We have had some welcome warmer days recently. The ice is melting on the Bay and on the lakes and sliding off the roof. It rains a little each night, the mornings are misty. The birds are invisible.
Miss Sadie, the Cowboy and I were on our favorite woods trail when I heard a barking dog. Oddly, my own dogs ignored it. This was worrisome. (Am I beginning to hear things? Are my dogs going deaf?) Then from up on the ridge I heard the unmistakable hooting of a barred owl. I looked and looked in the misty woods and finally spotted it. No camera. But you can hear the call for yourself at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Macauley Library bird call guide.
I might nab its picture yet. Neighbor Bruce (the maple syrup magnate) tells me that he has seen “a large owl” in a tree right by my house. It figures. I’m rather hoping it’s a Great Horned Owl, as they will eat skunks and porcupines.
Early Tuesday morning I woke to loud hammering. I opened one eye and then another. Eased out from under the covers and shuffled around for my slippers. Bang-bang-bang. As my brain kicked into gear I identified the sound. Woodpecker. By the sound of it, big woodpecker, a hairy, maybe, not as big as a pileated. I crept down the stairs to get the camera. Bang, bang, bang. Crept out on the deck to the corner of the house. Bang, bang, bang. Eased my head around the corner with all the stealth of an Antrim County stillhunter. Perfect silence. No woodpecker. Or rather, the woodpecker was around somewhere, and probably laughing at me, but silently. My slippers were wet. I squished back inside. Bang, bang, bang. I have a picture of the very visible hole the invisible bird was working on.
Just before lunchtime I was working away at my desk when I glanced out the window and saw a bird in the mist, perched on a nest, bobbing up and down as if it might be feeding young. By the time I found the camera the bird had flown, but I had hopes of the nest, perhaps little birdie beaks poking up at the edge. Bad light, mist, far away . . . but still.
Zooming in I realized that the “nest” was the tattered remains of a wasp nest. What on earth? I wondered.
Do birds recycle wasp nests? Do they build new homes on a foundation of abandoned wasp nest? Do they salvage wasp nest paper to furnish a birdly cottage on the bluff? (A thieving chickadee once made off with the insulation from my shoe.)
This particular invisible bobbing bird was shaped and sized like an American Robin, nowhere near as big as a crow, and it moved like a robin, but in my experience robins weave untidy nests of long grasses on top of the floodlights on my garage. I will be glad of any insights about bird recycling efforts.
(Note to self: I will take my camera with me every time I step outdoors. I will find the owl and capture its image. As for the woodpecker . . .)
Torch Lake Views 
Karma
April 24, 2014
Birds sure are tricksters that way. So many I’ve longed to get photos of, only to be eluded. I am certainly hoping you do get that owl photo – would love to see that!
Gerry
April 24, 2014
I will do my best.
P.j. grath
April 24, 2014
Gerry, I’ve been hearing all kinds of invisible birds lately, mist or sunshine. Even having the camera with me doesn’t mean I’ll be able to see the birds — much less photograph the little stinkers, who are not very cooperative when it comes to sitting still. And yet, isn’t it lovely to hear them?
Gerry
April 24, 2014
It is lovely – except maybe for the Bang, Bang, Bang! Just minutes after I posted this I heard the woodpeckers again, and I have changed my opinion – this time I saw them, and they appeared to be Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, both males and females, flitting about in the birches. I tried and tried – no photos. They are laughing up their yellow bellies at me.
tootlepedal
April 24, 2014
You mean that you don’t take your camera with you everywhere that you go? If I didn’t snap it, it didn’t happen.
Gerry
April 24, 2014
I sometimes leave the camera behind when I take the dogs out and know that I am likely to come back wet and muddy. I have destroyed altogether too many little cameras. I wish that things didn’t happen if I didn’t snap them . . . quite a few things have happened lately that I could do without. No pictures.
Martha
April 24, 2014
The Rule- If you don’t take a camera you will always come across something you want to take a photo of. Sometimes even one of the best images you could ever capture. Rule #2- Just take the camera.
That wasp nest will turn to goo in the rain.
Gerry
April 24, 2014
I will take pictures of the goo.
WOL
April 25, 2014
Does your camera have a connector ring for a strap? If so, a lanyard with a clip on the end clipped to the camera’s D-ring and put the camera down inside the front of your shirt. (Put it in your pocket for a while first!) Having it down your shirt ought to keep it from getting too muddy and wet.
The robin may have been inspecting or listening at the wasp nest to see if there was anything edible in it. Or it may be advertising its territory. Burrowing owls bob as a sign of agitation or a defensive posture. I don’t know that robins do, though.
Was the woodpecker/sapsucker going after your deck or the siding on your house?! That’s what it looks like.
Gerry
April 25, 2014
Going in reverse . . . the siding, definitely.
Robins bob all the darned time. They don’t so much peck at things as dip into them.
I can see that I have never properly described the many ways in which I manage to get little cameras – not to mention my valuable person – wet and muddy. I do have a wrist strap, which sometimes keeps me from dropping the camera. Sometimes. But I do take your point. Perhaps if I made a sort of pouch to wear under my shirt I could tuck the camera in there. Probably my best bet would be to leave the dogs at home, but we all know how well that would go over.
shoreacres
April 27, 2014
I love your descriptions of the search for the invisible bird(s). I have a friend who lives in Kansas who once was told there was A Snowy Owl flitting around his neighborhood. He’s quite the birder — the sort who keeps a Life List — and he wa undone at the thought of seeing that owl. People kept calling him with updates. It’s here! It’s there! People produced photos of the thing. He never saw it. His wife said she was concerned that he might destroy his camera, never mind lose it.
I’ve got a “something” that’s making noise outside my place. Whatever it is, by the sound of it, it ought to be large. I can’t find it, of course. I keep running outside every time I hear it, but no joy.
I do have a friend whose cat was picked up by an eagle last week. Here’s poor Kizzie. We don’t know what the eagle looked like.
Gerry
April 27, 2014
Thank you.
I can feel your friend’s pain – and I am by no means such a committed birch watcher. (I just like seeing the rascals.) We have had snowy owls Around Here over the last year. There will be more.
I have probably told the story 100 times of Miss Puss of blessed memory and her battle with Evil. In my mind it has always been an owl. Miss Puss never said. But it might have been an eagle. Poor Kizzie! Miss Puss’s injuries were limited to gashes on her paws. She bled a lot, but the blood under her claws was not hers, and I heard something large and surprised scream very loudly. Levitated me right out of my reading chair. Good for Miss Puss. Good for Kizzie, too.
sybil
April 28, 2014
Love the misty fog and the mysterious birds coming and going …
Gerry
April 28, 2014
Thank you. I like misty fog and mysteries of all kinds. This is fortunate, as my life is filled with both.
Dawn
April 29, 2014
We have invisible woodpeckers too, complete with very real holes in our walls. Sometimes he pounds on the downspout to make sure we recognize he’s there…but he’s always gone by the time we make it outside. I too have often thought I need to carry my camera with me every second of every day as I have seen some amazing things but rarely get the shot. Good luck finding the woodpecker and the owl and whatever was in the wasp nest!
Gerry
April 30, 2014
Rascals, those woodpeckers. I saw the owl again, and saw lots of woodpeckers. Stay tuned. No further activity at the wasp nest though. I suspect there’s a tiny sign in it that says “free building materials.”
Craig
April 30, 2014
A woodpecker once became obsessed with the metal vent cover on the roof of our house in Farmington. It woke me up every morning for a month, in its futile attempt to make a dent in this shiny object. Thirty years later, I can still hear its reveille drum beat.
Gerry
April 30, 2014
I’m surprised you didn’t engage a monkey to bang out a reply on a drum set. That would have discouraged the woodpecker. Maybe. Thirty years. That’s a long time. And hardly any time at all.