Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Nobody Came to Choir Practice

As I become increasingly familiar with the song of the Carolina wren I learn the quality of the song varies by individual bird. All follow the same general pattern and rhythm but each has its own characteristic sound. I have yet to see any wrens on the coast but I hear them early in the morning. This morning two of them woke me with their echoing call and response pattern. The first was a loud insistent chee-boogie-chee-boogie-chee-boogie-CHEE, with extra-emphatic accent on the final CHEE, as if trying to teach the other. The responder had a softer flutier sound to her call---more like video-video-video. And she never added the upswinging tag to the end. The more she didn't add it, the more insistent the first one becme in flaunting his upward CHEE! Until the lovely video stopped althogether and the braggert chee-boogie man went on as unrelenting solo for quite some time. Bully behavior?

Where are the chickadees, cardinals, sparrows, swallows, nuthatches, and towhees of middle Georgia? Do they not live on the coast? From 7:00-8:00 a.m. on the front porch swing, the woods are eerily silent and not a breath of air. One turtle dove in the distance. dkm

1 comment:

rwrizzo said...

I was wondering what happened to the chickadees myself, so I looked at the Audubon Society's Backyard bird survey, and found out that they are moving north.
We may have our doubters of climate change, but when the birds leave for cooler climates, one tends to believe the birds.