Common Ground: Third eye duck blind

Photo courtesy of Christine Cunningham. Duck-hunting success comes from patient peace and quiet. Just don’t crow too loudly about it.

By Christine Cunningham, for the Redoubt Reporter

Conversations in the duck blind are the most profound conversations a person can have in life. If the topic is not pertinent or amusing, it doesn’t get talked about in the duck blind. Sound is too precious. If it has to be said in a whisper, it’s got to be relevant or hilarious.

Nothing else rises to the level of communication. If ducks are coming in or over, all idle chatter must cease. It doesn’t matter if you were about to present the punch line to the funniest joke you’d heard all year. It doesn’t matter if you were about to reveal a secret that could cure the ails of all mankind. If ducks are coming in and you’re in a duck blind, the ducks have to take precedence.

For a while, when duck hunting was new to me, it was impossible for me to know that the appearance of ducks in the sky, the sound of ducks on a pond nearby, or even the random thought of ducks that might arise was cause for instant pause. The ducks “have the floor,” is what my fifth-grade teacher would say. Whoever is running the show is the one that gets to talk.

So, if you’re hunting ducks, they have your attention. You’re supposed to be scanning the sky. You’re supposed to be listening. You’re supposed to be using your duck call. And if a duck wants to join the conversation, that’s the best kind of talk.

But I didn’t know this when I started. It seemed like, if the story was good enough, it wouldn’t matter if a few flocks of ducks failed to land on the pond. I was wrong. Those could be the only ducks that fly by all day. In my case, they were.

When the measure of my conversational ability is how well I can stop talking at the mere suggestion of ducks, I had a long way to go. I had to learn to talk in shorter sentences. I had to learn to pick up where the story left off after a 45-minute duck interruption. This not only helped me in the duck blind, it could possibly help me in life.

Science of the Seasons: Keep a hawk eye out for avian acrobatics

By Dr. David Wartinbee, for the Redoubt Reporter

A few weeks back, when the Redpolls were emptying our bird feeders every day, we had a special visitor. Out of the corner of my eye a large dark bird swept low over the ground and headed to an area below one of the feeders.

The feasting Redpolls seemed to scatter in every possible direction and just as fast, the predator was gone. I wondered what had just cruised by and suspected it might have been a goshawk. We have seen goshawks attempt to take small birds at the feeders in the past but this hawk was more dark brown than the characteristic blue-gray back and light-colored chest of adult goshawks.

I started looking out every window of the house in hopes that it might have landed nearby. Sure enough, there was the predator, perched in a tree staring at the bird feeder and the dozens of Redpolls that were back on the ground. It was a goshawk-sized bird with a dark brown back and a speckled front. The eyes were bright yellow and not the ruby red I expected of an adult goshawk. After a quick check in my bird book, I was certain that this was a juvenile goshawk.

Northern goshawks, perhaps better known simply as goshawks, are categorized as an accipiter and are found throughout North America, Europe and parts of Asia. They are a year-round predator here in Alaska but are so secretive that they are only occasionally seen. This past winter I encountered several goshawks but in almost every case, they were quickly out of sight and lost in thick woods.

I was usually able to identify them by their size, gray color and characteristic flight pattern of flap, flap, glide. Additionally, they are one of only a very few hawks that are seen here in winter months. These distinctions work in the winter, but in summer sharp-shined hawks frequently use that same flying cadence and Harlen’s hawks are similarly colored to immature goshawks.

Birding bonanza — Late spring compresses area shorebird migration

Photo by Joseph Robertia. A duck pokes along the wetlands at the mouth of the Kasilof River on Saturday.

By Joseph Robertia

Redoubt Reporter

The lingering cold temperatures and snow have meant a late start to spring this year, but for one group that’s provided a silver lining to a favorite activity. For birders, the late change in conditions has meant a late arrival of migratory birds, but once they showed up, they showed up in force.

“Things were delayed a bit, but it’s made for some great viewing opportunities now. Out on the Kenai Flats, you can see 10,000 birds a day right now, where usually you’d only be seeing about 5,000 a day,” said Todd Eskelin, an avid birder and biological technician at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

The bird congestion at the estuary areas at the mouths of the Kenai and Kasilof rivers owes to many areas migratory birds would be frequenting still being frozen.

“A lot of areas are still locked up with ice, and definitely were at the end of last month. The waterfowl migration usually picks up at the end of April to the beginning of May, but with so much still frozen then, it’s compacted a six-week migration into three weeks,” he said.

Bear in mind — Unarmed birder fights off unusual brown bear attack on Kasilof Beach

Photo by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. While not often spotted on popular recreational beaches, it is not uncommon for bears to patrol shorelines, looking for potential meals washing up in the surf, like this one photographed two years ago. A brown bear sow attacked a family of birdwatchers out for a walk on the Kasilof Beach on Sunday.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

The details of a bear attack Sunday afternoon on the Kasilof beach were about as ripe for tragedy as they come.

A family with three of their kids — one just a baby in a backpack — unarmed, out for a walk along the shore. An adult sow brown bear, seemingly “deranged,” acting erratically and aggressively, not responding to attempts to haze it away.

The family is caught in the open sand, with no cover or protection, no chance of making it back to their vehicle, no one around to help and nothing with which to defend themselves but a bird-spotting scope and tripod.

And yet, the encounter ended about as well as it possibly could, the only casualties being the tripod, one of the baby’s mittens and the bear, which was shot and killed by Alaska State Troopers.

“After it was all done my overwhelming sentiment that I was left with was I just felt grateful. It could have ended so many different ways and, really, no one was hurt. It never laid a paw on any of my family and I didn’t get torn up so I just felt really grateful,” said Toby Burke, of Kenai.

Burke, 48, a wildlife biologist with the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, was at the Kasilof River at about 3 p.m. Sunday with his wife, Laura, their 11-year-old daughter, Grace, 8-year-old son, Damien, and 7-month-old baby girl, Camille, snoozing in a pack on Laura’s back.

“So, little people,” Burke said, from his office Monday. Then a pause. “Little people.”

“We were not armed. We just came out on the beach to recreate. We didn’t have bear spray, we didn’t have any firearms with us,” he said. “We weren’t even that far from our vehicle, and it’s a fairly high-use area. And even the day we picked to go there, it was windy and cool but it was still sunny and people were coming out to walk their dogs. It just, I guess, caught us by surprise.”

The Burkes are avid birders and were at the north beach of the river to conduct a shorebird survey in the estuary. With binoculars and a heavy-duty spotting scope and tripod, they spotted some yellowlegs, black-bellied plovers and ducks at a distance. They’d arrived a little early for the tide to be fully in, though, so decided to walk down along the shore toward the river mouth to kill some time.

They cleared the dunes and were heading south down onto the sand, but stopped when they spotted a brown bear ahead, about 400 meters away.

“We just stopped in our tracks and said, ‘Oh. We’re not going to be going down there,’” Burke said.

They saw no one else in the vicinity, though they had noticed vehicles of two other parties walking north along the beach. Just then a dune buggy came zipping along. Burke tried to get the driver’s attention to indicate the presence of the bear, but he’s not sure if the driver noticed as he headed toward the bear.

“It was like a homemade dune buggy, really loud, so we thought, ‘OK, this guy is going to drive it into the next county. At least into the flats away from the beach area,’” Burke said.

Sure enough, the bear retreated into the dunes. The buggy stopped at the river mouth, then turned and zipped back the way it had come.

As the Burkes watched, the bear re-appeared.

“The bear in the dunes was acting really erratic. Like it was deranged. It would run out on the beach and back into the dunes. It looked like a very unhealthy bear, not just its appearance, but its behavior. I’ve had experience with bears with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And I even said to my wife, ‘That looks like a candidate to be destroyed or shot,’” Burke said.

They lost sight of it in the dunes. Then it reappeared about 300 feet away, near a chain-link fence that denotes private property.

“It was just walking. I thought, ‘This bear’s a little curious but not showing any particular interest in us.’ But it was getting closer so we thought, ‘We need to get out of here.’ But again it disappeared and we couldn’t see it,” Burke said.

They were about to head for their van when, “All of a sudden it popped up behind us in the dunes and was right there — 50 or 60 feet from us,” he said.

The bear had circled back behind them, and this time is it was more than curious. The Burkes grouped together and tried to haze the bear away, waving their arms, clapping their hands and shouting.

“It didn’t leave. It decided to charge into us. Then I just told my family to get behind me and I was using my scope and tripod to try and fend it off,” he said.

Rare birds becoming common sight — Siberian Accentor, bramblings visit Kenai Peninsula

By Joseph Robertia

Photos courtesy of Carol Griswold. A Siberian Accentor — a small bird with a brown-streaked back and yellowish eyebrows and underparts — showed up in Seward late last month.

Redoubt Reporter

While lightning rarely strikes the same spot twice, an equally unusual occurrence has been happening on the Kenai Peninsula this winter as not just one, but two more rare bird sightings have taken place in a winter already marked by a number of odd avian identifications.

A Siberian Accentor — a small bird with a brown-streaked back and yellowish eyebrows and underparts — showed up in Seward late last month, while several small groups of bramblings — long-winged, long-tailed birds with orange to their breasts and shoulders — have been seen in not just Seward, but several other locations, since their November arrival.

“The Siberian Accentor is really exciting. The last observation of one was in Hope back about 20 years ago, so this is a big deal,” said Ken Tarbox, of the Keen Eye Birders, a retired Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist, and one of the organizers of the Kenai Peninsula Wildlife Viewing Trail Guide.

Seward birders Kit and Janet Durnil first spotted the Siberian Accentor on Jan. 22. They knew they had never seen a bird with a mask like the accentor, but they weren’t entirely sure what they were seeing. They called Carol Griswold, an avid Seward birder who leads bird-watching trips to see unusual species, such as this.

Griswold said that the bird has been a little tricky to spot. It’s been moving a bit and also traveling with other birds, including varied thrush and fox, golden-crowned, white-crowned and song sparrows.

“With much bare ground under the trees, and lots of brush piles, there is a lot of territory for the sparrows and accentor to hide,” she said. “Yes, the bird has usually been spotted near feeders, but sometimes on the mountainside. I think we see it at feeders because that is where we look, and when we don’t find it, it’s not at feeders.”

What a lark — Birders flock to peninsula to see rare Eurasian visitor

By Joseph Robertia

Photo courtesy of Laura Burke. A sky lark was seen at Deep Creek State Recreation Area on Oct. 19.

Redoubt Reporter

It was a lark, in both name and the fact that it showed up on the Kenai Peninsula, or mainland Alaska at all. At least that’s what avid birders said, who flocked to Deep Creek to see the rare avian visitor late last month.

“People were driving 500 to 600 miles and pulling all-nighters to get here and see this bird, that’s how special it was,” said Toby Burke, a wildlife technician with the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

The bird is a small, cryptically colored ground-dweller formerly known as a Eurasian sky lark, but now, since the forming of the European Union, just known as a sky lark. They can be found from Europe to Asia in their home range. Sightings in Alaska are rare.

“This is the first record of one on mainland Alaska. Typically when they’re spotted in Alaska they’re seen in the Western Aleutians, the Pribilofs or occasionally St. Lawrence Island, but not here. It’s an anomaly. So the Anchorage birding community, people from Seward, even Fairbanks, started coming down because, usually to see this bird you’d have to go to the Bering Sea and spend a lot of money,” Burke said.

According to fellow refuge technician Todd Eskelin, it was Steve Waltz, a birder from Anchorage who makes frequent bird-watching trips to the peninsula, who first spotted the lark.

“Most people headed down that way stop at Ninilchik or Anchor Point, but not usually Deep Creek, so it’s really cool he did. He took photos and described it, and posted to the Alaska Birding list serve,” he said.

Class visit a real hoot — Owls offer lessons on biology, ecology

By Joseph Robertia

Photos courtesy of Johnna Lemm. Bill and Sharon Larson, with the Bird Treatment and Learning Center, visited Kalifornsky Beach Elementary School recently.

Redoubt Reporter

The tiny owl craned its head 180 degrees to reveal its large, yellow, disc-shaped eyes. Its brown- and buff-colored feathers would normally help it camouflage into the tree cavities in which it typically roosts, but this 8-inch owl wasn’t hunting from a dense spruce forest. Rather, it was on display last week at Kalifornsky Beach Elementary School as part of an educational program put on by the Bird Treatment and Learning Center of Anchorage.

“They do an owl unit in second grade, but the best view they would normally see of an owl would be on a video, so this really engages them,” said school Principal Melissa Linton.
The diminutive owl, a Northern Saw-whet, was one of two owls that visited the school last week. The other was a much larger and diurnal Northern hawk owl. Though different in size, the two had something in common — they had both previously been injured in ways that prevented them from surviving on their own.

“The Saw-whet, now 2 years old, was attacked by ravens when it was about 4 months old. It’s now blind in one eye.

A Northern Saw-whet owl with an injured eye perches on the hand of Bill Larson.

The other owl was hit by a car about this time last year. It fractured its wing and it’s now pinned together. So neither bird will be released back into the wild,” said Sharon Larson.

She, along with her husband, Bill, are U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-permitted bird rehabilitators and the volunteer caretakers of the owls.

Larson said that the owls are great to bring to schools — as well as churches, scouting groups and other venues — because not only are they distinct and unique, but also because of all the lessons that can be taught in relation to the creatures.
“You can teach a lot about ecology by asking the kids about the bird’s color and why it might need to be that color to fit into its environment. It’s a good opportunity to teach about conservation, too, because if there are no trees or forests, there are no owls,” she said.

Science of the Seasons: Whoo goes there? Great horned owls often heard before seen

By Dr. David Wartinbee, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of Dr. David Wartinbee. A great horned owl is silhouetted in a tree. The birds have excellent camouflage. Often their hoots are heard before they are seen.

On a recent evening, as I was watching the end of a cold, beautiful sunset, I noticed a large bird land in a tree in front of the house. From its broad wings, short tail and large size, I was pretty certain it was a great horned owl. Sundown is when they are fairly active as they survey for their next meal. With binoculars I could make out some of its mottled coloration and the all-important feather tufts that give it the “horned” name.

Great horned owls are fairly common here on the Kenai Peninsula and can actually be found all over North and South America. So they are well-known throughout the country. They are one of the larger owls, with a wingspan of almost 5 feet, and they weigh 4 to 6 pounds. That may seem light because they have a barrel-shaped body and their feather fluff-up makes for an impressively large-sized bird.

These predators will take just about any animal they can capture, including grouse, crows, squirrels, marmots, hares, voles, weasels and even fish. In some parts of their range they are known to take bats, reptiles and amphibians. Great horned owls are also a major predator on young raptors, like osprey. They are able to take on more formidable prey because of their large and powerful talons. Some prey items are eaten on the ground, while smaller rodents or birds can be carried to a perch for a more leisurely repast. These owls are not above taking carrion or road kill, too. Because of the willingness to take animals off the roads, younger owls often become road kill themselves.

With the current high numbers of varying hares on the peninsula, great horned owls have probably been feeding well for the past couple years. Recently there have been reports of large local populations of redback voles, so their good food fortunes continue.

Great horned owl food choices remind me of a favorite children’s book called “Owls in the Family” by Farley Mowat. In the story, the two pet great horned owl return to an open porch window with their nightly prey until one flies in with a freshly killed skunk. The family was no longer amused! While that is just a story, great horned owl are actually the only known avian predator of skunks. One western owl nest was found to have remains of more than 50 different skunks. Apparently, owls are not put off by the powerful skunk odor.

Big Sit takes flight — Keen Eye Birders, refuge, put Alaska on bird-a-thon map

By Jenny Neyman

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Toby Burke, biologist with the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, points out a yellow-rumped warbler to Ken Tarbox, center, and others from the Keen Eye Birders during a Big Sit bird-a-thon at Skilak Lake on Saturday.

Redoubt Reporter

According to the official rules, the Big Sit bird-a-thon is a noncompetitive event.

Still, that didn’t stop the Keen Eye Birders from hypothesizing ways to distinguish themselves from the participating groups in 41 other states across the country, as well as seven other countries, all seeking to identify as many birds as possible from a 17-foot-diamater circle in a one-day event over the weekend.

The Keen Eye Birders designated their viewing circle on the shore of Skilak Lake, at the Lower Skilak Boat Launch. Though they kept eyes, binoculars and ears peeled during their vigil, from 7:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, there are only so many species to be seen in Alaska this time of year, when many migratory birds have already headed south.

“There are some (species) left in Alaska. A lot of the waterfowl are still here — they’re leaving now — and the trumpeter swans are coming through,” said Ken Tarbox of the Keen Eye Birders, at about 1 p.m. Saturday. “We’ve got 23 species so far, but there will be places in the Lower 48 that will have 100-some species.”

Alaska Big Sit participants may not have much chance of posting the highest number of species identified on the designated day — held annually the second weekend of October, with groups choosing either Saturday or Sunday to participate — but they might separate themselves in other ways.

For instance, they perhaps have seen the most dogs in one day, situated, as they were, at the edge of a boat launch with consistent traffic of

Birds weren’t the only creatures at the boat launch for the Big Sit. The refuge held kids’ activities, which drew a good-sized crowd.

sportfishermen launching boats throughout the day, most with a four-legged passenger in their party.

“We’re just sitting here, watching the people, boats and dogs, and some birds,” Tarbox said.

They could very well be the only participating group to get snowed on, as flakes began to fall in the afternoon.

They might be the only group to have a bird nearly land on one of the birdwatchers, when a pair of gray jays — known for their boldness in filching

picnic crumbs and food scraps from campers — found the cookies lying out next to Tarbox’s chair a little too tempting to resist. One dive-bombed the cookie container from its perch atop a sign just behind the birding group, and only aborted its descent at the last second when its trajectory took it a little too close to Tarbox’s head and shoulder.

And they’ve got a good shot at having the youngest participant.

Two gray jays make themselves easy to count, landing on a sign just behind the Big Sit bird watchers.

“We’re claiming the youngest birder on the Big Sit day this year, nationwide. We’ve got one born there on Sept. 27, so we put binoculars to her eyes,” Tarbox said.

“I don’t know, Ken. If you make that a competition, you’ll have women giving birth,” said Toby Burke, a biologist with the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, which jointly sponsors the Skilak Lake Big Sit event with the Keen Eye Birders. His baby daughter was the youngster of mention. “Do you really want to encourage that?”

Even though the international Big Sit event doesn’t give prizes to groups for recording firsts, onlies or mosts, it’s difficult to pluck all the sense of friendly competition out of birders. That’s part of the fun of birding, after all — seeing how many species one can identify, whether it’s from casual backyard surveys, far-ranging birding expeditions or a lifelong, travel-, time- and expense-intensive passion to add to one’s “life list” of bird sightings.

“I enjoy the people, I enjoy being out and I enjoy just learning more about birds. You’re never too old to learn,” said Linda Story, of Soldotna, who has been involved with the Keen Eye Birders since the group’s inception about 10 years ago.

She classifies herself as a novice birder, primarily watching the visitors to her bird feeders at home. But she enjoys any opportunity to participate in birding group outings and events, like the Big Sit, she said.

“I love going and watching birds. I’m not someone who keeps a list or does that sort of thing, but hanging out with this bunch, I get more and more interested,” she said.

Eagle eye gets new gull — Rare bird spotted on Kenai River flats

By Jenny Neyman

Photo courtesy of Ken Tarbox. A lesser black-backed gull, center, is an unusual visitor to the Kenai flats, seen hanging out with our more-normal population of herring and glaucous-winged gulls.

Redoubt Reporter

Needle in a haystack? Try finding one particular gull amid the nesting colony spending their summer on the Kenai River flats.

From a numbers standpoint — with tens of thousands of gulls drawn to the quality nesting habitat of the river mouth estuary, plus the abundant food in the hooligan and salmon runs pulsing up the river from spring to fall — it’s a feather’s breadth away from impossible.

But to a trained birder’s eye, noticing one particular gull among the many isn’t all that difficult when the one in question sticks out like, in this case, a black back amid the sea of otherwise white and light gray.

That dark spot against a wash of white was what caught the attention of Rich MacIntosh, a birder from Kodiak who took a day trip to Kenai on July 19 on his way to Anchorage in order to do some birding on the Kenai flats.

While scanning the topography near the Warren Ames Memorial Bridge, to take stock of the variety of migratory birds that call Kenai home in the summer, he couldn’t help but notice a large flock of glaucous-winged and herring gulls, with their orange legs and white-and-light-gray plumage. Harkening to the “Sesame Street” song, he noticed that one of those things was not like the others.

“There was a flock of several hundred gulls, and you can see a flock of several hundred gulls from a mile away, and you go there and you set up a telescope and you scan through the birds until you see something that looks different,” he said.

There, amid the gray and white, was white and black.

“It’s very, very different from any gull that regularly occurs down there, in that it has a very, very dark back. All the other large gulls you would find in the Kenai area have pale gray backs,” MacIntosh said.

Where there’s a willet, there’s a way — Kenai Flats hosts 1st confirmed sighting of bird rare to Alaska

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of Laura Burke. A western willet has been seen on the flats at the mouth of the Kenai River. The bird is common to the East Coast, found in the West but never before definitively seen in Alaska. It was discovered Friday and has been delighting birdwatchers who have been flocking to Kenai from across the state since the sighting was confirmed.

Redoubt Reporter

Had Toby Burke been back East when he saw the long-beaked, long-legged shorebird sitting in the grass rimming a tidal pool along Boat Launch Road in Kenai on Friday morning, he wouldn’t have given it another look. But he was in Alaska, and once he realized what the bird might be, his eyes all but popped out of his head.

“There’s only been one previous sighting in Alaska, and it was unsubstantiated — never photographer or unequivocally proven — in August 1961 in the Minto Flats. So this one here is at least the first one that’s been documented, if not the first one that’s been seen in Alaska,” said Burke, a technician for the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

He’s speaking of a willet, a migratory shorebird in the sandpiper family common to the East Coast, known in the West, and extremely rare in Alaska.

“We’re about 1,500 miles from its closest breeding range, and they don’t tend to wander a whole lot to the far north like this,” Burke said.

He had been out conducting a survey of breeding birds on the estuary flats at the mouth of the Kenai River on Friday morning and figured he’d take a quick detour down Boat Launch Road off Bridge Access Road to see if anything interesting caught his eye. He glanced at the tidal pool near the road, since there’s usually at least a dowitcher or some other shorebird hanging out.

“I looked over and just on the edge of the grass I saw this bird that superficially looks like a greater yellowlegs, which is a local breeder here. But then I looked at it and went, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not a yellowlegs,’” he said.

Winging It: Mating season a sweet-sounding time for birding

By Sean Ulman, for the Redoubt Reporter

The birding calendar has turned to breeding season. Field crews, deployed to remote regions of the 49th State, are trudging tundra and mudflats searching for nest treasure chests.

I flew home to southern Massachusetts on May 31, within the bird world’s window of rest between migratory travels.

Stepping onto my childhood swamp-side yard, relishing nostalgic aromas, familiar songs seem new again. I compartmentalize my hearing, trying to pick out a cardinal’s mingled whistles among the bells and teasing wheezes of tufted titmice, black-capped chickadees and flying finches’ chips and piks. A big voice elevators decibels, chanting several syllables, conjuring a go-to grouping for voice guessing — Carolina wren, common yellowthroat, ovenbird? Staccato nasal notes — “nah, nuh” — precede two white-breasted nuthatches, rather than Seward’s common red-breasted nuthatch, landing on overhead feeders. A mourning dove “cooo coo coos” on a bowed limb, flaunts its lime-mauve neck glitter, and leaps, snapping wings clapping.

Birding’s courting/singing/listening scene, which precedes the quiet nesting-hatching season, and follows the shorebirding season on the Kenai Peninsula, for me, can still be eloquently experienced even as many adults settle into long hours logged sitting on nests. Theories as to why noncourting birds are still belting — territorial, communication or for the recreation, joy or art of singing. It’s a special time to identify birds because every species found on a yard or town list can also be added to a list of that place’s likely breeders. While the individual pine siskin you might have heard ripping a long strip “zreeeee” may not be a nesting individual, its proven sustained presence in an area this time of year likely confirms its species as a local breeder.

The following musical tour will trade off paragraphs exhibiting birds observed in Massachusetts from May 31 to June 14 and Seward from June 1 to June 23.

In a pondside shrubby prairie bordered by white pine, stippled with cedar, a prairie warbler pitches its rising eight-syllable “zee zee zee zee zee zee zee zee,” as though it’s moving farther away with each note, gifting a hint to its location atop a beech tree, as if insisting we scope its black mask and stripes laid over rich, color-wheel yellow, which we do.