point counts are pretty straight forward, what happens is you go out and stand in an established spot, look and listen*--but mostly listen. len does back to back five minute stints, recording bird species and location--direction the call came from. it sounds a bit ho-hum for a non-birder wishing they were back in bed considering it was before 6:00 on a saturday morning. surprisingly, there is quite a flurry of activity in the short time you stand still with your ears 'perked' up. here is a series of lenny, counting at six of the different points we visited.
having spent time in my youth working at a factory printing sears catalogue, i have lost hearing range and can barely detect the higher buzzes, chips, and chirps of many of the warbler species that len works with and was now hearing--black throated blue, nashville, magnolia, canada, blackburnian were all notes on a page rather than in my ears. i did hear a woodpecker, a sapsucker because it's the only peck, peck, peck that slows down as it goes. american robin, phoebe, blue jay, common yellow throat, red eyed vireo, crow, morning dove, a turkey's gobbles, and an oven bird's teacher, teacher, teacher. i actually see one of those little brown forest thrushes as we are about to leave site #1. less than ten feet away lenny stops and points to the ground at a small mound of leaves with a hole about the size of a golf ball through which i can see at least three eggs. it looks just like a little beehive oven, no wonder the bird got that name.
now and again i leave lenny standing and counting as i go off listening and looking at what i can hear and things i can see. i hunt up the super bright scarlet tanager, singing away at the tippy top of a large pine tree. i photograph some lady slipper orchids and an interesting line of mushrooms growing along where a large oak limb had fallen. i look into a vernal pool with a mass of wood frog tadpoles wriggling just under the surface. lenny sends me off to find the clutch of woodpecker young he hears peeping away in a nearby tree cavity. we walk past a sheep skeleton with dozens of sow or pill bugs (thank you hannah broadley for looking at them closely) foraging over the vertebrae and skull for the last scraps of cartilage.
there is so much going on in a forest. even though i am not able to hear it all and i am certain i only see a fraction, it makes me feel rich to be out here observing what i can. being aware of ones environment is something i have long pushed in school and out. as i type, i take a binocular break to watch a red squirrel scramble about the trees along the stone wall beyond the screen door. outdoor things seem to encourage my tendency toward adhd...there is so much going on period.
*speaking of listening, the front door was open to the porch and as i sipped my tea and typed, i heard a lot more chirping than usual from the active robin nest up in the rafters. through the window over the kitchen cutting board i saw why. a broadwing hawk landed on the rafter plate over on the wood shed with the male robin harassing it. it didn't stay too long before being chased off down the drive. i thought it might land in a tree out front so i got up to look. no such 'luck' today, at least for the hawk, the robins had successfully protected the eggs in the nest from being broadwing breakfast.
which reminds me, i could go for a 2nd breakfast...
