The Monday morning run to the bakery started out unusually well when Gellert and I noticed a great big bird perched on a distant transmission tower: an adult bald eagle, the first we’d seen from our yard here. It must have roosted in the neighborhood overnight, and I took its presence as a sign that a trip to Brookdale Park might be in order.
It was a beautiful morning, at last, cool enough for a jacket, bright enough for chimney swifts high overhead.
As usual, the best birding was along the Magic Edge, where the morning sun strikes first and the understory is densest. My timing was good, and I arrived just as the morning’s biggest flock did. Soon the trees and bushes were wimmling with birds.
After a long summer, it was great to be in the position of having to choose which bird to look at and which to let go. I ended up with eleven species of migrant parulids, including two bay-breasted warblers, and with them a couple of red-eyed vireos, a blue-gray gnatcatcher, and a very oddly colored scarlet tanager — he was a normal formative male except for the deeply colored, dull orange undertail coverts and vent, making for a weird contrast from below.
It was beginning to feel like a big morning. But the dog was getting fussy (why does he prefer romping in the dog park to lying quietly at my feet?) and the wind was steadily rising, so we wished the birds good travels — and resolved to return tomorrow.
