A dozen or more eastern bluebirds, just as many yellow rumped-warblers and a few palm warblers highlighted the walk.

The fall migration does not get the attention and building excitement that the spring migration gets, but if you hit it on the right day, it can be a day worth remembering. This walk started out extremely slowly, in terms of seeing birds anyway. For the first hour, I heard a few cardinals, catbirds and eastern towhees in the brush and a few crows and blue jays “cawing” and “jaying” overhead. That was about it.

Even the pond was void of any birds. I don’t think I’ve ever been there and not seen geese and mallards. Often, there is a great blue heron or two and some American black ducks. Not this time.

In the New England bird world, there is the ring-necked pheasant and the ring-necked duck. The ring-necked duck should probably be called the ring-billed duck, but that’s a story for another day. Then there is the ring-billed gull, but that’s also not relevant to this column.

The other day, my son Andrew and I came across a ring-necked animal of another sort. It was a ring-necked snake, and it is very aptly named.

While walking to the cafe at work the other day, I found this critter in a tree by the sidewalk. It’s the caterpillar of an eastern tiger swallowtail. (Below is a photo of the butterfly that was taken earlier this fall.)

The caterpillars of eastern tiger swallowtails are typically green but go through a brown phase before turning green. The “eyes” on the caterpillar are not really eyes, obviously, but markings to make it look intimidating.

Young birds are extremely vulnerable to predation and an abundance of other hazards. Thankfully, nature evens the playing field to a degree by giving some parents clever defense mechanisms to protect their young.

Among the most interesting of these tricks are performed by waterfowl.

While walking in the woods the other day, I heard a frantic splashing in a nearby beaver pond. Upon further inspection, I saw a female mallard flopping around and generally causing a racket.

The duck appeared to be injured as it held out a wing as if it were broken. It looked as if the duck was trying to fly out of the water, but just couldn’t.

The mallard was perfectly healthy. It felt threatened by something and went into defense mode. I don’t know if it was me on the trail that threatened it or something else lurking along the pond’s edge. The chicks remained hidden in the vegetation while the adult flew to an open space and caused the scene.

Ask me what my favorite bird is and I’ll likely give you a different answer every time. Truth is, I have lots of favorite birds. Now I just say “that’s one of my favorite birds” when I see one of the dozen or so species that fit the category.

The American oystercatcher is one species that has long fit into that category – probably from the first time I saw one. While many shorebirds blend in with the sand or rocky habitat and look nearly identical to each other, the American oystercatcher stands out with its larger size, contrasting plumage and, of course, its large orange-red bill.

Aside from its cool appearance, oystercatchers have a high-pitched call that may be heard from a great distance. I have often visited the shore and thought I struck out in my quest to find an oystercatcher only to hear that call on a nearby sandbar. The call is often made in flight so it’s easy to find them and track them to their landing spot.

As a follow-up to my recent column on butterflies, here are a few more photos showing butterflies with wing damage. Here’s the column in case you missed it.

Our wrinkles, scars and other blemishes make us who we are. They are our story.

The same is true for butterflies. Not all butterflies look like the perfectly drawn or photographed models in field guides. In fact, most of them don’t.

I found this gem during a walk through a field today (Monday, Sept. 4, 2023) in southwestern New England. This black swallowtail clearly favored red clover as it bypassed all the other flowers in the field and landed on every clover it could find.

There’s nothing like hummingbirds to unite and excite North America.

Last week’s column on the timing of hummingbird migration apparently got ranked high on a popular internet search engine and blew up. I was wondering why I was suddenly getting emails from across the country and Canada. An editor from a New England newspaper emailed me to say the story had become the paper’s most popular story of 2023 overnight. The power of hummingbirds, I guess.

Emails came from British Columbia, California, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York and each of the New England states. Even my aunt from Virgina texted me out of the blue to say she was directed to the article as well. Some of the regular For the Birds readers responded as well. I appreciated all the emails. Here is what some of the hummingbird fans had to say:

Carolanne from Atkinson, New Hampshire, said she recently became interested in hummingbirds as her “life has slowly quieted down” with her children now grown. She has more time to sit on her deck and watch the wildlife, and hummingbirds became a favorite of hers. She was amazed that hummingbirds fly across the Gulf of Mexico during migration and wondered why they don’t just remain in Florida. It’s an interesting thought, and researchers are discovering that some hummingbirds do indeed remain in Florida or Louisiana instead of making the trip across the Gulf.