Ovenbird sighting surprises visitors

HOLDEN – A group of visiting naturalists came to experience the Fields Pond Audubon Center and its trails. They were from the Midwest, tired of driving, and only had a day to enjoy nature in the Bangor area before heading to the Maine coast.

They hiked every trail on the Audubon property. They loved sitting at a picnic table on the Fields Pond shore where they watched loons on a quiet, mostly undeveloped lake.

They hiked up and down the Ravine Trail and enjoyed the vignettes down to the stream below. Suddenly, they saw an ovenbird. What a treat!

Many birdwatchers have said to me, “I’ve heard ovenbirds all my life, but I’ve never seen one.” These fortunate people must have had a mother or other caring mentor who took them into the woods and taught them the song of the ovenbird: “Tea-CHER, tea-CHER, tea-CHER, tea-CHER, tea-CHER.”

This ovenbird was not singing. It was giving loud chip notes, signifying agitation. One of the visitors said, “There’s its young!”

This plump little bird had the features of one just out of the nest. It had a short tail and wings, and yellow corners of its “gape,” the term used for a bird’s mouth. Quickly, the little bird ran away from the people.

Most songbirds don’t walk or run; they hop. Birds that spend a lot of time on the ground save energy by walking, not hopping. Ovenbirds walk, like a tiny chicken, on the leaves of the forest floor. This small one ran away.

The visitors left the agitated parent and its young so they could calm down, and went to the pond to see how many frog species they could find. They heard gray tree frogs and saw bullfrogs, a pickerel frog, many green frogs – and a blue frog! Actually, its species was a green frog, but it had a bright blue head. They were stunned.

I believe a blue frog was seen several years ago at Fields Pond, but I never saw it. I got to see this one. I checked for information on the Internet and learned that this phenomenon is caused by the absence of yellow pigment. Blue and yellow make green. The lack of yellow makes a green frog blue.

Another highlight for the visitors from the Midwest was a brightly colored yellow spider called a crab spider because of its shape. This spider hid in a yellow flower and grabbed insects that landed there.

The visitors from the Midwest brought a lunch, had a picnic and found enough of nature’s highlights to spend their day happily at Fields Pond.

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.