In the springtime I am usually glued to my kitchen window, looking for any trace of any bird that might suggest winter is finally over. The first species to hint at this change of season is the blackbird, the harbingers of spring. They can be relied upon to show up sometime in February or March, but the exact dates vary somewhat depending on the severity of the winter that we have endured.
The real clinchers, however, are the phoebes and tree swallows. They arrive with almost clockwork precision and as far as I am concerned it is their lovely forms that truly announce the beginning of spring. I have been keeping increasingly detailed records of the arrival of both these species and over the past eight years I have marveled at their ability to arrive within the same narrow window of time. For the phoebes, it’s been somewhere in the first two weeks of April, but for the tree swallows it’s been within the same seven-day window that generally falls in the first week of April. The only exception was this year, an El Niño year, when the birds showed up a full month early.
To be sure, there are other species that show up with almost the same predictability, but somehow they don’t make the same sort of impression on my mind. This, I think, is the simple result of the fact that they are not the first to arrive and that, I think, is simply an artifact of the operation of the human mind. We (at least, I) tend to fixate on “firsts” and “lasts” with much more ease than I can keep track of similar patterns that occur in the middle of things. Now that I think of it, I may have just come up with a great little project for a quiet day this winter.
Anyway, there is a similar pair of birds that announce the beginning of autumn. Sure, the technical start of the season is back in September, but this is an event that is locked into place by the orbital position of the Earth around the sun. The first day of autumn feels no different from the last day of summer, but about three weeks later there is a massive and obvious change in the appearance of the trees. This also seems to coincide with the appearance of two species of birds that are the autumn equivalent of the phoebe and tree swallow in the spring.
The birds I am speaking of are the northern junco (Junco hyemalis) and the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis). Both of these species are faithful visitors to my feeders and both are fairly easy to detect if they are present in the landscape. In the past eight years the junco has arrived in October six times, and the white-throated sparrow seven times. For the past six years both species have arrived in October.
What I find particularly curious is the fact that there seems to be no rhyme or reason to which bird arrives first. They are operating completely independently of one another, but they are locked into the same environmental cues and are thus thrust into a similar pattern. I must also acknowledge the fact that human error is clearly a possibility. Just because I notice one species before the other doesn’t mean that I have detected the actual arrival sequence of each species.
This year, I happened to pick up on the white-throated sparrow first. It was Saturday, Oct. 1, I was up early to fill the feeders, and in the bright light of the new sunrise I heard a single utterance of the white-throated sparrow’s song. It was one of those moments that can truly be described as achingly beautiful. The only time I have picked up on an earlier white-throated sparrow was back in 2010 when I saw one on Sept. 26.
The first junco of the year didn’t turn up until 10 days later. I had kept my ears peeled, but not been able to detect the sound of a junco during Columbus Day weekend. Then, as if by magic, I spotted a junco on the porch railing on the afternoon of Oct. 11. This arrival date turns out to be completely average, though my mind seemed to suggest that it was early. That’s why I started writing things down in the first place.
But the biggest thunderbolt of the season came on Friday, Oct. 7. I had just come home from school and was quick to head out to the porch railing to refill the sunflower feeder when I came face to face with a pine siskin! This was a real shock. Siskins are far more erratic in their arrival times. Sometimes they show up in autumn, sometimes they arrive in winter, and sometimes they fail to show up at all. Back in 2012 I saw a siskin on Oct. 11, but this year’s sighting is the earliest for my personal records.
This is a period of transition in the landscape and it can often feel like nothing is going on. However, if you know what to look for there is actually quite a lot to look for. If you happen to pick up on something strange, or interesting, please drop me a line and let me know. It’s possible that others in our area have picked up on the same thing and you are not alone.
Bill Danielson has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, and the Massachusetts State Parks. He has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 19 years and he also teaches high school biology and physics. Visit www.speakingofnature.com for more information, or go to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.