Experiencing March on the Outer Banks is a little like living with a teenager—sometimes unpredictable, with wild mood swings, but always fresh and exciting.  This year, March came in like a lion with an early nor’easter, so I am banking on a lamblike gentle ending to the month, right in time for Easter in early April.

As a dedicated (ok, you can read obsessive) journaler and photographer, I have a handy, built-in reference system for who, what, where, when, and sometimes why.  Starting my working life as a journalist in the guise of a reporter for the Outer Banks Current newspaper (which preceded the current Outer Banks Sentinel) honed skills in listening, observing, and note-taking.  I admit I am having much more fun these days, noticing natural comings and goings, and trying always to teach myself to pay even closer attention to my surroundings and who, or what, shares space with me. 

The morning after I posted my last entry, about seeing a flock of yellow-rumped warblers but no waxwings yet, I sat down near the window that looks out on our little backyard Colington woods, intent on my journaling.  The morning was beautiful and I was writing away when I heard a loud thunk, the sort of thunk that means, uh-oh. In this case, uh-oh, I think a bird just flew into my window. I got up, looked out, and sure enough—there was a small little somebody lying in the leaves right under the window, pumping its tiny tail feathers up and down but not moving otherwise.  Uh-oh quickly became Oh-No. I brought my outside kitty Timba onto my front porch and dashed around the house.  Timba doesn’t usually chase the birds, but like all kitties he is curious, and the last thing the little somebody needed was a curious cat. The somebody turned out to be a small Cedar Waxwing. Its little bill was offset, giving it a cross-billed appearance (I guess flying bill first into my window accounts for that) but otherwise the bird looked okay, just stunned—no blood, no odd angles to its head or wings or tail. I’d grabbed gardening gloves on my way out, so I put one on and picked the little darling up, cooing and shhhing and clucking to it. I even pished—that sort of birding sound that often flushes songbirds out into open branches, not knowing what sort of call the waxwings have, but wanting to invoke comfort and ease.  (I looked the call up later; waxwings have, according to one description, a sort of buzzy trill rather than a melodious song series. I am a lousy whistler, so even had I known, I doubt I could have replicated it.)  I put the bird on a board in the backyard, sat down beside it, and waited. And prayed. And waited some more. It looked around, looked at me and all at once, in a flash of wings and courage, the little waxwing flew out and then up, landing in a nearby holly tree. Whew. That was a close call.

I went back in, sat down to my journal again, and not two minutes later: ka-thunk! Aw, man…I went back out. No bird on the ground, but I could see the problem.  The windows on the back of the house face west, and birds flying east with the morning sun in their eyes could see, I am certain, what I could see—the appearance of tree limbs in my window’s reflection.  Local birds obviously know the house is here, but these Cedar Waxwings are migrants, just passing through, ma’am.  I found a patterned afghan and tacked it up inside my window. Tacky décor (pun intended) but no more thunks.  The waxwings don’t stay long so I will take the afghan back down in a few days.

When I left the house later in the morning, the yellow-rumped warblers were all still present, chowing down waxy berries from my cedar tree. And what should fly into the cedar (and into my dogwood too, for that matter), but an adult waxwing—first one, then a small flock, flying across the street and back again.  I’d like to think the waxwings, who stayed obligingly still long enough for me to take a series of photographs, were saying thank you in their own way.  I was saying thank you, too.  Looking back at my records, I see the waxwings arrived two weeks earlier than they did last year.  I’m so glad I was home to help the little one, and hopefully prevent any more close encounters with the mirage in my window.

Mac (aka Woodduck) wrote to tell me that a large raft of ducks has been bobbing about behind the Lone Cedar Restaurant on the Nags Head causeway. I drove over a few afternoons ago, and saw the group he’d been talking about.  All sorts of diving ducks and dabbling ducks were in the group, from hooded mergansers and buffleheads to some beautiful redheads, who were either redheaded ducks or canvasback ducks, I couldn’t tell which from the shore. Maybe Mac can identify all these ducks for us.

All sorts of birds are on the move now, but I have not yet seen any Colington Harbour osprey yet. They were here by March 5 last year, and are my official spring heralds.  The other spring herald is the blooming of the first daffodil in my little yard, and that took place this morning—nearly three weeks behind its blooming in the past two years.  Every year, my mother said, it always snows on the daffodils, so while I am enjoying these recent sunny days, I am also anticipating at least one more flurry of flakes.  That’s spring, just like adolescence, holding its own special place in the pace of the year.