Birds of
Altamont Farms

Four feet tall, slate gray, with a red crown. You hear the rattling call from a half mile off before you pick the pair out of the grass. They walk the pasture at a steady pace and do not hurry for anyone.

Barred rusty chest, black-and-white checkered wings, and a call that carries across the whole place. Usually the bird sitting on a low limb at the woods edge, watching the ground rather than circling.

Our smallest falcon, about the size of a mourning dove, rusty backed with slate-blue wings on the male. Watch for one on a wire over the open field, tail pumping, then hovering in place before it drops.

Round headed, dark eyed, barred brown and cream. You will hear it before you see it, and it starts calling well before full dark. It will answer you if you call back.

Crow sized, black and white, with a red crest. The drumming sounds like someone knocking on a hollow door. Look for the long rectangular holes it chisels in dead trunks.

Long necked, coral-pink bill and legs, chestnut chest, black belly. They perch in trees, which no one expects from a duck, and they whistle constantly overhead in small flocks.

Unmistakable. Pink, with a flat spatula of a bill that it sweeps side to side through shallow water with its head down. Never here long, and always worth stopping the tractor for.

Tall, blue-gray, and patient. It will stand in one spot at the pond for twenty minutes without moving, then strike. Just as often you find one out in dry pasture hunting rodents.

White, with a long curved orange-red bill and black wingtips in flight. They arrive as a loose flock, work across the pasture in a line, and pick the ground over completely.

Dark above, white below, with a bandit's mask through the eye. It hovers over the pond, folds up, and hits the water feet first. Comes up shaking itself dry in midair.

The red bird everyone knows. The female is warm brown with a coral bill and is easier to overlook. A pair holds the same stretch of hedgerow year after year.

Our largest swallow. The males are glossy dark purple-blue all over. They chatter constantly around the house on the pole and feed high overhead in loose groups.

Pale, heart-shaped face, buff back, ghost white underneath. Silent in flight. The call is a harsh scream, not a hoot, and it will make you look up the first time you hear it.

The male is blue headed, green backed, and red underneath, and it looks out of place every single time. He stays low in thick cover and you usually only get a second of him.