July 5: End of travel

Arrived home at last.
River, vireo's song
sound exactly the same.

August 10: Up Mount Battie

We played tourist today. Sailed on the Schooner Surprise this morning out of Camden Harbor with (almost) my whole family, to celebrate my mother's birthday. Then we all enjoyed an al fresco lunch together on the river: lobster rolls and whoopie pies. Later, my husband and I hiked out our front door and up Mount Battie in nearby Camden Hills State Park, making the most of this long, sunny summer Sunday and a rare day off together.

Familiar trails,
same vireo singing--
you still laugh at my stories.

July 19: Doldrums

By six a.m.
even the singing vireo
is bored with his song.

July 25: Cacophony

Right now I can hear out my window, all at the same time, and loud:
2 cawing crows, one of them whiny, probably a younger bird
1 Blue Jay
1 Red-eyed Vireo, non-stop all day
1 Song Sparrow
1 cardinal

Beats the lawnmower,
this birdsong circus under
treetops' lush green tent.

June 2: Return of the Red-eyed Vireo

In the neighborhood this morning...

Another hot morning.
Back for the summer,
Vireo sings non-stop.

August 25: Vireos

For most of the summer the red-eyed vireo's rollicking song has been playing in the background, his warbled, "Here I am. Where are you?" a constant projection from the trees. Because this particular vireo species sings for most of the summer, he provides a non-stop soundtrack to the season, a soundtrack at first accompanied by warblers, orioles, tanagers, robins, and other songbirds, but gradually dwindling down to a handful of goldfinches, chickadees, and titmice providing occasional back-up chorus.

This morning I didn't hear the song, I heard only a vireo's repeated call, a distinctive sort-of whine, almost a complaint. Now the only birds singing in the big oak next-door are the usual flock of goldfinches, probably chattering about which feeder they're going to descend upon next.

No longer singing
even the vireo protests
as summer draws to an end.

July 5: Red-eyed Vireo

As summer progresses and we finally feel the heat here in Maine, we hear less birdsong. Most birds have nested and even fledged young by now, so there's no biological reason to sing unless you're trying for another nest: no need to advertise for a mate, no territory to defend. While a few birds still join in the dawn chorus or add their voices to the robin's evensong, it's generally a lot quieter out there than a month ago. Except for one bird, which seems to sing non-stop all day and all summer long: the red-eyed vireo.

Red-eyed vireo photographed by my friend Brian Willson

I can hear him now out back. He sounds like this. To me, he sounds like the long, lazy days of summer.

One day in May 1952 Louise de Kiriline Lawrence decided to follow one red-eyed vireo for a whole day. The bird sang for a total of ten out of almost 14 hours. And she counted--he sang 22,197 songs! (This is recounted in Donald Kroodsma's The Singing Life of Birds if you're interested in reading more.)

While the songs can get a bit repetitive by day's end, there's something truly lovely about the tone and cadence of the vireo's singing. A red-eyed vireo song is robin-like, a rapid series of chirrups. He sounds like he's asking a question and then answering it, over and over, a slightly different question each time: "Where are you? Here I am. Who are you? A vireo." He's got a lot to say. Kroodsma thinks that the males will sing as long as there are females out there willing to mate (vireos may have multiple broods in a season). So if the vireos are any measure, the trees in our neighborhood are quite the summer pick-up joint.

Lucky for our ears,
vireo's incessant song
is also pretty.

June 27: Repetition

The red-eyed vireo may repeat his song 20,000 times during the course of a summer day. I was thinking of that as I heard one singing off in the trees, as I picked what felt like my 20,000th strawberry in my friend's garden today. We've had perfect strawberry weather this June, and my friend's patch was overflowing. She needed help. After enjoying a breakfast of Belgian waffles with strawberries, the two of us picked 23 quarts over several hours--punctuated, of course, by a lunch of yogurt, honey, and... yes, strawberries.

There's something lulling about repeating a gesture over and over, even as your back and legs ache. It was warm but not overly sunny, either, which made it a pleasure to be out doing something productive in the garden. And of course, knowing I was going to take home some of these luscious fruits was added incentive. I lost myself in the activity, only occasionally (because I'm a birder and can't help it) becoming aware of birdsong in the surrounding woods. The red-eyed vireo, for example. Or the robins nesting nearby. Or a bluebird. Once I looked up and saw a hawk circling overhead. The setting was bucolic--peas in bloom, corn almost knee-high, terraced perennial beds in full bloom, butterflies fluttering over fields spangled with wildflowers. Who could call this work, this crawling over strawberry runners, squatting in the dirt, plucking ripe berries from amidst the foliage and dropping them with a plunk in a pail?

The real work started when I got all those berries home. I dropped off a bowlful at my parents' house, and gave away as many as I could to my neighbor with many children--those growing bodies need the vitamin C. But even after putting some aside for my cereal over the next couple of days, I still had a heap. These I rinsed, spread out on a towel, hulled one by one--the repetition less enjoyable than the picking but meditative nonetheless--and bagged for the freezer. Two quarts that will undoubtedly form the base of some wicked good smoothies later this summer.

For each berry picked,
vireo sings one more phrase
in praise of summer.

June 15: Bird at the Bank

Sometimes birds will make their presence known in unusual places. A shift of focus, and suddenly I'm aware of birds around me where I wasn't looking for them. Like today, while I was paused at the bank drive-through window. Because it was going to take a few minutes, I'd turned off my car engine and was just sitting there with my window down, waiting for the teller to process the deposits. Turning off the car meant that my car stereo was also off, so I was waiting in quiet. Gradually I realized that a red-eyed vireo was singing in the trees at the edge of the pavement. Red-eyed vireos will sing all day long, each warbled phrase sounding just as merry as the last. This tireless bird brightened an otherwise dull moment. As I listened to him, I became aware of other birds singing in the distance: goldfinch, house finch, crow.  (Isn't there always a crow?) It was a simple matter of quieting the rest of my life so that what had been pushed to the background could come forward. And most of the time I think I'd rather have birds be in the foreground of my daily life.

Like the song sparrow that's been fluttering around my office windows for the past two days. He seems to just want to rest on the slim edge of the window frame, because he stops fluttering once he gets his balance. Then he looks in at me and pauses a moment before flying off. A while later, he's back at it, my companion throughout the work day, keeping an eye on my progress in his frenetic way.

Silence, then birdsong--
quieting body and mind
reveals what is there.

June 2: Home

I was away for three days on Monhegan, spent a night at home, then drove to Massachusetts the next day for an overnight in Marblehead (and an evening at Fenway) with my sister and her family. So when I pulled into the driveway this afternoon, stepped out of my car, and heard the familiar warbling song of the neighborhood red-eyed vireo, I felt a reassuring sense of home-coming. There he is, where he's supposed to be, singing the song I'll probably hear all summer long. And I too am thus welcomed back to where I'm supposed to be.

He sings of mown lawns,
irises blooming, foggy
mornings: vireo.