Lunch Date with a Redstart

I had a lunch date with an American redstart. We met at a sun-dappled apple tree on the trail at the urban park in my neighborhood. I stood transfixed beneath the tree as she danced like light on the branches. She chased insects with that redstart zig-zag style. 

This is the fourth day I have seen her in the same tree. She will come within two feet of me. I know it is the same bird due to the fact that she is missing her left eye, and she has a distinct look and style of foraging. 

Female American Redstart with one eye

I have never seen a warbler so close for so long. She is tiny, vivacious, and in constant motion. 

It is hard to describe her. She is so small and so alive. When you see her up close, she becomes smaller rather than larger, and when you realize that she is covered in fluffy feathers, you know that her actual body is smaller yet.  She is 4 inches long, and half of that is her tail. She weighs 6 grams or 0.2 ounces. This is equivalent to a quarter. If you hold a quarter in your hand, it barely registers as anything at all.

She has an outsized personality for a miniature animal. When seen up close, she is startling. Her eye sparkles in the shade. Mary Oliver described a gull she rescued and cared for as being like a jar that you open expecting to see darkness, but in this case, the jar is filled with light. I think every bird is filled with light, energy, and a personality and life that are beyond our understanding. This is why birds are so intriguing; they can draw us into their world and, in the process, draw us into nature. 

I know that she sees me standing nearby. Once in a while, she will pause, look at me, and twist her head as if she is trying to figure out what I am. She does not seem to mind my presence. She will repeatedly forage on the branches just above my head. At that distance, watching a bird has a different quality to it. I can hear her bill snapping as it clamps down on an insect. Her feet make tiny scratching noises on the tree bark. The fluttering of her wings and fanning of her tail create subtle sounds that are accentuated by her occasional rapid free fall through the foliage. She is a dynamo.  

In most respects, she appears to be like other redstarts, but there are some differences. She does not fan her tail as widely or often as other redstarts. I am not sure why. Maybe flushing insects with your tail sends them off in random directions? This would be a problem since she can only see on one side. She appears to have to work harder than other redstarts. All redstarts are in near-constant motion, but she is in hyperdrive.

After 45 minutes of watching her at close quarters, I still do not have the kind of image I am hoping to capture. What I do have are a lot of images of bare branches and the end of her tail. She consistently flies from her perch within 2 seconds, which is about 1 second faster than it takes me to compose, focus, and take a picture. She appears to turn her head more frequently than other redstarts, which makes sense given her limited field of view. I have never heard her give the redstart “chip” call. She has not been part of a mixed flock. I am amazed she can survive migration and capture tiny, rapidly flying insects with her reduced depth perception and visual acuity, although she appears to capture insects at about the same rate as other warblers. She is resilient and impressive.  

Why does she spend so much time in this one tree? Is there something about the structure of the tree and the type of insects it attracts that appeal to her? She will forage in surrounding trees and shrubs only briefly before returning to the apple tree.

… Courageous little warbler-

You’ve seen more of the world

than those you fly above

those who never see you or

much of

anything

Why should I care

for this tiny

warbling

miracle?

-Lighter than the nickels in my pocket

or the pen with which I wrote these words in wonder -

Sweet-sweet-sweet-sweet-sweet You

look me in the eye

as if to say:

I know you, too.

Why’d you take so long to notice?

Were you least concerned?

Now tell the others

All the others

All the other others

They might need to care

Pamela Norton Reed

I have not seen the American Redstart with one eye for a couple of days. I assumed she flew south. Yesterday morning, I stopped and looked for her, and all was quiet. There was no sign of her again. I started to move down the trail when I noticed a slight flash of movement in the upper canopy. I stopped and focused on that spot. I saw a small patch of leaves shaking intermittently. As I watched this spot, she dropped down through the canopy and appeared right in front of me. She paused for a second and then hovered near a clump of dead leaves, where she extracted an insect and flew up into an Osage Orange tree to eat it. When she finished pummeling and swallowing the insect, I noticed her looking at the apple tree. I followed her gaze and saw a Red-eyed Vireo foraging in the upper canopy of the apple tree. 

She did not like seeing the vireo in her tree. She gave a short buzzy call and promptly chased him out of the tree. So, now we can add moxie to her list of character traits. Most birds do not display territorial behavior this time of year, but she appears to have staked her claim to an area around this apple tree. This is a bit surprising to me. I would think that she would want to be part of a mixed flock to enjoy the benefits of having more eyes and ears on alert for predators. Life is full of mysteries, and she is an enigmatic bird.

American Redstart

I did not realize that a migrant songbird would stay in one location for this long. This is at least 7 days, maybe longer. I am not sure if she is an anomaly or if this is routine, and we just do not notice due to the fact that we normally cannot identify individual birds.

I leave the park and return home to harvest apples with my son, Noah. He climbs up in the tree right as a mixed flock of warblers moves through our yard. Chestnut-sided and bay-breasted warblers fly into the pin oak on the other side of our garden, but two redstarts fly into the apple trees and start weaving their way through the canopy around Noah as he picks apples, seemingly unconcerned with his presence; it occurred to me that the redstart is special. They are sociable birds that have found ways to benefit from our presence. They routinely forage in my yard. They love the apple trees, our garden, and especially our compost pile. They will spend hours fly-catching around our compost. On their wintering grounds in South America, they will forage around chicken coops and people's homes. They fly great distances from the northern United States and Canada down to South America; for parts of that journey, they are connected to people. 

If you want to impress your friends, stand still near a redstart and act non-threatening, and there’s a good chance they will come quite close to you. At that point, you can proclaim yourself to be a redstart whisperer. Most people will probably believe you; now, you can believe it yourself.

I am just glad that this little warbler with one eye came into my life. I hope she makes it down to South America and takes up residence in a hospitable coffee tree. She has added a new dimension and insights to my bird watching, and I am grateful. Every time I visit this tree, I am going to think of her.