Some days birding, starlings are the best you get

A small percentage of my birding excursions give me a goose egg: no birds spotted whatsoever. Such outings are rare, and I can almost predict when I’ll get that result.

Time of day is the most reliable predictor. On off-work days either my wife will shoo me out of the house or I’ll head out of my own volition. But when I get to the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm at 2 in the afternoon, I know that birds will be scarce. They are most active in the morning and some emerge an hour or so before sundown. But when it’s mid-afternoon, most birds there are hunkered down.

Earlier this month, I arrived at the Pole Farm at 2:20 p.m. one day to get some air, and that’s about all I got. I spotted six turkey vultures overhead and heard two blue jays in just under half an hour, when I decided to call it a day.

Some mornings can make for slim pickings, too, such as one early this week. As I drove in to the Pole Farm, I did my usual scan to see if anything was flying. All I could spot were 15 starlings lining the roof of the red barn by the Cold Soil Road parking lot.

Only 10 minutes after sunrise, the temperature was around freezing, and there was a breeze, which I recognized as not an ideal combination for birding success. My hunch was right.

In the 30 minutes I spent there, the only other birds I logged on e-Bird were two Canada geese that flew overhead. As I got back to the parking lot, I spotted a hawk in a big tree to the right of the park entrance and walked over that way. It was a red-shouldered hawk, probably the same bird I’ve seen in that tree many times in the past. It stated squawking and eventually flew off after I’d only had a chance to get a couple of branch-obscured photos of it.

Back to the car I went, and I saw three starlings high up in a tree just off the main path. I snapped a couple of frames of them, and one tops this post. That was as good as it got photographically that day.

This morning, I spent about half an hour at the Charles Rogers Preserve in Princeton, and it was quiet again. I spotted a great blue heron far across the central marsh and snapped a couple frames, more so to check the camera than to get a good shot. I was disappointed not to see any ducks, wood or otherwise, that are often present in the marsh much of the year.

I didn’t lift my camera the remainder of my half-hour walk, as birds were seemingly in hiding. But I did luck out — I had heard the cry of what I thought might be a pileated woodpecker as I headed toward the red trail, and as I was on my way back I spotted one checking out some of the trees.

The bird was fairly small for a pileated, but there was no mistaking its magnificent crest through my binoculars. The bird popped from tree to tree, circling around the back of each. Even if it had stayed on my side, I wouldn’t have been able to get a clear shot through the tangle of branches between us.

Thus ended another outing with no useable photos, a mild disappointment vastly painted over by the thrill of spotting the pileated woodpecker, the first I’ve seen in several months.

Even if I don’t see or hear any birds on an outing, it’s still worth getting outside for a little exercise and communing with nature. And I can always check the action at my feeders when I get home. A downy woodpecker is hacking away at our suet feeder as I write this sentence.

Happy birding, everyone!