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I have to write to you about the Bubble Bird. I began hearing him and his companions last fall and then around November they disappeared. What drove me to distraction about this bird was that he "sang" at night. The only daytime bird I knew of that sang at night was the Northern Mockingbird. And this song did not come from a Northern Mockingbird or from any of the owls or night birds.
The song reminds me of a slow drip from a faucet in the middle of the night when you are trying to sleep. It's a sort of "bup (silence), bup (silence), bup (silence), lower tone bup, lower tone bup, and one last bup" or a multisyllable cross between a squawk and a definable trill.
I go on a safari
One night at 2 a.m. when I couldn't sleep and the Bubble Birds were in full chorus, I took my flashlight and binoculars (Okay, I admit I couldn't see anything with them) and went in search of the illusive Bubble Bird. I heard one on the right side of my house. I shone the light up into the thick foliage of an Anacua tree. I couldn't see a thing.
I heard one across the street at my neighbor's house and crossed the street and shined my flashlight practically in a bedroom window. Nothing.
I heard another on the left side of my house. I guess he was on that neighbor's side of the high wooden fence.
Disappointed, I went back into my house.
I asked an expert on birds. He was stumped and suggested that maybe I wasn't hearing birds at all. When I thought about that later, I wondered what our local frogs were doing climbing trees. I know some do because I have seen them on the Discovery Channel and the Animal Planet. But mostly I have seen our frogs on the ground.
I went to a three-CD bird song set I have and listened to all the birds they said sang at night. No Bubble Bird, although I found one in the daytime section that sounded similar. It was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, but he wasn't considered a night bird.
I went through my books, seven in all, looking for information on the Yellow-billed Cuckoo because I knew that they were here in town from the list I got. None of my books mentioned that the Yellow-billed Cuckoo could be my Bubble Bird.
I gave up.
The answer-finally
Then this spring I visited my brother who gave me a bird book, the Book of North American Birds published by the Reader's Digest. It's too big to be called a field guide.
For grins I looked up the Yellow-billed Cuckoo and found this quote, "But throughout the countryside nearly everyone has heard these birds. From May to October (remember this is written by a Northerner), when they are resident in much of North America, their strange songs are apt to erupt from wood and brushy roadside tangles at almost any time of night or day."
"At almost any time of night or day" it said. At last, proof that I had tagged a bird on sound from a CD, information that this bird is a resident and the eighth bird book.
I also learned that the Yellow-billed Cuckoo makes his strange song often preceding summer storms and that for generations the birds have been called "rain crows" by country folk who probably never saw them either.
Why I couldn't find him on my safari
One thing I learned from all my books was that the Bubble Bird, no I mean the Rain Crow, excuse me, I really mean the Yellow-billed Cuckoo is extremely shy and secretive and seldom seen. He slips furtively through the tree he is in and then flies in a straight line quickly to the next hiding place. He loves caterpillars, even tent worms. He moves in reptilian, snakelike movements that only the most fortunate observer has seen.
These birds have a gorgeous tail, I guess to make up for the fact that they are plain brown on the top and plain white on the bottom. The tail feathers are brown with large white tips around the outer edges. You can see this from underneath and when the bird is in flight. So if you see a bird hurtling forward with a large tail with white patches on both sides, you are one of the lucky ones.
Ann Mullen is a woman of a certain age who has been writing for two decades. Her websites, Media-Ann-Such and New2Need cover articles on a wide range of topics. You are invited to come and see what else is on her sites.
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