At 4:45 PM today I found myself carrying two brown stems of former tomato
plants to our compost bin at the Fort Barnard community garden in S. Arlington.
I was wearing a blue denim shirt. A fluttering slowly and unevenly approached
me and I thought "large butterfly?" until the flutterer came up, spilled air,
brushed against my shirt, and flew off a bit faster to a perch a few feet
away. Then I was able to get a good luck at a confused Ruby-crowned Kinglet.
And yes, the bird did look confused! Apparently it had thought I was a landing
pad, even though I was moving. The blue shirt and the brown stems must have
been visually confusing. Very minor feather contact was made, not a full
collision. A unique experience for me.
Earlier in the day we had a backyard Swainson's Thrush, briefly. And Long
Branch Nature Center was very birdy in the mid-afternoon in the flood plain
area south of Long Branch, but I didn't have optics and was distracted by other
issues, so couldn't do better than to ID more RC Kinglets, WB Nuthatches, Am
Robins, and a few other typical birds.
Yesterday at 6:10 PM one of our local Barred Owls was calling nicely to the
east of the nature center building.
Cheers,
Steve Young
Glencarlyn and Long Branch Nature Center, S. Arlington
