June 26th, 2006
an unfamiliar voice
Every once in awhile, an unfamiliar sound or voice manages to twig me from my insect and other nature observations while wandering around the farm. I’m not great on bird calls, but usually know when there is someone different singing among the background chorus of twitters, chirps and caws.
Yesterday, during my early evening insect ramblings, an odd call — kruh-kruh-kruh — could be heard among the willow and poplar along the drainage creek. Looking up from the spider on a milkweed that I was photographing, I caught a glimpse of a light brown, longish-tailed bird as it burst out of a nearby tree and flew a few wingbeats to perch in a small birch tree a little up the trail. I shot a photo – not too great as the light was rapidly dimiinishing. However, the shot was good enough to see that the bird was a Black-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus erythropthalmus) — perhaps a first for the farm, or at least that I’m aware of. The bird didn’t seem particularly nervous, but moved onwards a couple of trees at my approach. It led me along for another hundred feet or so before continuing off into the woods beyond the trail. I took a few more photos — the one below being about the best. Although indistinct, a red orbital ring may be seen around the bird’s eye.
It’s always nice to discover something new or unexpected around the farm. As the character of the land has changed, it’s been interesting to see how that has been reflected in species diversity… new plants, new insects, new birds, new mammals. I found a couple of new insects during the same evening walk, and will post some photos of them later today or tomorrow.
June 26th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
We first started paying attention to birds when we retired and moved to Washington. I had never really listened for bird calls before that. Once we started seeing all the natives and and becoming familiar with their sound, we started to hear the migrators. There are bird songs that come from the woods that we have not been able to identify yet. It is a wonderful rich melodic mystery. Your Black-billed cuckoo is a beauty.
June 27th, 2006 at 1:07 am
RA – Interesting how we get used to the “regulars” and notice the arrival of the migrators. Somehow, from one year to the next, I forget how much singing there is when the bird activity is in full swing here each spring. By the same token, I also forget how quiet it seems when many of the birds begin to head south (but I don’t want to think too much about that at the moment!).
June 27th, 2006 at 11:22 pm
I was very surprised a few years ago to learn the the black-billed cuckoo is a pretty common bird around our region. It likes roughly the same kind of habitat (shrubby edges) as the brown thrasher and the catbird, but it’s a much skulkier, much quieter bird than either of those. What you describe was probably its alarm call–maybe you were close to a nest site. Shrubby willow patch would be good for it. This bird is also called rain crow because it is said it sings (“coo-coo-coo, coo-coo-coo” low and soft–wav file ) just before rain. I have no evidence of this–I know it nests right in my neighbourhood every year, but I very rarely hear a peep out of it. It is even rarer to see it sitting in the open as in your photograph–good catch! Lovely bird.
June 28th, 2006 at 11:29 am
No html for comments? I tried to leave the link to the cuckoo’s song available at Project Wildspace. Here it is again: http://wildspace.ec.gc.ca/life.cfm?ID=BBCU&Page=Call&Lang=e
And as an experiment, in case I left out a bit of the code in the comment above:
Link to call is here!
June 28th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Pamela – Thanks for the link to the .wav file. I read your message through my email last night and it worked fine that way, but when I came here to check on your message from this morning, I see that the links didn’t show up. I’ve just fixed them. My blog seems to pick up links okay, but doesn’t make hot links to words properly. I have to type in the code for any links that I embed. I don’t quite know why that is. I thought it was actually because my browser is not supported by WordPress, but there must be more to this. Anyhow, thanks for pasting the link again and also mentioning that the .html doesn’t work for you.