Some new arrivals at least for me the past few mornings in a walk up the landfill and out to Teller's Point, included Eastern Phoebe (2), a singing Eastern Towhee (on the wine cellar low road), a seemingly serious uplift too in the numbers of flickers, common grackles, cowbirds and red wing blackbirds, also saw a few of the meadowlarks that have been up on the land fill. Raptors were around as well, two harriers (including a grey ghost), at least two American kestrel, 2 red shouldered hawks flying north, one coop, one merlin, the resident red tails, one lingering eagle (or more likely a local bird), and a few blue heron flyovers, -- osprey are on the light stanchion in the train station parking lot where they have nested the past several years. I struck out hoping to see some waterfowl moving up river; virtually nothing either on the river side or the bay side.
The highlight (maybe because spring seems so slow in coming) was my first butterflies of the season - a lady (not sure which), and a beautiful morning cloak. And they of course got me to a song, and in turn the myriad of incredible singer/songwriters Texas has spawned - the more popular e.g. Willie Nelson, Townes van Zandt, Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Lee Ann Womack, Delbert McClinton, the less so, e.g. Doug Sahm, Freddie Fender, Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely, Guy Clark, Susanna Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, Alejandro Escovedo, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Rodney Crowell, Robert Earl Keen, Kasey Musgraves, Hayes Carll, and the more obscure, Roky Erickson, James McMurtry, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Tish Hinojosa, Adam Carroll, Carrie Rodriguez, Bruce Robison, and Terri Hendrix - and the many, many I have certainly left out. What came to mind particularly upon seeing the morning cloak was the beautiful song perhaps more apt for a swallowtail, "Butterfly Wing" by one of the more obscure Mr. Jon Dee Graham --- the way he uses a single common word "that" as a thread to hold a song together; great writing. So Happy Spring, Happy Easter, Happy April Fool's Day, Happy baseball season, and here's to my old friends and you lepidopterists out there: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tNFOPc5g3QE L. Trachtenberg Ossining -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
