Journal 2 – Updated

Since I’ve been sick all week with Covid, I decided to do my first bird walk around the two cemeteries at the ends of my street, Germain. At the start of my walk, around 4 in the afternoon, I saw what I believed to be a Dark-eyed Junco sitting in a shrub along the fence enclosing the cemetery. It was producing a high-pitched trill that was intercut with some whistles and warbles. Walking through the cemetery, I could hear a distinct whistle of “pew pew” starting high and sloping down in pitch. Unfortunately I didn’t recognize the song and upon looking at the birds we’ve studied, I couldn’t place one species that I thought it might be. I couldn’t see them very well, but they appeared to be somewhat small birds, around the size of an American Robin, perched far out on the branches of the tree they were in. I came across another tree that had a group of small birds far out on the branches that were making a sound consisting of squeaky chirps, whistles, and tweets. Once again, I couldn’t tell what kind they were visually, but they appeared even smaller than the previous birds I had seen. I could tell they had very short, small beaks, and thin, short tails that stuck out about half the length of the body. When I came home and looked up some of the calls of the species we had studied, the House Finch seems to have the most similar call and visually similar as well. As I was finishing up my walk at around 5pm, I watched American Crows begin to congregate in the tree tops surrounding my street, a sound and sight that my roommates and I have gotten used to over the last few months.

Posted on April 17, 2023 02:22 PM by thoyt