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with Phyllis Yochem
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Tuesday, March 21, 2000
With arrival of early-season hummer, visions of sugar feeders dance in their heads
Birders with spring fever also dream of upland sandpipers and American golden plover
What visions flit through the dreams of South Texas birders on this, the verge of spring? When live oaks push forth new leaves, dropping short stems of tiny brown florets, we populate those burgeoning foliations with buzzing northern parulas. We look and listen for small blue treetop birds, with triangular yellow-green patches in the centers of their backs, although who can see their backs overhead? White arcs above and below the eye form split eyerings. Chin, throat and breast are bright yellow, and in the male are marked with chestnut band, and often with a slate gray band above that.
When we hear their song they sing of possibilities, of where they are going and where they have been. We listen at the very end for an upturned buzz that tells the story. Their appearance triggers in birders another, usually premature reaction: the need to see what is at Packery Channel Park.
The evening we succumbed to that impulse there was very little there. A flock of roseate spoonbills, beginning to color up for spring, roosted on the sand spit visible from the end of the park. Two eastern phoebes were tail flicking from atop the wire fence that surrounds the oak motte. When the light was almost gone, the first scissor-tailed flycatchers of the year came to pose and display its beautifully deep peach underwing feathers in the setting sun.
The visions continue with rumors of upland sandpipers and American golden plover in the fields, and possibly a flock of buff-breasted sandpipers. We listen for plover voices passing overhead in the night.
I have had my first ruby-throated hummingbird, a male in full regalia, at the feeder. He was not welcomed by the buff-breasted hummer who has had it all his own way (except for the orange-crowned warblers) all winter. I have heard and seen purple martin scouts.
Jean Abney has had good luck with goldfinches this year. They were visiting her feeder last week for a fillup before starting north. She was delighted to see that her guests were both American goldfinches and lesser goldfinches, of noticeably different sizes.
A conversation with the Brittain boys (who should now be called men) was a dazzling preview as it often is. They had been birding at Paradise Pond at Port Aransas minutes before the famous drought-breaking deluge came. I call Chuck and Rick Brittain "boys'' because I have known them since they were. As long as I have known them, they had been superb birders. Some of the birds they saw that morning were a black and white warbler, a yellow-throated warbler, black-throated green warblers, a golden-crowned kinglet, and a winter wren.
There will be a work day at Blucher Park on March 25. All willing hands are welcome. Spring Bird Walks start on April 1, the following Saturday. The Coastal Bend Birding Hotline number is 883-7410.
Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi
resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.
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