After being on hiatus from hiking for nearly three weeks because of a bum knee, I started walking again this evening, with tacit approval from the doctor. It felt great. How I’ll feel in the morning will probably be grist for tomorrow’s blog mill.
After last week’s near-scare of winter, a bit of sunshine this evening was welcome. I’d not been on the Bike & Hike Trail in northern Summit County since late summer. I was wondering how “my” Northern Mockingbirds were doing. The Ohio Ornithological Society listserv has been all atwitter with birds migrating through, particularly sparrows, and I needed to get out and find some. Sparrows can be challenging (for me) in any season. To sort out gull species in sub-freezing conditions requires you be part masochist as well as a great birder. Sparrows, while favoring better weather conditions, give you only a fleeting glance to test your birding skills. And they’re 99 percent brown.
Not wishing to test the recuperating knee beyond reason, we opted for about three miles of easy walking. To our delight, the Northern Mockingbird was in his usual spot, high in a maple tree that has already shed its leaves.
Many of the usual suspects were around, however, sparrows seemed to be missing. Turkey Vultures, coming to roost on the huge power towers provided by First Energy Corp., seemed to be paying a lot of attention to me. I waved my arms to show them I was still alive, just moving slowly.
Nearing the end of our walk we heard him. He was so proud of his song. It seems like he’d start repeating the first verse before he finished the full version. There is little mistaking the song of a White-throated Sparrow. We then heard a second bird; then a third. Their message seemed to be: Get on with it, get on with it, get on with it.
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