Today's the Day April 21, 2010

The leading edge of the songbird migration has arrived in Central Maryland. As usual, the thrushes led the way (family Turdidae), including the American Robin (which actually can be found almost any month of the year in our area), but more delightfully, the large number of species beyond Robins...These include Eastern Bluebird, the gently downward sonic spiraling of the Veery (which I heard and saw yesterday afternoon and is what tipped me off to the presence of the early arrivals;) in that group we can expect to see the Wood Thrush and the Hermit Thrush any minute now! The songs of the thrush family are, in my judgement, their most wonderful aspect, and they are relatively easy to remember (I can whistle and "call in," the Wood Thrush, for instance), and the Veery, which is also fairly easy to identify and mimic by the "downward spiral" in sound, which is the way I always think of it...There is weather coming in, so I am trying to get what observation I can today. I have to say, that birds have been with me since I was a lad of four years old. In fact, my earliest memory is the spring day when a crow tried to pick a clothespin off the clothesline that scared my mother!