Time to move on...

Frank Baldwin, a helpful watcher-of-nature living out near Camp Polk Road, e-mailed me other day regarding a phenomenon he hadn’t seen before: Numerous birds flying out of the Squaw Creek area early in the morning and returning just before sundown in the evening.

My first thought was red-winged Blackbirds, as the Deschutes Basin Land Trust’s Camp Polk Preserve wetland produces a goodly population of red-wings each year. However, to be sure, I took a run over to the area Frank described to watch.

Sure enough, right at 5:57 a.m. here they came. Not red-wings, but hundreds of starlings and Brewer’s blackbirds flew over my head headed east. I followed them to the junction of the Sisters/Redmond highway at Camp Polk Road and watched as they dispersed.

A bunch of the starlings went east in the direction of Fryrear Road (probably to the transfer station to see what they could scrounge up). Another group sailed over into the Cloverdale Road area and a large flock of starlings and blackbirds continued alongside Highway 126. I watched as the birds settled into the fields and began foraging, probably feasting on grasshoppers, other insects, plus seeds from both cultivated crops and weeds.

This is the time of year that most birds begin to gather up into large flocks. Quail around Central Oregon have raised many youngsters that gather into huge coveys. While quail are “resident” birds, others, such a blackbirds, robins, warblers, waterfowl and such are migratory.

While I was observing the blackbirds and starlings out near Camp Polk, I also saw hundreds of swallows swooping over a pond near the highway, tanking up on emerging insects. As soon as the swallows had fueled up, they started on their migratory flight to California and other points south.

Then I heard a flock of about 50 robins settling into the trees along Cloverdale Road, all a-twitter about their upcoming voyage to California. If you spend a day at the Forest Service’s Green Ridge Fire Lookout, you’ll see hundreds of hawks sailing by on their journey to the warmer latitudes to the south.

The starlings and blackbirds that Frank and I watched coming out of the trees along Squaw Creek; all the robins gathering up; swallows on the wing and hawks soaring past the lookout are all driven by one of the most powerful objects in our system of life: the sun.

The angle of the sun related to the surface of the Earth and the duration of sunlight are two factors that trigger the movements and activities of all life on the earth — even you and me.

Whales, blackbirds, starlings and all birds begin their mating ritual when sunlight reaches a specific zenith and duration. Colorful feathers appear as the sun triggers hormones in a bird’s body.

The male American Kestrel cannot help himself when he arrives back in Central Oregon from his winter home in the south. With sex on his mind, he has to catch a lizard to dangle in front of a female kestrel — and it’s the sun’s fault.

Mule deer make their annual migration between the Cascades to the High Desert because the sun tells them it is time to go.

The old experienced does will lead the herds to and from wintering grounds. The bucks, bless their pointy little heads, have only one thing on their mind right now: making babies. That, too, is the sun’s fault.

Huge flocks of waterfowl are leaving the northern latitudes for wintering grounds in the south, among them Snow Geese that will fly over us from Siberia to Sacramento. If you find yourself in New Mexico and would like to see a sight you will never forget, stop at Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and watch the Whooping and Sandhill Cranes, along with tens of thousands of Yellow Headed Blackbirds — so many of them their screeching will hurt your ears.

Soon, the robins that raised babies in our backyards will be gone, most to Central California. The robins that take their place and pig out on our juniper berries are from Washington, Canada and other points North; all driven by our magnificent sun.