The Naturalist's Corner
Invited for tea
I opened the door around 7 a.m. last Saturday and spring hit me square in the face. Actually a cold misty breeze hit me square in the face but I got an earful of spring. “Drink your tea – ea-ea-ea-ea!” wailed an eastern towhee from the brambles at the edge of my yard.
Now chickadees have been singing and so have Carolina wrens and cardinals and some song sparrows’ teakettles have started to boil. But these troubadours are likely to loosen up their vocal chords anytime during the winter if we get a couple of warm sunshiny days. And while you may hear an emphatic and prolonged “drrriinnkk” or “driinnkk teaaa” or “tea-ea-ea” from a wintertime towhee, the bawdy, lascivious, full-throated “Drink your tea-ea-ea-ea-ea!” is generally reserved for karaoke night at the local singles bar after a long cold winter.
Towhees in the yard aren’t the only signs of spring.
A walk around Lake Junaluska last Thursday produced 20-plus tree swallows. An unidentified shorebird was also observed at the lake. I didn’t have binoculars and the distance was too great and the lighting too bad to make out more than a silhouette working the edge of the small channel that’s left in the middle of the lake. The bird was foraging like a sandpiper and from its size and posture, I would guess pectoral.
Pectorals are early migrants and commonly seen around the lake in migration when it’s drawn down. Wayne Forsythe reported pectorals along with American golden plovers, killdeers, horned larks and American pipits along Hooper Lane in Henderson County last Sunday.
Related Items
George Robert Ellison II — Thoreau in a jockstrap
The birders… they are a’changing: A new generation of birders rises up
The Naturalist's Corner: Eeekk! Not a mouse
The Naturalist's Corner: Social distancing
Birds aren’t the only winged harbingers of spring. Butterflies are being reported across the region. Question marks and mourning cloaks have been reported from Kingsport, Tenn. And mourning cloaks have also been reported from Catawba County. Of course one look up at the red maple buds should clue you in that the brown leaf litter will soon be parting as the green shoots of trout lily, bloodroot, toothwort, trailing arbutus and other spring ephemerals claw their way to sunshine.
This is not to say that Ma Nature won’t dust us with another snow or two. I remember back in April 2005 when I was surveying for migrants at Balsam Mountain Preserve. It was 30 degrees, snowing, and some places had half an inch of the white stuff on the ground. But when I could find sheltered places out of the wind, early migrants like northern parula warblers, blackburnian warblers, black-and-white warblers, blue-headed vireos and rose-breasted grosbeaks were singing in the snow. So go ahead and fire up your teapot because before you know it, it will be time to sit on your deck and “Drink your tea-ea-ea-ea-ea!”
Don Hendershot can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
