Early Hummingbird Reports

(Transcript of today's For the Birds)

After an unprecedented mild winter and an unprecedented early spring, hummingbird sightings in the southern and central states are proliferating, as the tiny birds are being reported as much as 6 weeks ahead of normal. People checking out the map at hummingbirds.net have been seeing Ruby-throated Hummingbird reports as far north as the Twin Cities and three quarters of the way into Wisconsin already.

But checking the map at another website, ebird.org, shows hummingbirds no further than the northern border of Texas through central Arkansas and North Carolina. [Between recording this and capturing the map below, in the wee hours of March 27, a sighting was added in Indiana.]

So how are we supposed to know where hummingbirds really are, and when we should get our feeders out? Ebird is clearly the more authoritative site--every exceptionally early report for an area requires documentation. Hummingbirds.net is much less formal, with reports pretty much accepted on trust. I know that some of the early hummingbirds people have reported to me over the years have turned out to be moths or tiny songbirds such as warblers or kinglets, so every really early sighting has to be taken with a grain of salt.

On the other hand, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are much more likely to be noticed in early migration by feeder watchers than by birders in the field, and a great many people reporting to hummingbirds.net specifically watch for that first hummingbird. Ebird attracts serious birders who seldom park themselves at the window watching for the first hummingbird--they’re out birding.

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds winter in Mexico and Central America. They normally start crossing the Gulf of Mexico in late February, which is pretty consistent with the data on hummingbirds.net--there weren’t many people reporting hummingbirds from down there to ebird until well into March, which makes me question whether they have enough reporters focused on hummingbirds for their map to be the more valid one.

Once hummingbirds cross the Gulf, they fatten up and tend to wander north with rising temperatures, which this year warmed up exceptionally early. Ruby-throated Hummingbird migration always follows that of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. Hummingbirds just don’t have many flowers to feed from when they first arrive in the north--they seem to reach my own yard a week or two before the cherry and apple blossoms open. What do they feed on when they first arrive? They depend on the running sap from sapsucker drill holes. According to ebird, there have been plenty of sapsucker sightings already well north of where hummingbirds.net shows ruby-throats. So the optimistic map may actually be correct.

The bottom line is, I just don’t know which map to believe. But you never know what’s going to happen in such an exceptional year, so I’m setting out a couple of hummingbird feeders this week. I probably won’t have any takers for another month, but you never know. I’d rather have my feeders out there and not get a hummingbird than live with the possibility that a very hungry hummingbird passed through and could find no food on Peabody Street. But whenever that first one arrives, I’m going to go straight to my computer and report it to ebird.

Cornell Lab's Red-tailed Hawk Nest Cam

View the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Red-tailed Hawk Nest Cam!!!

(Transcript of today's For the Birds)

Some of the most addictive websites in the world are nest cams. Tens of millions of people have watched just one pair of eagles raise their young in Decorah, Iowa, thanks to live-streaming video from a camera set in their nest. The eagle cam was put in by the Raptor Resource Project, the same people who constructed the Peregrine Falcon nest box in Duluth and who band our Peregrines every year. I wish they would get a streaming cam in our box, too, but they don’t have the necessary funding.

Nest cams have become all the rage, so you could spend all day every day watching them for all kinds of species--there are even some trained on hummingbird nests in California.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has been working with nest cams for all kinds of studies. They have a website with links to videos of nests from previous years. A few years ago they started a game called CamClickrs so people could tag various specific behaviors from years of archived nest cam photos to help scientists. I haven’t dared to start playing CamClickr--I’d become hopelessly addicted.

Last year Cornell followed nest cameras recording successful nestings of Barn and Barred Owls, Black Vultures, Chimney Swifts, Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, Carolina Wrens, Tree Swallows, Eastern Bluebirds, and even Pacific Loons. This year they rigged a high-definition camera into the nest of the Cornell campus Red-tailed Hawks.

These particular birds are often seen at Sapsucker Woods from the Lab--I watched them a lot when I was working there. Now I can see these birds up close and personal whenever I want. The live-streaming is mesmerizing. It’s not too hard to distinguish the male from the female.

Male:

Female (a.k.a.Big Red):

I’ve seen both of them incubating the eggs

turning the eggs

rearranging nest materials while sitting on the eggs

stepping off the eggs to preen

and delivering food--it seems like both the male and the female offer dead mice to entice the other one off the nest so they can take a turn sitting on the eggs (but no pix of the mice yet).

There were two eggs when I started watching on Monday

and Thursday I got to see the female lay her third egg. Cornell archives video of the coolest moments so even though the archive isn’t live, you can watch a 10-minute video showing her laying the third egg.

The male seems more high strung than the female--when he’s on the eggs, he watches every which way, his head darting up, down, to the left, back up again, the movements quick and restless. The female seems more laid back about it all. There’s something thrilling about being able to see exactly how hard the birds are working, and how tirelessly, and we get these views without disturbing the birds at all. In about a month the eggs will hatch, and before I’ve even seen chicks, I’m utterly invested in them.

If I’m excited about the Red-tailed Hawk nest cam, I’m thrilled about a nest cam that hasn’t started streaming yet. When I was working at Cornell, a pair of Great Blue Herons built a nest in a snag in the pond right outside the Lab. Day after day I’d be drawn to the window where I’d watch them and take hundreds of photos.

Now I have a huge set of photos from every stage as their four chicks grew from tiny nestlings to fledgings.

This year the Lab set up a cam to follow the herons. The adults haven’t returned to the nest yet, but soon I’ll be tracking two pairs of Cornell birds.

View the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Red-tailed Hawk Nest Cam!!!

Scotts Miracle-Gro added bird-killing pesticides to birdseed!

(Transcript of today's For the Birds)

When we go to any store to buy food for ourselves, our pets, our domesticated animals, or the wild birds in our backyards, we don’t think much about how we’re entrusting the well-being of ourselves and those critters to that store and its vendors. When anyone buys tainted products, even if it can be proven that the cause was accidental, we still hold the company that sold it to the store liable, because they are responsible for testing to ensure that they’re products meet minimum standards. What about when a corporation knowingly adds dangerous pesticides to bird seed--pesticides known to be toxic to birds?

That’s exactly what happened in 2007 and 2008, when Scotts Miracle-Gro company started adding two pesticides to birdseed mixes to control insect pests. One of the pesticides contained chlorpyrifos-methyl, which is not only toxic to fish, birds, and wildlife, but is required to carry precautionary labeling. The other pesticide was pirimiphos-methyl, which doesn’t have the precautionary labeling only because it’s not supposed to be sold for ANY use where it could come into contact with food or the environment. It is registered only for use as an interior surface paint additive to kill insects that are vectors for diseases.

Scotts started adding these dangerous pesticides to birdseed in 2007, despite clear warnings by two of their employees, one a pesticide chemist, the other an ornithologist. The corporation ignored them, continuing to distribute their products until March 2008. At the same time, a corporate manager responsible for federal registrations of their products intentionally falsified pesticide registration documents for two lawn products. (Scotts is Monsanto's exclusive agent for the marketing and distribution of consumer Roundup®)

When wild birds are poisoned at bird feeding stations, their deaths may be attributed to all kinds of causes. When a large outbreak of dying birds occurs in a backyard, the first thing we blame is disease, and people usually bring in and disinfect their feeders; when they put them out again, they don’t worry at all about putting bird seed back into them. No one really noticed anything about dying birds, although there were lots of people calling and emailing me directly and via the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and other people and organizations associated with birds, in 2007 through 2010, about dying feeder birds. I and just about everyone else thought this was due to disease outbreaks--I know I didn’t even consider the possibility of tainted seeds because the problem was so very widespread.

But in late January 2010, almost two years after Scotts stopped using the pesticides [and initiated a recall], a San Diego couple purchased Scotts Miracle-Grow Morning Song Wild Bird Seed from their local Wal-Mart to feed their outdoor aviary birds. Out of a flock of 100 birds, all but eight died. They didn’t suspect the seeds at first, but then they trapped dozens of field mice for translocation away from their property. They fed the mice these seeds, and within a few hours every one of the mice was dead. That Wal-Mart continued selling the seeds, claiming they only remove items from their shelves after a recall. Meanwhile, the couple sent the seeds for independent testing. This alerted the EPA, and within three days, on February 2, pulled seeds from local retailers and launched an investigation.

When the EPA first learned that the company was illegally adding these pesticides to birdseed and discovered the falsified documents for Scotts’ other outdoor products, they pressed charges. The case finally made it to court this year. On March 13, 2012, Scotts entered guilty pleas to all charges, and offered to settle for a $4 million fine and a half-million dollar contribution to support wildlife research and preservation. The judge has not yet made a decision. Scotts documents show that they had sold at least 73 million packages of this toxic birdseed [only about 2 million units were successfully recalled], so although their proposed settlement is huge, it’s far less than the profit they made. Meanwhile, I’ll never again purchase any products sold under the Scotts, Miracle-Gro, Country Pride, or Morning Song labels. This corporation has violated my trust forever.

Additional information: Excellent investigative report by "GrrlScientist" with linked citations

ABA Bird of the Year!!

(Transcript of today's For the Birds)

When my first book came out, my publishers called me one day and asked if I wanted to go to the ABA convention in Los Angeles for a book signing. I was thrilled until I realized that they weren’t talking about the American Birding Association—they were inviting me to attend a convention for the American Booksellers Association.

It was a fun meeting despite my initial disappointment. The American Birding Association is the only national group focused entirely on the fun elements of birding. The ABA has sponsored production of all kinds of valuable resources for birders, from checklists to what I consider their greatest contribution--their birder’s guides to various locations. Of all the books I’ve owned over my lifetime, the ones that were the most indispensable in guiding me through important experiences were my first cookbook, my first bird field guide, and some of the ABA guides.

James Lane was the man who wrote the first birder’s guides--they were simple books, stapled rather than bound, with a simple cardboard cover. Russ and I went to Texas in 1978 armed with my birder’s guide to the Rio Grande Valley, which gave directions to every birding hotspot to visit with simple graphs showing which birds were most likely to be at which places during which times of year. When we went to places like Falcon Dam and Bentson Rio Grande State Park, or on the Whooping Crane boat ride out of Fulton, we could tell exactly who the serious birders were when we saw a birder’s guide on their dashboard. It was like belonging to a wonderful little brotherhood. I added 46 birds to my lifelist in just 9 days thanks to my birder’s guide. And the guide told us how to find other animals too.

Russ and I went to southeastern Arizona in 1982, again armed with that area’s trusty birder’s guide, which even gave us a good idea of which places would be fun together as a family without the birding being too overwhelming with our six-month-old baby along, Because the guide led us to such great places, I still managed to see 56 lifers.

When the American Birding Association started publishing those birder’s guides, they made a lot of improvements in the revised versions. Before I take a trip anywhere, even when I’m not going to have a chance to do any serious birding, I pore through the birder’s guide so I know what birds are likely to be around. If I do find a few free hours, I know which places are closest for a quick getaway.

Unfortunately, as with many organizations, ABA membership has been falling as people realized they could buy their valuable resources without having to pay dues. But I’m still a committed member. This week the ABA announced their Bird of the Year: the Evening Grosbeak. They put together a cool webpage about the species, and I contributed a lengthy blog post about Evening Grosbeak conservation--what has happened to their numbers, possible explanations, and what we can do about it. I love that a group focused on the fun of birding is committed to conservation and education.

Additional information: Article about Evening Grosbeak decline by Paul Hess in Birding for March 2009.

Early Spring

(Transcript of Monday's For the Birds)

Spring migration is proceeding way ahead of schedule this year. Saturday was warm enough that the songs of a robin drifted through my open window along with the twitterings of 100 or so redpolls. These tiny northern finches usually stick around into April. I think they’ll be long gone by then this year--by Monday, only two remained. I still have a dozen Pine Siskins and hope a pair will nest in my yard. On Monday, a junco showed up --I don’t know if this is a new arrival or one of the small flock that wintered in my neighborhood--but the American Tree Sparrow that arrived with him was new.

Saturday, a pair of Merlins was hanging out and calling. There are lots of large conifers in and near my yard, and I wonder if the Merlins are searching for a good nesting situation. They use an abandoned crow nest--usually one built the year before. I know a couple of crow families nested near here--I could hear the babies begging from two different nests last year--so there are at least a couple of possibilities. It can be tricky to see a crow nest--they build them high up in a spruce or pine tree, very close to the trunk and well hidden. So if Merlins do end up nesting here, I may eventually figure out which tree they’re using, but will have to be very lucky to actually find the nest.

I don’t understand how it came to be that a bird-eating falcon became so noisy; don’t they scare away all their potential prey? Yet somehow this seems to work for Merlins. I enjoy these feisty little falcons, but it can be hard for me to deal with them in my neighborhood, fueling their bodies and those of their young with my chickadees. Back in the early 90s when a pair of Merlins nested down my block, one of them would fly straight over the sidewalk along Peabody Street until he reached my house. Without slowing, he’d drop so his wings were almost brushing the sidewalk until he’d passed the corner tree. Then, staying carefully behind trees until the very last moment, he’d bank and head straight to the feeder in my side yard. Whichever bird he grabbed never knew what hit it.

When I moved to Duluth, Merlins were very difficult to find. They started nesting in town during the 1980s, and I fell in love with them even if I have trouble abiding a bird that eats chickadees. One year a storm knocked a Merlin nest out of a tree when the young were close to fledging. I got to rescue the two chicks. They didn’t need anything from me except to be brought to a safe branch. The mother yelled at me from the moment I showed up, flying over my head as I carried the chick to a safe spot. She was a bit calmer as I did the same with the second chick, but kept up her incessant calling the whole while. I took a couple of photos of the babies but hurried on, knowing how I would have felt if a strange giant of another species picked up one of my babies.

I don’t know if we’ll have any Merlin nesting events so close to my house this year, but it was exciting hearing them on Saturday, and made me feel like spring is definitely happening. I’m concerned about these record-breaking temperatures--Russ saw a butterfly this weekend that wasn’t a mourning cloak, and more and more the timing of plant and insect emergences doesn’t coincide with the life cycles of many of the birds that depend on them. I don’t like to be an alarmist, gentle weather and new spring arrivals inspire hopefulness, and the equinox tends to bring out my equanimity. So even as I do what I can to conserve energy and try to minimize my carbon footprint, I’ll take pleasure in the season. Spring is here!

Archimedes!

I don't currently have a webpage for Archimedes, so this blog post will serve as an introduction to my licensed education Eastern Screech-Owl.

Archimedes came to me when he was 1 year old, in April, 2000. He had been brought to the Back to the Wild Wildlife Rehabilitation and Nature Education Center in Castalia, Ohio, when he was a very young chick. He was emaciated, covered with various abrasions on his delicate skin, and was close to death when some children found him. His problems originated with a blood parasite, and as he got sicker and became too weak to beg, he finally keeled over in the nest cavity, and his parents eventually tossed him out, probably thinking he was dead. The children who picked him up saved his life by quickly getting him to the wildlife clinic.

Few rehabbers feed baby owls anymore--the chicks are too likely to imprint on humans--so if the young owls cannot be placed in another nest with young of about the same age, the rehabbers entrust them to captive "foster parents" of the same speces. Unfortunately, Archimedes was so weak and needed so much attention that this was impossible, and he became hopelessly imprinted. When he was healthy and hunting successfully, they tried to teach him to fear humans, but that failed. It was a tragedy for him to not be able to live a wild and free life. I've tried to give him as wonderful a life in captivity as I can. But thanks to his being imprinted, he makes a splendid education bird because he's utterly calm when doing programs. I have both a US Fish and Wildlife Service and a Minnesota DNR permit to "possess" him.

Archimedes eats mice. I order frozen mice that come packed in dry ice. He eats one or two each day, depending on their size and his weight--I add a few dietary supplements to keep him healthy. When he's very hungry or the mouse is very small, he swallows it whole, but usually he lops off the head and upper shoulders in one bite, and then swallows the rest.

He calls at night--more often in spring and fall than other times of the year. Sometimes for no apparent reason he calls at mid-day, too. You can hear him calling without interruption for 2 minutes and 55 seconds (recorded on September 13, 2011) here.

Every summer he goes through a rather awkward molt.

I feel blessed to have had the amazing good fortune to be entrusted with this little guy for 12 years now--this spring he turns 13, meaning he's a teenager! The oldest known banded wild Eastern Screech-Owl lived to be 14 years, 6 months. I hope Archimedes breaks all the records!

Eagles!

(Transcript of today's For the Birds)

Right now we’re at the peak of eagle migration over Duluth. The crows in my neighborhood have been making a ruckus whenever eagles pass over, but they make a ruckus for everything else, too. This year’s eagle migration has been impressive, based on all the phone calls and emails I’ve been getting from people seeing them flying overhead. A lot of people are surprised to see them circling over parking lots, but when snow was covering the ground, roads and parking areas were the best places for thermal air currents to form. Now that the snow is melting again, thermals can form just about anywhere.

Frank Nicoletti and several other birders have been counting eagles along Skyline Parkway: the biggest days so far were March 11, when they counted 400 Bald Eagles, 21 Golden Eagles, and 16 Rough-legged Hawks, March 13, when they had 341 Bald Eagles, 5 Goldens, and 12 Rough-legs, and March 15, when they had 451 Bald Eagles, 28 Golden Eagles, and 12 Rough-legs. Other hawks are also coming through, though not in those numbers yet. The peak of migration for eagles usually falls sometime around March 25. Rough-legs and Red-tailed Hawks tend to peak in mid-April, and Broad-wings in early May, so there will be plenty of good hawk viewing in the coming weeks. (You can learn more about the count here.)

Many migrating eagles are headed to the far north. Eagles nesting in Florida and other Gulf Coast states started as early as late fall and many are already done for the year. Those nesting at our latitude started nesting in the past couple of weeks. Eagles reuse the same nest year after year, making some repairs in fall after their young are independent, and then making more repairs on the nest in spring before the first egg is laid. Eagle pairs usually mate for life, but we don’t know much about whether they spend the winter together except non-migratory pairs—at least some of them stay together all the time. Some mating behaviors are documented on wintering grounds, so some ornithologists believe that at least some eagle pairs may remain together year-round, but it would take long-term tracking of marked individuals to figure out for sure how often this happens.

Duluth East High School may be unique in the Lower 48 as a large public high school with an active Bald Eagle nest right on the school grounds, easily viewed from the parking lot or the athletic fields. The pair has returned there year after year since the school was a junior high school, and throughout construction when the building was rebuilt as a high school. I went on a bird walk around the school with some of Jenny Madole’s students on the Ides of March, and the highlight was seeing one of the eagles on the nest. The bird was sitting tight. She looked directly at us for a while, but I could also see her watching crows flying over, and also looking out in directions where I couldn’t see anything in particular, but she didn’t move the rest of her body at all. It takes about 35 days for the eggs to hatch, so students should be seeing fuzzy little heads peeking out in April, and the eaglets should be getting big enough to sit higher up by the end of the school year. It’s hard for the kids to be so near and yet not know for sure what’s going on inside that deep nest. Some students are investigating the possibility of getting a nest cam for next year—that would be a splendid learning opportunity for the entire community. Meanwhile, the kids are piecing together the eagles’ family life with glimpses of the birds as they can, while they plan out bird feeders and nest boxes to make East High School an even more extraordinary place of learning that will truly be for the birds.

Robins

(Transcript of today's For the Birds)

Back in early February, I saw an American Robin in my backyard. Part of the time he was eating berries, and part of the time he was rummaging through leaves in the back of the yard for earthworms. This may have looked like a little preview of spring, but it didn’t sound like it—he wasn’t singing yet. Some robins spend the entire winter in Duluth, not due to climate change directly, but because they wander widely, wherever they can find berries and crabapples. The ones wintering here aren’t necessarily the same ones that will breed here, but robins that winter in the northern tier of states and in Canada do have the advantage of a shorter distance to travel to their breeding grounds, assuming they survive the winter. Males that winter further south have the energy expense and dangers of long-distance travel, but they don’t deal with severe cold. Weather patterns change from year to year, and robins that have the advantage one year may not the next. In the long run, climate change may have increasing advantages for robins wintering in the north, because the South is having more tornado-level storms in winter, while the North is having milder winters. But as long as there are huge amounts of fruit in the South, we’ll almost certainly continue to have robins wintering throughout their range for the foreseeable future.

Wherever they are outside the breeding season, robins are constantly on the move, but the bulk of robin migration northward in late February and March follows the 37-degree isotherm. With the current warm front, we can expect robins to start appearing throughout the north woods in the coming days. I always get a surge of joy when I hear my first one. Considering how variable the weather can be in early spring, it’s cool that once our first spring robin appears, he sings day after day, whatever the weather brings, including heavy snow and ice storms.

Female robins return a couple of weeks after the first males. By then, territorial disputes are mostly settled, and females can get down to the business of nesting. Few robins in towns nest in trees anymore—their eggs and nestlings are just too vulnerable to the burgeoning numbers of urban crows. Those robins who still do nest in trees invariably choose a thick evergreen for their first nest, since they lay their first eggs before leaves have emerged enough to provide protection from sun and rain in deciduous trees. More and more robins nest on houses and other structures close enough to people to get some safety from the crows. Most people enjoy their backyard robins, but when they nest on a porch light or something else right by an entry, the robins may make a mess, start dive-bombing us, or make us worry about disturbing them. Setting out robin nest platforms in more desirable places on the house can help both us and them. Carrol Henderson’s book, Woodworking for Wildlife, available in bookstores and from the Minnesota DNR, has excellent plans and advice for placing robin nest platforms.

Few researchers focus on robins in banding studies. Those adults who are successful breeding in an area may return for several years straight—the oldest wild robin known lived to be almost 14 years old—but their young seldom return anywhere near where they were raised, and individual robins seldom return year after year to particular wintering areas, so their movements are still not at all understood. I love how a homey backyard bird that just about everyone notices and recognizes can keep so many secrets from us.

Birding with the Flu

(Transcript of yesterday's For the Birds)

Four weeks ago, I came down with the flu. This year’s virus strain is a doozy—every time I thought it was actually clearing up, I got sick all over again, which is not a good thing for a person who makes her living mostly by out-of-town public speaking. I had several engagements, each of which came up right when I thought I was getting better, and after each one, I ended up sicker than before. I came home from the last one with a full-blown infection—fortunately, I could feel it coming on and got to the doctor while the fever was still low, but it climbed all day and into the night before it finally broke due to the antibiotics. Now I can finally talk for a few minutes straight before I break down into coughing again.

Overall, this wasn’t that big a deal, because lucky for me, I’m a human. Birds don’t have the luxury of being able to hunker down and watch romantic comedies and funny Leslie Neilson DVDs when they’re sick. Even the most wonderfully paired cranes can’t rely on their mate to prepare chicken soup, and if the weather is uncomfortably cold and wet and you happen to be a bird, well, that’s just too bad. If a bird is too sick to spend all its waking hours finding food and detecting potential predators, it simply won’t survive.

The engagements I did while I was sick included leading a couple of field trips at the Sax-Zim Bog, one for the Sax-Zim bird festival and one for Duluth Audubon. A Great Gray Owl has been hanging around, but hasn’t been very cooperative and never seems to be hunting anywhere near a road, so seeing this one involves not just luck but a good hike. But Boreal Chickadees, Gray Jays, Evening Grosbeaks, and Common Redpolls have been fairly easy to see all winter at the bog, and even when I was feeling sick, I couldn’t help but take photos of them.

Canal Park in Duluth has also been superb, with six species of gulls still turning up fairly regularly, including not just the regular Herring but a few overwintering Ring-bills, several Glaucous, a few Iceland and Thayer’s, and even one or two Great Black-backed Gulls. I’ve managed to get photos of all six species even though I’ve only been to Canal Park three times all season.

These gulls spend part of the day by the Superior landfill and part by the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District facility. Unfortunately, some birders were stopping by WLSSD even though it’s closed to the public for obvious safety reasons, and despite the fact that it’s much simpler to just head to Canal Park in mid- to late-afternoon, when the birds take a break from sewage and garbage to loaf around near the lift bridge. Several birders have been feeding them bread there all winter, making the gulls’ regular visitors at Canal Park, where they are extremely easy to see. Common Goldeneyes are hanging out in several areas in the Lake, and are now doing their cool breeding displays. The males bob and suddenly jerk their head all the way to their lower back, bill pointed skyward. That’s one of the coolest, most thrilling breeding displays I’ve ever seen, and right now when you find a flock, it’s almost certain that at least some of the males will be doing this.

Goldeneyes have been here all winter, but Hooded Mergansers are also starting to show up, the males making their breeding displays by bobbing their heads and raising and lowering their elegant crests. Even when I’ve been stuck home in bed, I’ve been able to see dozens and sometimes hundreds of winter finches and my own dear chickadees, but I’m glad I’m getting well in time to enjoy spring migration at its finest.