Mid-summer Birds: A Bird Finder List
Mid-summer Birdsby Tom Andersen
Birds quiet down in July, except maybe for the Ovenbird. Do you know Frost’s poem? It’s Frost at his best, describing nature in the simplest of language but still managing to be head-scratchingly enigmatic.
Birds quiet down in July, except maybe for the Ovenbird. Do you know Frost’s poem? It’s Frost at his best, describing nature in the simplest of language but still managing to be head-scratchingly enigmatic.
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.We’ve had seven or eight author-birders writing our weekly Bird Finder features for three summers now. I’ve edited them all and none have been about the Ovenbird so I’ve never had a chance to work in a reference to Frost’s poem. Until now.
Below is our list of mid-summer birds. No Ovenbird but plenty of others worth looking for.
Some can be found mid-woods. Most will be hunting and foraging at the shore, which is good place to be in July.
Or try Frank Gallo’s Black Skimmer.
American Bittern, by Frank Gallo.
Photo: Carolinabirds.org, New Jersey Birds.
