Audubon Center notebook

A tiny discovery

ORRINGTON – A group of first-graders from Kenduskeag was visiting the Fields Pond Audubon Center recently on a Secrets of the Forest tour.

While waiting for their turn to explore the inside of a brush pile, several students heard a very high-pitched bird song. They looked around and up and down, and way up in the top of a hemlock tree they noticed a tiny little bird.

The bird hopped around peeping the tiniest, highest peep that they had ever heard.

“What is that bird,” they asked Katie, their volunteer guide for the day. She told them to notice that the bird was smaller than a chickadee and to look for a little yellow crest on the head of the bird.

“I see it!” one of them shouted.

Sure enough, they had discovered a golden crowned kinglet.

This tiny bird is remarkable in its habit of staying in Maine for the winter, eating insects and caterpillars all day long to keep warm and then going into a type of hibernation at night. Their high-pitched voices are barely within the range of human hearing but a dead giveaway when you hear it.

A secret revealed

A little farther along on their walk these same first-graders heard another noise in the forest. It sounded like a bird and they wanted to find the mysterious noise maker.

Having spent a fair amount of time in the forest, Katie recognized what was making this sound, and it wasn’t a bird. She held them back and led them through a series of questions.

What’s the weather like today? Cold and windy.

What are the trees doing today? Swaying back and forth, back and forth.

Are any of these trees close together? Yes, lots of them are.

Let’s watch and listen to where that sound is coming from. Where those two trees cross! What had started out sounding exactly like a bird was in fact, a tree squeak. Two trees rubbing against each other as the wind blew through the forest. Intriguing in its own way, these children had discovered one more secret of the forest. The sound of trees talking!

Sending sightings, comments or questions to fieldspond@maineaudubon.org