The Kellogg Columns

There is a researcher at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley who captures the black-capped chickadees visiting the feeders in her yard and bands them. This way she can identify individuals and learn how they interact. She can also tell how many different birds come to the feeders, and surprisingly there are quite a few.

I usually count four or five chickadees at my feeder, but based on the banding studies, there are probably many more individuals that visit. At any one time we probably see only a small fraction of our feeder visitors. Likely they make the rounds in the neighborhood, comparing the fare.

When the recent snowstorms finally arrived, more birds should have come to the feeders, but at first the opposite seemed to be true. Was this because birds are scarce in general this winter, as the low numbers on the Christmas counts indicated? Or did many small birds succumb to the snow and cold?

Now in the last week, more birds have been coming to feed. There are more than a dozen tree sparrows at any one time, eight white-throated sparrows, three song sparrows, about twenty juncos, and even one field sparrow for the first time all winter.

Have these birds been in the neighborhood all winter, and are finally driven to the feeder by the dwindling or covering of wild food supplies? There is another possibility. Perhaps some birds migrate in the middle of winter, and these increases are new birds that had been wintering much farther north, and have newly arrived here.

We know that some species do this, such as the rough-legged hawk, which is a large obvious species that was clearly not around in December or early January, but now is being reported from quite a few places. However, for small common birds, we need more banding and research to solve the mystery.

This mid-winter movement of birds might explain why there were fewer birds after the snow first arrived. Possibly many of the birds of December were prompted by the snow to pack off and move to New Jersey or coastal Connecticut. Then it took some time for a new group of arrivals from farther north to find the local feeders.

We are talking only about the species that actually do migrate at all, such as the sparrows mentioned above. The sedentary species, such as cardinals and woodpeckers and house sparrows, probably do not wander that far. They live or die with the food they can find in their chosen homes.

This is tough on a species such as the Carolina wren, which some people are now hosting for the first time all winter. There are only a few of these wrens here on the northern limit of their range, and they are in a precarious position since they need bare ground to find their food. If they don't have that, they must subsist on seed and suet at a feeder.

Migratory species benefit by the instinct to move around, and none are more movable than the finches. There are goldfinches at my feeders, usually fifty at a time. A single redpoll came twice in the last week, but at some feeders there are flocks of redpolls.

A tour of Blandford and Granville last weekend was only fruitful near houses that fed the birds. One house had a flock of fifty redpolls clustering to eat in a tight bunch, and flushing all at once as well. A friend's house had another fifty redpolls and we watched them pack in tight to feed on the ground beneath the feeders.

We did not watch closely enough, for we suddenly realized there were two pine siskins among the redpolls. That was an unexpected surprise, for most of these finches moved through our area in October on the way farther south.

Another treat were the two red-breasted nuthatches that came in to grab a seed and flutter off in the manner of chickadees. Unlike their white-breasted cousins, the red-breasted nuthatch is a migrant species, some years moving south to us and sometimes moving farther south away from us. There is a vast variety of behaviors and adaptations that birds exhibit, and it is a source of mystery and fascination for those who watch them.

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February is passing quickly, and so far there is little sign of first Spring, when the earliest birds arrive from their winter homes just a little to our south. However, there is one sign that cold and snow cannot delay or thwart. Early on a cold but sunny February 1, the titmouse sang his courting song, and the woodpecker drummed his fast roll.

It was the sun that did it, swinging the earth around on a string of gravity. It swung our yo-yo planet around until its north-south axis pointed perpendicular to the sun's rays, rather than tilting our northern half of the earth away from those rays.

For those with more poetry than science in their souls, we can say that dawn brightens the sky earlier and sun delays its setting more each day. The increased sunlight falls on plant and animal alike, and even if the warmth is felt only on the face, that is enough.

That light falls and finds receptors in the brains of birds, and that brain in turn emits the hormones that swell the testes of the male and revive the sleeping ovaries of the female. This must begin long before the breeding season begins, because those reproductive organs are shrunken and dormant the rest of the year.

A few sunny days in a row and the birds are all beginning to feel the first urges. The cardinal belts out a round or two of loud whistles, the white-breasted nuthatch mutters his droning yank, and the mourning dove coos his sorrowful sounding whooos. These notes sound like a tiny mellow pipe organ, or as many an inexperienced listener has supposed, the distant hoots of an owl.

It won't be too long before the organs of the dove are swollen to a hundred times their former size, for this species nests early and often. A pair is in such a hurry to get started that they throw together a few sticks on a pine bough and call it a nest. The eggs are laid and half of them fall through to the ground.

In the first few days of February, these songs sound in every yard. They come from those species which are here all winter, unmoving in migration, but still moved by the strengthening sunlight. Not too far to our south the same result ensues in the migrating birds that need bare ground to survive. Restlessness is added as well, so although snow still awaits them here, they are coming anyway, and soon.

Some of our birds are both stay-at-homes and movers. The black-capped chickadee when young is prone to wander. If seeds or larval insects are in short supply in their natal home, they irrupt far south, sometimes in large numbers. During some Novembers at banding stations along the coast hundreds of chickadees are netted and banded in a single night. Despite their efforts many first-year birds are believed to perish, no matter how far they fly in search of food.

If they do last until spring, then they return and join up with the couch chickadees, who have all they want in one place with no reason to migrate. These black-caps form a small flock that "owns" a stand of woods, gleaning food from this larder in never ending swings and circles. Usually a feeding station is shared by several groups of chickadees, especially if it is located in or near an extensive patch of woods or forest.

Each group has a complex social structure with a clear order of dominance by older birds. When February comes the dominant males begin to whistle a gentle song, first note higher pitched, last two lower and run together. It sounds like "Hey Sweetie." For such a diminutive fluff of feathers, the chickadee can act the rakish devil.

Within a group the order prevails, the younger birds giving way to the older, even if they are already perched on the feeder. One at a time is the rule, the young birds slipping in quickly while the old ones sit on the branch and pound, stripping the seed of its inedible husk. Some day that chickadee stripling that left its home and returned, may become the father or mother that rules a resident flock.

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The gulls had gathered for the night. I watched from my car as they glided in and circled, braking with wings beating briefly, then alighting on the ice of the river. This expanse was a safe haven for the nightly roost, where the birds could crowd in, preening and fixing feathers before the darkness fell.

My thoughts were gathering too, or perhaps it was wool, as I reveled in the evening scene. Suddenly the scene changed. Act two of the night began with a shape fluttering by the window. I peered carefully through the gloom, and there was the owl, perched on a branch of a small tree not ten feet away.

It was rather small, but intensely alert, turning its head back and forth with quick starts and stops, like a mechanical toy. It was not a toy, and any mouse would learn that quickly if it ever showed its head from under the snow-covered grasses. The tufts on the head were flattened, but still obvious enough to reveal this bird as a screech owl.

These owls are strictly nocturnal, as their bigger cousins are, the barred and great horned owl. The snows are now deep enough to stress these birds a bit, but somehow they manage, even if the female has to stay on the delicate embryos while the male hunts. This is the fate of the great horned owl, big and fierce enough to catch the large prowling animals of late winter, such as skunks and possums or even screech owls.

The barred owl is a deep woods bird, finding the mice and squirrels of the forest. They sometimes visit a bird feeder at night, hoping for a rodent grown fat and lazy on left over seeds. Rarely, one will sit much of the day near a feeder, its black eyes staring out from the round handsome head covered in brown and white. There is nothing like the stare of an owl, even at a distance.

Some owls are very active during the day (diurnal), and the Allen Bird Club went looking for these on a trip to the coast last week. When not enjoying the many kinds of ducks we were seeing, we were praying for raptors, especially owls. These were owls from the arctic, come to our tundra-like coastal marshes to prey on and sample the southern cuisine.

Early in the morning we had visited Nelson's Island in Ipswich, hoping for the short-eared owl. Instead, there were rough-legged hawks and harriers, the hunters who shared the same habitat, taking the day shift, while the owls took the evening. Although these owls are accustomed to both day and night hunting, their eyes are still tender enough to make them avoid the shattering sun of full day on the white snow.

By late afternoon we were on the other side of the same marsh, in the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. The snowy, the most prized owl of all, had been reported here earlier that afternoon, and when we heard about it, we reversed our course to turn back and hunt for it.

No white owl was now present in the tops of the beach bushes, and our hearts fell. We headed down the road, studying the dunes on one side and the marsh on the other, where a dull setting sun made viewing difficult. We had to pick out this owl against a background of snow and ice as well. The three-car caravan crept along the road, and we scanned each side with hope as fading as the day.

Myles and Kathy, a couple in our van, had never seen the snowy, so it was even more sought after for them, one reason we had returned to try. Myles was in the front on the marsh side, binoculars bearing on the vast expanse, while I was despairing in the back. "I see an owl," he said with some surety.

We leapt out as the car stopped and swiftly we set up scopes. There was the snowy owl, that yellow-eyed stare surveying the frozen landscape, scratching for a meal as we filled our eyes and laughed with satisfaction. He flew around twice, spooking the ducks in the river, for he is big enough to threaten them. The bird was an adult male, as white as snow, earning the first-place ribbon of our two-day trip.

A vulture cut through the sky the other day. It was steady and straight, not the usual teetering and side-slipping the vulture usually employs in its endless flight in search of carrion. Most vultures have a keen sense of smell, and their constant twitching while on the wing reminds me of the tongue of a snake, flicking in the air to sense the odor of potential prey.

This bird was moving north, a clear sign of first spring here in New England, for vultures retreat in the face of heavy snow, looking for warmer climes. The warm rains recently bared the ground and brought them back, probably from as near as the New Jersey coast. We have two different species in eastern North America, the turkey vulture and the black vulture. Both have been extending their home range farther north over the last fifty years.

The turkey vulture is now a firmly established resident of most of New England, roosting on steep cliff sides or in stands of tall trees adjoining an open area. These birds are big, and it means extra effort for them to take off from the ground. They prefer to alight where they can swoop off again on set wings and catch the wind currents or thermals instantly.

Every day last week there were hundreds of vultures in the air around myself and four friends as we explored south Florida. We were not in the usual places most people know, but rather at Snake Bight, Shark Valley, Imokalee, Loxahatchie, Tamiami Trail, and Corkscrew. A bight is a shallow bay, but the mosquitoes surely do bite there. These are the real lands of the state of Florida, not the fantasy lands of Orlando or Miami.

The open expanses still stretch for many miles as they did in the times of the Seminole Indians or Spanish explorers. Always the vultures are floating in the tropical air, sometimes only two or three coursing over the ground, very often in circling swarms that rise from horizon to near the zenith.

However, it is not the only kind of bird using south Florida as a winter feed trough. Red-shouldered hawks are the most numerous of several species of hawks, being both residents and visitors here. They are seen circling or sitting tamely in a low tree, or just moving from one perch to another.

Very common are American kestrels and loggerhead shrikes, smaller raptors that sit on wires and posts, waiting for insects or mice below them to make a meal. Ospreys and bald eagles begin nesting here in February, their nests built blatantly in the tops of tall trees. The osprey is especially plentiful, even nesting near people.

Also returning from Central America to breed is the beautiful swallow-tailed kite. We watched for it at Corkscrew Sanctuary, the only place where the cypress forest that once covered much of this region still stands in its ancient splendor. From the platform over the marsh, we saw these graceful white and black birds with deeply forked tails sail past just overhead.

South Florida is also the only place in the United States that the short-tailed hawk and the snail kite is found. We sought these two species with special fervor and we finally found them as we walked the paved trail at Shark Valley. They were the reward for venturing past two alligators that guarded each side of the trail, only ten feet away lying quietly in the grassy waters, like a pair of watchful dragons.

Once we were past these ancient watchful creatures, our first prize appeared, a snail kite sailing along the nearby slough, its black body and white tail patch a welcome sight. It was searching for apple snails, its only food, which it extracts from the shell with a sharply curved bill adapted specially for this one purpose. Soon there was one and then two short-tailed hawks overhead, also dark birds, the black bodies and fore wings contrasting with the gray hind wings and tail.

The amazing hawks were one wondrous group of birds found in this land, the wading storks, herons and egrets are the other. Would you believe that the vultures may be members of this second group, not the first? Recent DNA testing reveals that vultures may be more closely related to storks than hawks. More about the wader family of birds and the land where they abound next week.

In the air of south Florida, the vulture reigns under the hazy sun, but the clouds soon tower up and drop tropical rains, creating the great wet glades that once almost entirely covered this land without hills. We the people, perhaps in search of the fountain of youth, have drained and ditched these glades until only a remnant is left.

Though a tenth in numbers what they once were, there are still plenty of hunters that roam the glades, and all of them carry lethal weapons, those bills that move with unerring speed and silence to harvest the riches of the shallow waters. There are seven species of long-legged, long-necked hunters that are present in south Florida in enormous numbers.

The largest is the ancient stork, in America called the wood stork. A thousand pairs are already nesting right now near Corkscrew, and we saw them perched upon the trees and soaring nearby. They have thick bills curved only at the end, and stand and move deliberately with the stiff, starched pose that gives them their name.

They soar as consummately as their cousins, the vultures, showing off their white bodies and half black wings. In the dry season, they can catch fish simply by dragging their bills through the receding pools. They carry this food to their own young, whom they will abandon if there proves to be too much water and poor fishing.

The white ibis is another long-legged hunter of the marshes and shallows of southern coasts, and the most numerous of all the glade hunters. Flocks of a hundred or more were found roaming through the giant tree trunks of Corkscrew, talking and squabbling with each other. When sometimes spooked by a lurking alligator, they would rise as one with a fluttering rumble to alight in the lower branches. In morning and evening, great flights of white ibis in vees and lines would cut across the dusky sky to and from their roosting sites.

The glossy ibis is all dark, and hundreds of these covered the marsh at Shark Valley. At first we thought only a few glossies were among the tall grasses, and then suddenly several hundred would rise as one and rush in a swarm to another part of the marsh. Both ibis species are somewhat small, but make up for this deficiency by having a long downward curving bill they use to probe the muck for snails and crabs.

We also saw hundreds of egrets in many kinds of water habitats, on the coast, in ponds, rivers and canals, as well as wooded marshes. The great is the largest egret, twice the size and as white as its sprightly cousin, the snowy egret. They, along with the herons, are solitary when stalking, standing still in the shallows and darting their straight powerful bills at an unsuspecting fish.

There are two kinds of herons that are abundant in the glades. One is the little blue heron, whose every feather shines with the same vibrant color. There is a gleaming texture in the blue that is almost extra-terrestrial, a being from another place and time, too exotic for mother earth. The blue of the other common heron, the tricolored, is sedate by contrast, and it has the expected mix of white and brown to soften the overall effect.

There are some great blue and green herons in south Florida too, as well as night herons, but these other two herons far outnumber them. The great blue is the largest of all the herons, and I was looking forward on this trip to seeing the distinct 'form' of the great blue that is found only here. The hotel and resort area of Fort Myers Beach was the surprising place to find this special great blue heron.

A lagoon between the hotels and the outer beach was filled with shorebirds and wading birds, and there was this gleaming giant, the great white heron. Its long breeding plumes dangled down from the back of its head, and its tail plumes dipped into the water. The massive stature of the bird, from the bill to the legs, made the great egret seem puny and dull by comparison. This bird seemed the solitary monarch of all the thousands of waders that still glean the land of glades and slow waters, the fountains of life in south Florida.

There was a time you had to ask for suet at the meat counter. Now there is usually a place where the packages of fat sit wrapped up next to the ground hamburger and steaks. You have to pay for this convenience as well, so get a tasty looking piece if you can, thick and solid and pure white the way the birds like it.

A homemade basket of chicken wire just won't do any more either. A sturdy vinyl-covered wire cage is now available at the seed store. Pick one where the chain wraps around the narrow sides so you can flip the top and slip the slice of suet in easily and cleanly.

There is an art to feeding woodpeckers, who do not often stoop to simple vegetable matter. They go right for the tastiest stuff, that delicious ingredient that we save for a rare dessert. We remove it from ordinary food, settling for low fat or no fat. The woodpeckers are macho birds, taking only fat, and taking it straight and clean.

The flight of the woodpecker is no nonsense as well, straight as a thrown spear, flicking those wings out just enough to keep it arrowing to its destination. No dinky twig perch for this bird, it goes right for the trunk or main branches, and somehow twists it body at the last instant so its bill is not impaled into the bark. Instead the bird is glued vertically to the side of the tree, the head poised to strike.

Every kid would love to be able to climb a tree this way, simply grasping on and hiking up or down the trunk, tail pressed below to steady you and hands free for better things. Look ma, no hands. Oh, to have wings to fly from tree to tree, never touching the pedestrian earth.

If you hang that cage of suet in your back yard, you can enjoy this star performer every day. Like all my feeders, I hang the suet from a long wire that is strung in the open between tree and house. You could nail it against the side of the tree if you are not bothered by raccoons.

The woodpeckers usually come one at a time, though there could be as many as five of the small downies at once. Then they chase each other up and down the tree, the subordinate bird switching from one branch to another, hoping its tormenter will tire of the game.

Nine out of ten times the bird is either a downy or hairy woodpecker, both with white undersides and black backs with a wide white stripe down the middle. Only the male sports the small red spot on the back of the noggin. The downy is much smaller than the hairy, with a diminutive bill, a tiny dagger compared to the spear point of the hairy.

A woodpecker always announces its arrival with noisy wings. A single bird will sound as loud as a small flock of any other species, the powerful pinions beating the air in such a way as to produce a distinctive thumping noise. Sometimes they will add the sharp single 'pik' note or even the longer series of notes in a musical rattle. The drum tap on a loose bit of bark is reserved for Spring and Summer.

After a slight pause of caution, the bird takes a great leap and glides to the suet holder. Then it pokes at the stuff, testing the texture while still looking around for the ambushing hawk or an approaching rival. Unfortunately, the challenge is often from a starling, and the woodpecker gives way before this aggressive blackbird with an oversized bill and short tail.

It is bad enough when three or four starlings come to rip apart the suet despite having to balance on the small holder. This year the crow has learned the same trick, and now comes to alight briefly with flailing wings, but still managing to grab a mouthful of tasty fat, gobbling it down on the way back to a nearby tree.

I prefer the hairies and downies, the bold and discriminating connoisseurs of fat, who have always known a good meal, and savor it like gentlefolk.

The early mornings of first spring are usually cold and often very still. Before the wind and sun spring up, the air feels frozen and lifeless. Then the music will begin. Soft and a little wavery, the sweet notes come from the weeds and fill the silence. The jumble of twitters that follows is so soft you have to strain to hear it. It is the song of the sparrow.

In earlier times it was thought that heaven was in the stars, far beyond human reach. Only our voices raised in song could reach those sacred places, and those voices were pale imitations of the songs that already rang there, the music of the spheres. We know now that earth angels are the only singers there are, and the only music in outer space is what we send there.

But we do send it, because the human heart is full of song, attuned to song. We all need to make music and receive it back, even those of us who say we have no 'voice.' For us, making and hearing music is as close as we can come to a sense of communion with the universe. All creatures seem to share in that sense, especially the birds, and most especially the songbirds.

The voices of small perching birds are so special that we give this group the name 'songbird,' and only one species of bird has the word in its very own name, the song sparrow. The song sparrow on a cold March morning is heaven enough for me, but there is a bird song even more divine than that.

One day last week the southwest winds brought balmy air from the south to New England's chilled hills. I sat on the edge of a large field, scanning the skies to find a hawk or two on its way north, heading for home, the urge for family in its hollow bones. There was something else I hoped to see, and especially hear.

Nearby the king of song began to tune up. There is a song sparrow and a kingbird, but the king of song is the mockingbird. Here in the warmth of mid-day, this master of the mimic was warming up. He was on a phone wire, close enough so I could see his throat throbbing, one note cascading out after another in an endless flurry. Even so, it was only a spring rehearsal, and the song was soft and slow, not the frenzy of joy when mating and hatching are at hand.

He sang the songs of jays and titmice as well as his own variations, and then he sang the song of the phoebe. That was the voice I was waiting for, the little flycatcher that is the sign of second spring. Was this mocker taunting me? Perhaps he was prescient, or just more observant.

Near the top of a tall tree not far away, a small bird with a familiar posture sat very still, with only the slight twitch of a tail to make my thoughts leap. It couldn't be a phoebe, but it was. After a moment the bird launched into the air and swooped down directly at me, as if bringing me a message from heaven. He landed not ten feet away in a small bush, my first phoebe of the new millennium.

Did the mockingbird know? Could he recognize the shape of the phoebe as well as his song? Did the song he sang alert me to look around and fulfill my fuzzy hope? The simple phoebe song is not a common part of the mockingbird's repertoire. I choose to think the music was made for me, or at least for dreams, human or divine.

Birds sing for a simple reason - it helps to create and fledge young to continue life into a new and certain future. Perhaps our songs have the same purpose, to link us with the past and future and to each other. Is that what the ancients meant when they spoke of the music of the spheres?

The songs of birds offer much to the music lover, but anyone who appreciates color and design has reason to be pleased as well. People of every human culture decorate their world, including their own bodies. In our current culture the female gender dons dress and gloss to attract the male eye and mind.

In the bird world, it is almost always the male who boasts vivid and colorful decoration, and the purpose is always to attract the female. Not all species are brightly colored, but if they are, the color is used as a display. The vividness of the color and the intensity and length of the display indicates the health and strength of the male, and its suitability as a mate. We, who watch birds, are the unintended beneficiary of this decorative display.

Some birds simply have one or two bright colors, like the tanager, but some add to the visual effect by an intricate pattern of color. The male ducks have the most striking combination of vivid color and intricate design. Seen at close range, the colors of all the ducks are amazing, more tightly immaculate than the rarest woven cloth or the most expensive paint. Two of the most decorated are the wood duck and the hooded merganser.

Both of these species spend the winter not too far to our south and push north as soon as the waters thaw. On a recent field trip, nearly a hundred hooded mergansers were sporting beneath the eagle's nest at Gill on the Connecticut River. They are also found with the wood duck on small ponds and marshes.

The wood duck male is one of the most coveted birds on anyone's must-see list, its gaudy dress making it a favorite of photographers and artists. Its plumage is a complex design of colors and patterns with bold white curving stripes on its head and body setting off its darker colored breasts, sides, and wings.

The wood duck grazes the water, gobbling pond weed from the surface, and is extremely spooky, taking off with a whiny piercing scream if you get too close. The hooded merganser dives for its food of fish and frogs, and is a bit more tame, staying around for a close look from the admiring eye.

They are nearly the same size, but the merganser seems smaller, having an air more perky and petite. When I saw one not long ago in a tiny pond, it sat tight, escorting its lady friend slowly across the water and showing off its extraordinary head. It is well-named for its ability to change the shape of both its head and the large white patch on its head, giving the impression that it is wearing a magical hood.

When the bird is at ease, the white patch is large and bold, like a fan or seashell, bordered all around by deepest black. When alarmed or alert, the head feathers are lowered and flattened, shrinking and squeezing the patch to an elongated oval. The distinctive short, thin bill and piercing red eye set in the black face completes the spellbinding impression of this face and head. But the wondrous effect does not stop at the neck.

Two black stripes run forward across the solid white chest to the undersides, marking the break between the white front and the ruddy tan side. For symmetry, there are white stripes at the rear, bold strokes of genius, cascading down the dark back. This design creates a streamlined image that startles the eye and mind into worshipful submission.

Who was the makeup artist who prepared this bird for the show? No French fashion guru could have come up with a more alluring design, and it succeeds. That day the discretely colored lady merganser was in his thrall, helpless before the dazzle of his dress. Her only decoration was the shaggy reddish feathers at the back of her head, perhaps a sign of awe-struck fear in the face of his ethereal beauty.

If decoration has such an effect, it is no wonder we humans strive to enhance our own bodily color and design.

Besides the wary wild ducks, there are also landbirds that wear plumage that is beautifully textured and patterned, but they are usually small, secretive, and very active. One of the few birds that is both well dressed and easy to find and study is the cedar waxwing, a bird common in New England the year round.

Like the ducks, the colors of the waxwing are not especially bright, but they are rich and subtle. Edward Forbush describes the dress of the cedar waxwing as "velvet black brightening into fawn, melting browns, shifting saffrons, quaker drabs, pale blue-gray and slate." The only bright colors they have are the tiny red and yellow droplets on the ends of some of their wing feathers.

Those droplets have the shiny appearance of sealing wax, which is how the bird got its English name. In Europe, the bird was originally called the silktail, and its Latin name, 'bombycilla,' means just that. It would not be too far off to say this bird appears draped in silk and satin, and resembles a caped and masked marauder.

The bird in Europe is not the cedar waxing, however, but another member of the waxwing family with very similar appearance and habits. This other waxwing is a northern species present in both Eurasia and America which has earned the name 'Bohemian.' The area in Europe called Bohemia is not normally part of this bird's range, so the name refers to this waxwing's highly wandering ways.

The Bohemian waxwing is larger than the cedar, gray overall, rather than tan, with a striking white wing stripe. Where the cedar waxwing is whitish yellow under the tail, the Bohemian is a rich cinnamon. They both share the black throat and mask through the eye that gives the birds the rakish look of a bandit. A sleek crest on the back of the head reinforces that impression.

Like many northern species of birds, it is a gypsy. After nesting is done, they gather and travel in large gangs, like roving bandits, until they find the food they prefer. That food happens to be the fruit of trees and shrubs. In America, the Bohemian waxwing nests in the high evergreen forests of northwestern Alaska and Canada, and most of these birds move in winter to the Rocky Mts. and the Plains.

The size of the wandering groups of waxwings can be tremendous, and early naturalists marveled that they sometimes gathered in congregations that rivaled those of the legendary passenger pigeon. As early as 1919, it was noted that this species also sometimes moved east as well as south. That winter, birds were found in Maine, and even a few reports came from Massachusetts.

In December 1968, an unprecedented invasion began in western Massachusetts, with flocks of many hundred found in various places all that winter. Since then, we have come to realize that a few Bohemian waxwings come to us almost every year, accompanying the regular flocks of cedar waxwings. There have been other incursions of substantial numbers, and this winter that occurred again.

The Allen Bird Club takes a trip to Turner's Falls every spring near the first of April, looking for waterfowl and the nesting bald eagles at Barton's Cove. After enjoying that view first-eye, we crossed the river into the downtown area, where the city streets had been planted with crabapple trees.

These trees produce small fruit in abundance, and it is a favorite food of the waxwings. Mixed flocks of both kinds of waxwings numbering two hundred or more had been coming to these trees for several weeks, methodically stripping the branches. We found about ten of the Bohemians with fifty or more cedar waxwings working one of the few trees that had plenty of untouched fruit.

We heard the light chatter of the Bohemian as well as the thin lisp of the cedar waxwing as they circled us in undulating flocks before alighting in the tall trees next to the crabapples. These are tame birds and we could approach closely and study the muted beauty of their plumage. The sight of them is payment enough for their free meals, as it would go to waste on these busy city streets if not for this beautiful and fearless fruit bandit.

Not long after the phoebe arrives to herald second spring, the flicker returns to us. This woodpecker is as showy and noisy as the little gray flycatcher is muted and unassuming. The phoebe sits on a branch and simply twitches its tail occasionally to show it is not part of the tree bark, and its simple two note sneezy song could easily be overlooked.

You don't have to have sharp ears to hear the flicker. Its loud, long wik-wik-wik call rolls across the field and is echoed back by a distant neighboring bird, ready to challenge with song and soul. The flicker has the blood of warriors in its veins and a gaudy shield to flash in the sunlight, answering any challenge.

Unlike our other four woodpeckers, the flicker developed a taste for the ground as well as the trees. It followed a food trail there, pursuing ants in their earthen burrow as well as beneath the bark. So you can find this woodpecker crouched in the grass, bigger than a robin and just as tall when it raises its head to attention.

If you approach a ground feeding flicker, it will spring quickly up and show its woodpecker heritage, a swift and straight flight, only undulating in time to their powerful wing beat. In retreat, it will reveal the bold white patch at the base of its back, contrasting to its dark brown body and wings.

It is as adept at clinging to the side of a trunk as any other woodpecker, but usually it will take the high way, landing on the topmost thick branch of a large tree. A flicker loves to scout the country from a lonely dead tree that still stands tall along a hedgerow. It often uses such snags as its nesting home, excavating a hole in the dying wood as well as feasting on the larva of borers that abound in such places.

Unfortunately, modern man has taken a dislike to such beautiful but leafless sentinel trees, removing them as quickly as he can. We neatly trim and tame any part of the wild that seems 'messy' and call it being civilized.

The flicker's warrior blood is truly civilized. The other day I watched as two of them flew across a pond and landed in a large snag tree above me. It was ideal habitat for this bird, plenty of trees along a small brook, but also extensive open farmland with mowed roadways and borders.

The birds were two males and they poised on the trunk only a few inches away from each other, remaining absolutely stock still, seemingly part of the inanimate wood. Suddenly they swayed their heads from side to side in ritualized dance, turning just enough to show off the black moustache on either side of their cheeks.

These were fighting flickers, trying to intimidate with a display of gender power. This moustache is the only plumage difference between the male and female flicker. The female boasts the same black bib and red nape mark, the same richly spotted tawny breast and belly, and the same gray crown and brown barred back, but it lacks the black cheek patch.

This stiff, abrupt swaying movement was repeated a dozen times over the twenty minutes I was there, but neither adversary made any other motion. Eventually one would back down and withdraw, a truly civilized way of settling territorial differences.

There are some bird species, like the European starling, that will kill even the flicker in this struggle for a nest hole. One blow on the back of the head from the aggressive starling will kill a flicker, despite its larger size. The starling is a species brought over and introduced to America by humans, and like us it will remove any native species that may stand in its grasping way.

But though the flicker has a beautiful blended yellow underwing color it shows in flight, it is not a coward, and still stands tall like the noble dead trees it favors. Every April it sends its call of joy across the meadow to fall even on our deaf ears.