While the turn of the calendar to May brings an avalanche of phenological change to yards and woods, maybe none is so obvious, and welcome, as the change in the morning soundscape. Just a week ago, the dawn chorus was still dominated by the early breeding resident and short-distance migrant birds like Song Sparrows, American Robins, Carolina Wrens, and House Finches. These are still singing, but less since they’re busy with nests. But they’d also be hard-pressed to get a word in edgewise now that the next wave of neighborhood chatterboxes is back from winter haunts and talking over them.
The last days of April indeed brought some prominent, proud new voices to the morning soundscape. My first Great-crested Flycatcher piped up on April 24, back about a week early from some lush wintering digs in Costa Rica or Colombia. These common and noisy neighborhood flycatchers nest in cavities, and you can get special bird houses just for them, a bit bigger than bluebird houses. I’ve had them nest in mine, but most years they’ve gone elsewhere. I feel jilted since these birds have been known to nest in old mailboxes. Still, I love to watch them flycatching in our small, mostly treed backyard, which functions as a woodland clearing of the sort they love to hunt.
My first catbird was a demure, silent bird sitting on my suet cake on a rainy April 27. It could have come from Columbia or from down the street – some catbirds winter quietly in local stream thickets while others go as far as South America. Within a few days there were several in the vicinity of my yard, and they could no longer stay silent. Now it’s the first bird I hear each morning, mainly the male who sings constantly above my deck and fights with other nearby males. While closely related to mockingbirds, they rarely imitate, and can babble their deceptively complex song continuously for up to 10 minutes at a time.
Some orioles have been back a little over a week, but I hadn’t really laid eyes on one in a satisfying way until yesterday morning. As I worked at the sink, a male landed on a plant hook a few feet from the kitchen window and whistled a few notes, its flaming orange plumage startling even me. I’m not bothering with the oriole feeder this spring, I usually attempt them later on after the chicks fledge. For now I’ll just enjoy them as they comb through the new leaves and flowers of the oaks in my yard looking for caterpillars, and I’ll hope to catch them building a nest somewhere in the neighborhood.
The last bird I want to mention is not so common and expected as the former species but seems to be nesting more, and further out, on the Cape in recent years. The White-eyed Vireo’s had a puzzling, roller coaster pattern of abundance in Massachusetts, from common and widespread 19th century breeders, to almost gone by the 1930s, to back up again in the southeastern part of the state, to now apparently declining again, with no clear cause for any of these changes. They nest regularly but sparsely in Falmouth and probably Barnstable, skulking in forests with dense, thickety shrub layers. But their snappy little song betrays them, and is one of my favorites, distinctively accented at beginning and end with a “chick.” It reminds me of my first job out of college – one of my duties was surveying birds on the tiny, teardrop-shaped tree islands that dot the Florida Everglades, each of which had a singing White-eyed Vireo.
So whether you like to fire up Merlin app to see who’s singing or just kick back and listen to the show without checking the program, I hope you enjoy this new soundscape of early May. Even if that hormone-fueled marathon-singing catbird reminds you too much of that guy at work who talks over you while you’re mid-sentence.
