Notes from the back porch

Things seen and heard on a hot July 4th morning

Just before 8am, the air is already uncomfortable. It clings to skin like swimsuit fabric.

It is a time before barbecues, before the air will fill with music and talking; before fireworks; even before the whoosh and roar of passing cars. Layers of birdsong float in the air, uninterrupted by city sounds.

The bell-like, two note song of a distant Eastern towhee soars above the other birds’ voices. Blue jays chatter and whistle in the trees above the back porch, where I sit with my laptop and my dog. Occasionally, robins whinny, a vocalization that sounds, to me, more like laughter. They have not yet begun their cheerful song. The singing of catbirds, erratic yet constant, lies beneath all other birds’ songs like the foundation of the morning chorus. The vocalizations of many catbirds interlace, as though weaving a carpet of whistles and babbles. Catbirds singing creates a picture in my mind of water flowing in a creek on a bright sunny day, of shoals where the water breaks over rocks and in doing so cracks the reflected sunlight into many small, gleaming fragments.

I search for other expected songs, those of the other residents and frequent summer visitors to my garden. No house wrens chatter and scold in the brush pile under the repurposed carport my husband and I call “The Bird Room.” I hope to hear their song, which, like the catbirds’, reminds me of water. In Late Migrations, Margaret Renkl describes the house wren’s song as, “a high, thin river made of musical notes tumbling and rushing and cascading downstream.” This description is perfect.

I’m waiting for the shrill whoop of the great crested flycatchers, annual visitors to my backyard whom until 2020, I did not know existed. That spring and summer, I committed to finally learning bird identification, and because I didn’t own binoculars, I started by learning their calls and songs. I got the Peterson Birding by Ear CDs and played them in the car, driving to and from various hiking spots. Five years ago, I could recognize nothing distinct in the morning birdsong. Now each sound has meaning, bringing to my mind a name, an image, and memories of other encounters with each species.

Whistling songs of cardinals and titmice join the others; a mockingbird mimicking them — short whistled phrases repeated at least three times — soon accompanies them. This repetition, three times or more, is how to distinguish the songs of a mockingbird from a brown thrasher, who repeats each phrase only twice. The brown thrasher in my backyard does not sing this morning; it hops silently over dried leaves and under low branches.

While I write this, a hackberry emperor butterfly (Asterocampa celtis) keeps me company, wings folded into brown and beige triangles, perched perfectly still on the side of my house. Later, it will dance through the air with a dark brown butterfly decorated with a few large dark yellow and pale silver patches — the aptly named silver-spotted skipper (Epargyreus clarus). The hackberry emperor, as the name suggests, uses as host plant our garden’s abundant hackberry (Celtis sp., like the second half of the butterfly’s scientific name.) The silver-spotted skipper feeds on various members of the bean family (including kudzu). On my back porch, a North American wisteria winds through the railings and attracts the adult skippers, who lay their eggs on its leaves.

As I write, a shimmering green hummingbird dances from the nearly empty hummingbird feeder to the porch, circling and looping through the air and pausing to stare in my face, as though ensuring I understand the urgency. I add a second, full feeder to a nearby tree branch. I watch the hummingbird pass the new feeder to continue visiting the nearly empty one.

The robins begin to sing, an upbeat yet repetitive tune, four or five phrases of paired notes (low-high, low-high, or as some guides describe it, “cheery, cheer up”) which, after a brief pause, start up again. A nearby air conditioner coughs to life before settling into a whirring hum to accompany the robins. From the nearby airport, a plane passes, bringing its white noise sweeping across the sky like a thick blanket covering, softening the other sounds.

The day’s heat (which we are warned will become dangerously high) creeps in. A downy woodpecker darts through the backyard and occasionally adds a descending trill to other birdsong. A delicate honk tells me that a white-breasted nuthatch is nearby. The musical song and not so musical scolding of Carolina wrens begin, followed by a single distant house wren. The rattling song of many cicadas crescendos, decrescendos, and after a pause starts again. Another cicada song buzzes and fizzes in the air like electricity. A buzzy trill joins these — another bird, a Northern parula, with an emphatic, “buzzy, buzzy, buzz, buzz, buzz!”

A breeze arrives, giving a brief respite from the heat. Finally, at 9:21, a wheep, a whoop, and a series of three screeches signal the arrival of a great crested flycatcher. A pair fly through the backyard, part ways above the porch, and land in separate trees, wheep-ing and screeching at each other. From below, their pale yellow bellies gleam, the color of sunlight itself.

Hackberry emperor butterfly on the roof of a silver car, which reflects the sky and leaves into a blue-green swirl. I took this photo in my driveway on a different hot July morning.