One recent night, my yellow Lab, Bailee, went outdoors to do her duty before heading to bed to sleep until dawn, when she’d then roust me to feed her breakfast.

While Bailee sniffed and snuffed around the dark lawn without getting to the job at hand, I stood on the front steps in cold silence until my patience had worn thin. Finally, I grabbed a handful of snow from a conifer shrub beside the door to make a snowball to hurry her along.

At that instant, a bird hiding in the dense branches below my hand flushed and flew several yards to a deciduous bush on the lawn edge. The outside lights clearly illuminated the bird — a white-breasted nuthatch, which started me thinking:

Several times in my life while I walked to or from the woods in total darkness, a songbird has flushed near me and flown away with a cupped fluttering of wings. Without light, it was usually impossible to ID the bird.

Normally, songbirds escape in darkness without showing themselves, so seeing the nuthatch so clearly was a bonus — a lifetime memory.

Maine birdwatchers live in a grand state for this sport all right. This winter, my bird feeders have songbirds galore coming and going, reminding me of an international airport. This diversion provides fun in the dead of the white season, adding much to our life here.

One feeder in the backyard hangs from a magnolia that draws myriad songbirds, including juncos, black-capped chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, red-breasted nuthatches, house finches, goldfinches, blue jays, and hairy and downy woodpeckers.

Those nine species come every day, but we have an array of other feathered friends that make life interesting. One winter, a Townsend’s solitaire visited here, a rare New England visitor. Other Townsend’s solitaires wound up on the Maine Audubon Bird Alert that month.

Golden-crowned kinglets are an uncommon bird feeder visitor here, but they’re common enough in winter conifers near my home, particularly hemlocks. They catch my ear and occasionally show themselves.

I love this kinglet with its fragile “see-see-see” call, such an odd juxtaposition on a frigid day. It measure four inches in length, sports a 7-inch wingspan and weighs 1/5 of an ounce, a tiny creature to brave such cold.

Males have an orange crown and females yellow, and this colorful patch has a black border and white eyebrow stripes below. The body is an olive-gray and the barred wings have two white stripes and a black one.

The golden-crowned kinglet resembles a ruby-crowned kinglet, but the male ruby’s scarlet crest isn’t apparent until the bird erects it in excitement. The female has no colorful crest.

Both genders of the ruby-crowned kinglet have olive-gray bodies and two white stripes and one black one on the wings. The ruby’s face has no stripes and the eye a broken-white ring.

A dozen years ago, I participated in the Audubon Christmas Bird Count for two Decembers, an enjoyable pastime, but counting birds from dawn’s first light until dark struck me as rather tedious if someone did this annual event several years in a row.

I like bird watching a lot, but from dawn until dusk makes for a long day. Some folks love doing it, though.

A highlight of the Christmas count occurred on a hemlock ridge in Sidney. While my partner headed into a huge bog, I climbed a hemlock ridge. Both years, hearing a golden-crown was my reward.

Golden-crowned kinglets produce eight to nine cream-colored eggs with brown speckles, suggesting a high mortality rate. As a general rule, birds with a large number of eggs normally lose chicks, but birds with a few eggs have a higher survival percentage.

This kinglet likes dense, mature conifer stands, explaining why I often hear them in hemlocks, fir and spruce during deer-hunting seasons, including the regular firearms and black-powder hunts.

This weekend we have roughly 11 hours and 37 minutes of light, counting the half-hour before sunrise and half-hour after sunset.

The days grow longer for sure, great for folks who love to wander woodlands now, looking for birds.

Around 10 o’clock on some late February mornings now, a southwest wind brings a spring smell from states south of us, and after dark while we lie in bed, a skunk may wander by the bedroom and nearly choke us.

The following dawn, we hear new bird calls as our feathered friends begin trickling into the state, and birds that spent the winter begin vocalizing more.

These spring smells and sounds excite amateur naturalists.

Right now, astute observers notice so many promises of the coming spring stealing into the state — the great awakening after a season that can feel so lifeless — but nature lovers in southern and central Maine know the real story of spring’s first true warmth lies but moments away.

Ken Allen of Belgrade Lakes is a writer, editor and photographer. He can be contacted at:

KAllyn@yahoo.com

 

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