Mystery chirps - Incessant high-pitched chirping puzzled the ten members of the Halifax River Audubon Society.  The sounds came from a grove of tall Slash Pines.  At first we thought it was a family of Brown-headed Nuthatches but it didn’t sound right.  After several minutes of scanning we found neither nuthatches nor any birds. A Northern Parula flew in with a fat caterpillar in his beak and landed on a clump of Spanish Moss.  The chirps increased in volume and tempo.  The chirps were not the sounds of a male parula.  Spanish Moss is a pendulous epiphyte, or air-plant, in the bromeliad family.  The little songbird circled the clump of hanging strands, very agitated.  He held onto the caterpillar.  In a blink he, and the caterpillar, disappeared.  He didn’t fly, he merely vanished.  The chirping stopped.

    Northern Parulas conceal a cup nest among Spanish Moss strands.  I wonder, how many hungry, noisy nestlings were hidden in the hanging tangle?