how far along these babies might be, and now I could tell him that they were fully feathered. We arranged for him to visit in five days. He was busy until then climbing up on osprey nests to band their young. Two years ago the young ospreys were dying in the nests for lack of food, but now for the second straight year there is plenty of fish to eat.

The famous peregrine falcons of Springfield were also banded as youngsters and their progeny had received the little metal bracelets when still in the nest. Now these four little kestrels were going to get their numbers too. Compared to the previous times my friend had come to band young goshawks, this was going to be easy. Then a helper had to climb tall trees, dodge diving parents, and grab large frightened birds with strong, sharp talons.

Despite the new radio technologies, the aluminum band affixed to a leg remains the best way to identify birds and discover where they go when they leave the breeding site. You must have a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to do this.

There were only three young in the nest when we revisited the box five days later. We placed them in a covered canvas bag and brought them down to be weighed. They were held firmly around the lower body to keep the wings from flapping and inserted into a can head first. Their yellow legs were left sticking out and the band was clamped on. Several times they called loudly, a single repeated note, lac-lac-lac-lac-lac.

Then they were held by those legs in the open and pictures were taken. The colors were striking reds, blues, grays and whites. One had large white spots in the red tail, which the others lacked. Two were males with bluish backs and one was female sporting a barred reddish back. They held themselves upright proudly and spread their wings, sometimes trying to bite the fingers that held them. Then they went back in the box.

One of us had seen the fourth bird fluttering on the ground as we entered the field, so we walked slowly through the mowed edge and the taller hay trying to find it. It took a while, but finally we found another female crouched in the grass.

She weighed 10% less than the others, but was the most feathered and feisty of all, clamping on to a finger with her sharp bill and refusing to let go. Once they leave the nest and start moving around they shed baby fat quickly and the parents are hard pressed to locate their young and keep them fed. This one was not quite ready to be on her own, unable to fly, so we popped her back in the box too.

We had done all we could to help these little falcons. They face a difficult future, since over half of all birds die in the first year. The few bands that are returned when this happens will help tell what are the greatest dangers to their survival, and perhaps we would then know what to do to help them further. Otherwise their fate would remain a mystery, as so much of the life and fate of flying creatures is.

Most small songbirds mature quickly. Once fledged from the nest, they follow their parents around for a short while begging food. Sometimes the female begins a second clutch of eggs while the male continues to look after the first brood. Eventually the young are left to fend for themselves, and many are unsuccessful. They must learn to find food and avoid becoming food in short order, and many also need to master a long harrowing migration to a warmer locale and a return trip to the hatching home.

Sometimes the first brood helps to feed the second set of fledglings, but most wait until the following spring to try parenting. The first-year bird must then learn how to select a nest site and attract or choose a mate. A daunting task also for young people, who often put off settling down in favor of travel or adventure.

For some bird species the maturing process is relatively lengthy, and some embark on what amounts to a grand tour. For example, seabirds are great wanderers, especially a family of seabirds known as terns. This is a large family of fancy flyers, perhaps more graceful than any other group of birds. They vary greatly in size, but all share the delicate proportions that belie a hidden power and endurance.

Usually we find terns on the coast, and in southern New England there are common, least and roseate tern colonies wherever sandy beaches, bars and islands are available. These colonies are not thriving, but they are at least holding on despite competition from large aggressive gulls and bullying beachgoers.

A visit to a nearby place called Sandy Point at the mouth of New Haven harbor will give you close looks at common and least terns. If they are not sitting on the nest scrape, they are resting in small groups on the water's edge or flying by just off the beach searching for fish. Seeing one, they will dive into the water and pluck it out to eat or bring to their young. You will enjoy watching this jaunty, noisy white bird with the black cap.

Later in the fall birds hatched this spring will fly with the adults to wintering grounds in South America, but they will not come back at all the following spring. Before attaining the plumage and instinct to breed, they will spend a year loafing on foreign beaches, surfing the waters and soaking up the sun. What youth wouldn't enjoy such a dream life?

One species of tern has evolved a truly extraordinary migration pattern. It nests on offshore islands from Maine to the very high Arctic, then travels east across the ocean to Europe, then south along the African coast to the shores of Antarctica. No other species of bird migrates so far. See what I meant about endurance and power? That describes the Arctic tern.

The first year Arctic terns seem to leisurely move north in stages. Some years they are found by the hundreds in June and July on the New England coast. They almost always migrate offshore, but very occasionally a few will be found inland during or after storms.

On June 17 a rainstorm went through New England and the next day a birder found a single Arctic tern on the Connecticut River in Holyoke. It lacked the complete black cap of an adult. This bird had probably been born a year ago in North America, visited four other continents, crossed oceans and gulfs, and fished and flew on innumerable beaches and bays. Now it sat on a dead branch at the edge of the "long tidal river" and patrolled the waters above the Holyoke dam.

It is still there as I write this, and many birders in western Massachusetts have now visited this spot and marveled at this once in a lifetime sight. The bird sits on its branch and preens contentedly for up to an hour, then spreads its long, pointed wings and embarks on a short fishing excursion over clear river waters. It seems like a winged apparition, with its wings a pale ghostly gray and its body a bright white. Only the black on the back of its head relieves this mystical impression.

For this young tern it was just another exotic stop on its grand tour of the world.