Saturday, March 8, 2014

Twee, Twee, Twee, Twee

March 3, 2014:  Roseburg, Oregon

Friends in Wisconsin and family in New Hampshire are still talking about below zero weather, meanwhile we just finished our first mowing of the lawn. If we had waited any longer we’d have to get a hay bailer out there.  Our lawn is lush and green all winter, then dry and crunchy by mid summer.  The spring challenge is to find a day when the grass is dry enough to cut, dry enough so we don’t stall the lawnmower more than just a few times. 

Daffodils are blooming and my ornamental cherry just popped into bloom. 

And today nature surprised me with a bird call I wasn’t familiar with.  Dale and I were walking about a block from home and heard, “Twee, twee, twee, twee” – about four insistent calls, a brief pause and then four more.  I’d just heard a junco trilling his little heart out, the first of the season, and now this strange call.

Fortunately the little bird had the decency to show himself.  He spooked to a new location.  Even though all I had was a silhouette, I knew immediately I was looking at a white-breasted nuthatch. He clung to the side of a birch in proper nuthatch fashion and then flew to the tippy top of another tree to sing.  There he sat, way up above the neighborhood singing his little heart out. 

When we got home I did a little searching and found white-breasted nuthatches sound a little different in different parts of the country.  Mine sounds very much like a recording from Monterey Bay, California that I found on http://xeno-canto.org. 


http://xeno-canto.org is a wonderful web site for checking out bird songs. 

12 comments:

  1. Lovely painting of this attractive bird, Elva.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Lynn … you must be Chris's friend. Thank you for reading my blog.

      Delete
    2. Yes, I met Cris on line through our blogs and now we are in person friends when my husband and I pass through Roseburg on our way to Portland to visit kids and grandkids! I've been enjoying your art on your blog for some time as well!

      Delete
  2. I love both of these birds. We had a pair of nuthatches
    one year build a nest in one of our bird houses. It was so much fun to watch them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are funnily little birds, aren't they. Always busy and usually upside down.

      Delete
  3. Isn't it interesting that the song varies so much from place to place. Birds have different accents just as people do.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I find it hard enough to learn bird songs if they are consistent. The variations make it just that much harder.

      Delete
  4. What a lovely rendering of this sweet bird. I enjoyed hearing about your climate & weather. Here in Maine we have a way to go before any lawn mowing! But there is the hint...the hope...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nice sketch and painting! We need to watch/listen for these little guys more. Just look for upside down birds, eh?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Beautiful drawing Elva - we have these lovely birds at our feeders all year long. Never really took note of their song. Will have to really listen. They usually visit with our chickadees and somehow their voices seem to drown out others (LOL)! Love your sketches. Will be back to visit often.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Welcome to my blog.

      I probably should have mentioned that this nuthatch song is probably just spring / courting singing. They have a shorter call they sing out all year with.

      Delete
  7. Just had the same experience with a red-breasted nuthatch. In this case I knew it was a nuthatch, was busy scanning the interior of the trees the sound was coming from when my novice birding friend pointed up at the top of the tree. "Is that it?" And indeed it was. I too had never distinguished the song from the call, and had never, ever, seen one at the tippy-top of a tree. Just goes to show that I often bird by assumption rather than observation...

    ReplyDelete