A Lazy Wheep

Turkey Vulture
They are ubiquitous this summer

Rings out from the little elm across the driveway, then comes slowly closer. Once I would not have noticed this bird, let alone recognized its call. However, during the flood of 2006, when we sat, stunned, no power, no access to the outside world, no nothing of what we were used to, hoping the generator would be up to letting us get the cows milked, one of these guys used the front hall as an echo chamber.

Trust me, that slow, peaceful, wheep is amazingly loud when projected that way.

We are rich in flycatchers this summer. The Willow Flycatcher that nests at the edge of the long lawn never lets us down. There are at least a couple more pairs up in the fields that I have heard.


Phoebes never fail us either, and nest around or on the house and barn each year.

Oddly, yesterday, an Eastern Kingbird joined the throng in the mulberry trees. You haven't seen birds until you have spent a stolen hour in the chair in the window in Liz's old room, watching the Cedar Waxwings, Grey Catbirds, Robins, Gold Finches, and Starlings gobbling fruit. It's like TV for birders.

But what was a flying bug eater doing in there? Or for that matter the downy woodpecker, which appeared to be eating berries too, although I couldn't quite be sure.

At any rate the robins soon showed the Kingbird the way to the door.

Great Crested Flycatcher