In the continuing (and no doubt boring!) saga of my misconstruction of what I
hear out my window while working at the computer, I heard a distinct, loud
but imperfect song of Orchard Oriole this morning (8 April); opening a
window, I heard the neighborhood mockingbird and thought: "Fool me once."
The mockingbird moved from Killdeer to starling to House Finch to
Semipalmated Plover and back to Orchard Oriole. "Ah-ha! Gotcha."
And then the Orchard Oriole sang, loudly, two trees down. Rushing outside in
stocking feet, I was almost hit by a startled Painted Bunting (the one
missing for the past week), which flew up into the neighbors' Crape Myrtle
tree, just next to ... a first-year male Orchard Oriole. Like several other
individual birds seen in Virginia this spring, this one was about 5-6 days
earlier than "average," though there are reports from the first week of April
from years past, certainly, usually in very mild periods with southerly
winds. What's surprising about this one, though, is that it showed up after
a period of terribly cold rain and cold, contrary wind.
Or did it? Maybe what I heard out the window on last Friday, the 4th, was
not just that mockingbird, or not only that mockingbird, after all. The
mockingbird is doing Great Crested Flycatcher now as I type this. Maybe I
should go outside before the really bad weather returns tomorrow ...
Ned Brinkley
Cape Charles, VA
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