Midsummer Birding

 Like just about everything else, birding has its seasons. In the early spring we have the ducks and the shorebirds. In May quite a few common birds return—swallows, flycatchers, vireos—and the warblers are also migrating through. By midsummer, we've see at least one of just about every bird we're going to see during the year. Yet it's possible that we'll "collect" ten or fifteen additional species here and there—birds that aren't rare, but aren't common either: a shrike, say, or an orchard oriole, or a lark sparrow.

Circumstance has a part to play, too. The bluebird is a common bird, but I haven't seen one this year, except, perhaps, whizzing past me in the parking lot at Como Park Pavilion. On the other hand, bobolinks are said to be in decline, and are not often seen on your usual bird hiking, but this year I've seen at least a hundred of them.

A few mornings ago, when Hilary and I drove down early to Veteran's Park in Richfield, we had two things in mind: to go for a pleasant walk in the unexpectedly cool morning, and to see a black-crowned night heron.

There was a time when we considered this beautiful bird "common." We would often see them hunched, immobile, on the deck of sailboats moored near the bandstand on Lake Harriet. At the time we didn't know they had a rookery nearby, on an island in Lake of the Isles. Once they vacated that spot, they were nowhere to be seen for years. I saw one once, sitting in a tree ten feet above Minnehaha Creek just south of Fiftieth Street, looking down into the water.

I learned from a friend only a year ago that they could still be found consistently at Veterans Park. Once again on an island, or in the nearby trees.

We came. We saw. 

The other morning we returned, and saw them again. Hilary got a good look at the bird, perched in a tree. I saw him only as he was departing. But I learned long ago, back when the birds were common, that the night heron in flight has a bulky body and very stiff wing beats, not at all like the lanky, loose-limbed flight of the great blue heron. There was no mistaking him.

The swampy environs of the park were alive with egrets, green herons, and broods of wood ducks. We saw one green heron dangling deftly from a branch, his neck extended like a pencil, waiting for his breakfast. As we walked the asphalt paths, we heard yellow-throats and warbling vireos, but the big thrill of the morning came when we ventured out along a plastic boardwalk in pursuit of a marsh wren. Its song is unmistakable: the clatter-clatter-clatter of an old-fashioned sewing machine. I've heard it often, but I'd never actually seen the bird.

We walked along the boardwalk, which was marginally stable but narrow and shaky, with bee-covered purple loosestrife to our left and an expanse of mucky-looking water to our right. We had seen the wren remove himself from our presence several times, darting up and then ducking into the cattails twenty or thirty feet ahead, but eventually he stopped, and when he started up his clatter-clatter chatter again we got an extended look at him. I even took a few pictures.

That would have been the thrill of the morning, except that we decided to stop at Wood Lake, a mile or two down the road, to check it out on our way home. Now, Richfield is perhaps best known these days as the home of the world headquarters of Best Buy, but it also deserves a note for having the most traffic circles in the shortest length of roadway anywhere this side of the British Isles.

Wood Lake is basically where we learned to watch birds, back in the 1970s. Over the years it's grown up, and it also seems to have gone downhill. We still go there from time to time, but we don't expect much.

This visit was as lackluster as ever...until I heard a squawk coming from the cattails alongside the boardwalk that crosses the lake. I stood for a moment, seeing nothing in the reeds. Then I noticed that there was a grayish-brown bird preening himself there. No bigger than a robin, it seemed. I whispered to Hilary, who had gone on ahead. Psst!

It was a Virginia rail. We saw the beak, curved, orange on the bottom, and much longer than that of a sora. We saw the gray cheek, the white stripes on the lower flanks. He paid no attention to us. Wow.

Virginia rails are secretive birds. I have only seen three of them over the course of almost half a century, and each time it was at Wood Lake.

Maybe that's what keeps us coming back.