We wrap up our (choose one: Bonanza, Beneficial, Barbaric) Bonus Birding Blog run with our visit to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Brooklyn seems to often get second consideration to Manhattan, but as you’ll see, the birds were just as good. “So what is next?” you might ask. Well, Braden and I are about to leave for a birding excursion to Arizona and California en route to his job working in the Sierras monitoring Northern Goshawks. You can bet we’ll have some posts from that. And if you are wondering how Braden is doing on his Big Year goal of 400 species, we are proud to announce that yesterday’s addition of Williamson’s Sapsucker brings his year count to 319 species! Hm . . . maybe 400 is too low of a goal?Stay tuned to find out!
After our sublime day birding Central Park, Braden and I hopped the F train the next morning to meet my editor and friend Harold Underdown, creator of the amazing website Writing, Illustrating, and Publishing Children’s Books: The Purple Crayon. I had enjoyed working with Harold on my book Beaks!at Charlesbridge Publishing back in the day and now am happy to be working on another picture book with him in his position as Executive Editor of Kane Press. When I invited Harold to bird with Braden and me, he just could not suppress his scientific curiosity and, on his suggestion, we agreed to meet at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
Birding Brooklyn’s Prospect Park was a great way to renew my friendship with editor Harold Underdown, here wearing a mask to avoid attention from his thousands of adoring fans!
Fresh off our amazing day before, Braden and I of course woke early and arrived in Brooklyn a full hour and a half early. Braden had researched recent bird sightings so we headed toward the part of Prospect Park known as Lookout Hill. At first we did not see much, but as we continued, the birds began to show themselves, including Northern Parulas, Least Flycatchers, Baltimore Orioles, and Black-throated Blue Warblers. We also saw a feral cat, obviously stalking birds and other wildlife—an unwelcome reminder of the enormous toll outdoor cats take on birds across the country.
After climbing Lookout Hill, we dropped back down and made our way through some woods to a place called the Upper Pool where an unlikely Red-throated Loon had been hanging out. We didn’t see it immediately, but did spot several handsome Wood Ducks. Rounding a bend, though, we suddenly beheld a large gray bird paddling prominently in the middle of the Lower Pool. We dutifully shot a dozen or so photos and then hurried to meet Harold.
The presence of a rare Red-throated Loon in Prospect Park had made birders worry about its health, but we observed the loon take two perfectly normal flights so fingers crossed it is healthy and will move on when it’s good and ready!
Unfortunately, as so happens with we birders, an unavoidable delay smacked us in the face—two warblers we had not yet seen in New York! Braden detected the first by ear, a Black-throated Green Warbler. As we were watching that, however, he suddenly grabbed my shoulder and said, “Daddy, look!” It took me a moment to spot it, but thanks to Braden’s recent Florida posts, I recognized that it was a bird near the top of my New York target list: Prairie Warbler!
Not the best photo, but I was thrilled to see my first Prairie Warbler–species number 503 on my American Birding Association Life List of birds.
It was great to see Harold again and with him in tow, we more or less retraced our earlier route—but with different results. We showed him the loon, and as the sun emerged from gray clouds, we began seeing a wonderful assortment of passerines that included a House Wren, more orioles, Warbling Vireos, and first-of-year Yellow Warblers. The stars of the day? Two warblers, a Black-and-White and a Northern Parula, that put on the best-ever displays for us. The parula spent a solid five minutes in a bush not 15 feet from us, allowing us some of our best warbler photos ever.
Warblers are often so difficult to observe that it is a rare treat to watch one up-close and personal. Thanks to this Northern Parula and Black-and-White Warbler, Prospect Park offered Braden, Harold, and me that chance!
After bidding adieu to Harold, Braden and I strolled down 9th Street and grabbed a pretty good meal at “New” Yummy Tacos, and then caught the F train back to Manhattan, glimpsing the Statue of Liberty along the way. That night, we all went to see the wonderful, poignant musical Come From Away. BUT, our birding adventures had not quite ended.
It was great to see the Statue of Liberty again, but something about her just seemed off.
The next day we walked the High Line, an inspirational elevated train trestle-turned-city park. Along the way, we stopped to eat “Liberty Bagels” in Chelsea Park. While we did see some birds including an oriole and an Ovenbird, bird numbers in both locations seemed significantly lower than we expected and, after talking to other birders, we realized that a migrant wave had probably finished passing through. That, in turn, made us feel how fortunate we’d been birding the last two days. As stated in our last post, the window for migrant songbirds through New York is pretty narrow and if I have any advice to those wishing to check birding NYC off your bucket list, it is this: give yourself at least a week to make sure you have the best chance of seeing a great group of birds. As we prepared to fly back to Montana, we felt grateful that at least this time, we had bit the Big Apple just right.
One of the joys of visiting New York is meeting friendly people from all walks of life, including photographer Ayinde Listhrop, who introduced himself while we were walking the High Line. Check out his inspired photos at https://www.unlimitedphotography.nyc/
We continue our spring birding blog blitz by picking up on our New York City trip last week and the nail-biting account of our Central Park birding adventure. If you’re afraid you will get TOO excited while reading this, I suggest you ask someone to hold your hand. And don’t forget to tune in tomorrow for our next post “Birding Brooklyn”!
On Monday, Tessa and I left Amy to continue recovering and rode the Hudson Line up to see our good friends, fellow author Larry Pringle and his delightful wife Susan. After taking a great walk at Nyack Beach State Park and eating a nice lunch, we returned to Manhattan in time to meet Braden at Penn Station after his first year as a college student! Bright and early the next morning, though, he and I jumped on the C train to do something we’d dreamed about since we began birding eight years ago: bird Central Park during spring migration! (Well, after a stop at Liberty Bagels on 35th St., that is.)
People often ask us the key to successful birding. Our trip to New York provided the definitive answer: bagels.
Just as Tessa and I had done two days earlier, we jumped off at 81st St. and immediately crossed over into Central Park, entering a particularly birdy area known as The Ramble. As mentioned in our last post, I worried that the birds might have left NYC already. Most migrating passerines only appear in the park during brief windows ranging from a few days to 2-4 weeks. They also come in waves that one can easily miss. Within a few minutes, however, the birds put my fears to rest when Braden called out a Black-throated Blue Warbler, a Life Bird for me and one of the most stunning of all warblers. Over the next hour and a half, a veritable songbird hit parade followed with sightings of Worm-eating Warbler, Nashville Warblers, Northern Parulas, Northern Waterthrushes, American Redstarts, Swainson’s and Hermit Thrushes, Magnolia Warbler and much more, including a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak high in the trees.
Black-throated Blue Warbler landed at Number 502 on my ABA (American Birding Association) Area Life List—and what an entry it was!
Not the best view, but this was our first male Rose-breasted Grosbeak since we’d hit High Island, Texas during our 2016 Big Year—so we took it!
Among birders, it’s a well-known fact that seeing a lot of birds can generate an enormous appetite, so Braden and I were forced to sit down and attack our bagels. Mmmm . . . lox shmear . . . Partly satiated and with cream cheese smearing our faces, we again rose and made our way to our second birdy destination—an area of Central Park called North Woods. Along the way, we passed multiple landmarks familiar to anyone who has ever watched movies or Seinfeld including Belvedere Castle, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir (where Dustin Hoffman jogged just before getting his teeth ripped out without anesthetic by a sadistic dentist), and the Central Park Tennis Center. We also made more bird discoveries such as a large group of White-crowned Sparrows.
Surprisingly, large numbers of White-crowned Sparrows are rare in Central Park. We were lucky to run across a group of five on our walk up to the North Woods section of the park.
To be honest, however, we didn’t think the North Woods could possibly match The Ramble for birds, but we soon learned that . . . it CAN! Two targets, a Yellow-breasted Chat and a Red-headed Woodpecker had created a buzz in that section of the park, and we (ahem) chatted with several birders about them, but it was the other birds that grabbed our attention. These included incredibly cooperative Black-and-White Warblers, glorious Chestnut-sided Warblers, a Veery and Blue-headed Vireo. We struck out on the chat, but making our way east, we followed the creek through an area called The Loch and continued to rack up amazing sightings. These included a quick glimpse at the now-famous Red-headed Woodpecker, several Red-bellied Woodpeckers, a Yellow-throated Vireo, a Great Egret flying overhead, and a bird I especially wanted to see, Swamp Sparrow.
You wouldn’t think an animal that is just black and white could be so stunning, but Braden and I savor each encounter with Black-and-White Warblers.
By now we had birded for five straight hours and our energy was starting to flag, so we reluctantly dragged ourselves to the 103rd St. subway station and caught a ride back downtown. We learned later that we might have picked up Cape May and Blackburnian Warblers if we had hit a part of the Ramble called the Point, but did we mind? Only a little. In fact, our day had exceeded all of our expectations for birding Central Park. During our long morning, we had logged a remarkable 57 species including an amazing 13 kinds of warblers—as many as we could hope to find during a whole year in Montana!
Though I’d seen Chestnut-sided Warblers when taking Braden back to college in Maine last fall, this was my first technicolor, breeding male!
Even better, when we returned to our hotel, Amy was feeling much better and had spent the day with Tessa at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, so we all went out to a nice meal at Kung Fu Kitchen. Can you spell pork soup dumplings???? Then, while Braden and Tessa strolled Times Square, Amy and I set off to see The Book of Mormon, a musical we were supposed to see in Seattle when covid struck. But lest you think Braden’s and my Big Apple birding adventures had concluded, stay tuned for our next post . . .
We interrupt our New York adventures to bring you Braden’s final post on his and Nick’s epic Florida adventure. As you’ll see, it was a wild ride. Tomorrow we will resume New York with our visit to Central Park. You won’t want to miss it!
A loud bang shook the car as we sped along the highway through the worst rainstorm I’d ever experienced. I looked at Nick.
“Did you hear that?? That lightning bolt almost hit us!”
We’d been driving through this hurricane-level rain for about fifteen minutes by now, gripping the edges of our seats as Nick avoided large puddles and watched the lights of the cars in front of us. After reading about flash floods, I had my fingers crossed that our car wouldn’t get swept away. Thankfully, after about half an hour, the water stopped pouring from the sky just as suddenly as it had started, and we celebrated by driving north towards Alabama, with one last place to bird before the sun went down.
Strike a Pose! Many of Florida’s Sandhill Cranes are unusual in that they a) are non-migratory and b) live in very urban areas. As you can see, this makes them a photographer’s best friends!
That morning had been a rollercoaster of bird-related emotions. We awoke at dawn, saying goodbye to even more Chuck-wills-widows as we drove to a large pineywoods preserve in search of the specialty birds we’d missed on the drive down. While yet again the beauty of this southeastern pine forest dazzled us, we only got fleeting glimpses of a Bachman’s Sparrow, and left the preserve disappointed. Next, we sidled up to a cemetery, home to a wintering population of Henslow’s Sparrows. We stomped around in the thorns for roughly forty minutes, leaving with no sparrows and legs covered in scratches. In a last ditch effort to get a new species for the trip, we found a small park in Gainesville home to a population of Red-headed Woodpeckers. Thankfully, Nick spotted them, flying around a group of burned snags in the distance.
We grabbed McDonald’s in Gainesville and headed North, planning to stop at several more spots for Bachman’s Sparrow before booking it towards the Alabama border. As we left town, though, my dad called me.
“Hey guys, how’s it going? Have you guys been to Sweetwater Wetlands yet?”
“No,” I said, looking at Nick slightly confused, “What’s there?”
“Snail Kites! And a bunch of other cool things.”
“Wait, really?!” I said, quickly pulling the hotspot up on eBird. Sure enough, Snail Kites had been seen there yesterday, and seemed to consistently visit the park. Unfortunately, the wetlands were in the opposite direction of where we wanted to go. After a brief discussion, we decided to go anyway—after all, Snail Kites were still one of our biggest targets on the trip. We’d had no idea they could still be found this far north, but if we had one last shot at them, why not take it?
We pulled up at the wetlands, putting Dixie in Nick’s backpack and starting our speedrun of the hotspot. The area was a large, freshwater marsh, divided by gravel trails quickly warming up under the midday sun. We split up, trying to cover as much ground as possible. Soon, it became apparent to us that there were indeed birds here.
Warblers and vireos serenaded us from the massive live oaks standing in the entryway to the area, and water birds were everywhere. Many of these were fearless, too—I managed to get great photos of both Sandhill Cranes and Limpkins standing less than ten feet from me. The Limpkins signaled that there were snails around, and we kept careful eyes on the sky as we walked. Me and Nick met up after half an hour.
Our last-minute visit to Sweetland Wetlands in Gainesville nabbed us our first good looks at Limpkins—and many other birds.
“Any kites?”
“Well, there are some over there. But they’re Swallow-tailed, not Snail.”
“Me neither. I heard a King Rail over here, so we could probably play for that…wait. Are those harriers?”
Nick pointed behind me at three distant raptors soaring behind us over the marsh. I raised my binoculars. The birds were brown, with white rumps and slender wings, two features common to Northern Harriers. However, they were flying differently. The birds slowly drew nearer, and before long, we could see their striped faces, indicative of juvenile Snail Kites.
“Snail Kites!” Nick yelled, and we high-fived as we watched one of our top targets for the trip fly closer to us. While the kites never got as close as the Swallow-taileds on our first day, we still got decent views. We’d only seen these birds because my dad had been following our adventure and found us a reliable spot to look for them!
Our last shot at Snail Kites paid off big as we backtracked to Sweetwater Wetlands on a hot tip from my dad!
Now, as the rain on the highway subsided, I began to reflect on the trip. It had been an absolute whirlwind of fun and disappointment, euphoria and frustration. Had it not been for Sweetwater Wetlands, we would have missed a significant chunk of our targets for the trip (including up-close Sandhill Crane and Limpkin). We’d chased many birds and came up short often, although we had a few successes with the flamingo at St. Marks and grassquit in the Keys. We’d driven hundreds of miles and dozens of hours, sacrificing sleep and food for the birds. And we’d seen so much of the country too, despite only truly getting to know one state. Florida had continued to amaze me, with its extensive saltmarshes and stunted mangrove forests, tacky fishing villages and five-star hotels. We’d birded in so many habitats I hadn’t even realized existed—Florida savannah scrub, Caribbean Pine Rockland, sawgrass glades and urban parks covered in animals from every continent.
We can thank the abundance of Great Egrets and many other birds to the visionary conservation efforts of Teddy Roosevelt who, among other things, helped put a stop to plume-hunting for hats.We need similarly radical action today to save many of our planet’s species—including ourselves.
As for the birds, we’d done pretty damn well. We’d found success on about half of our chases, missing stuff like the Smooth-billed Ani and Black-headed Gull finding other rarities like the Black-faced Grassquit in the Keys. Thanks to Sweetwater Wetlands, we had hit most of our targets, only missing the Mangrove Cuckoo (which, it turned out, it was the totally wrong season for) and several of the Miami specialties, plus Bachman’s Sparrow, which we still had a shot at. I’d obtained some of the best photos I’d ever gotten, including Prairie Warbler and Blue-headed Vireo, and really gotten to know several species that I’d had little to no experience with prior to the trip. The two species that topped my “Bird of the Trip” list were the aforementioned Prairie Warbler and Swallow-tailed Kite. I’d “discovered” an entirely new breeding population of the warblers, having had no idea that this species could thrive in coastal Floridian mangroves, and learned to recognize their buzzy, rising song every time Nick and I had set foot in that strange, coastal habitat. The kites had accompanied us everywhere we’d gone, and we’d seen them soaring above us almost every day of the trip, not discriminating between any certain habitat. Even after I returned to Maine the next day, it was hard to break the habit of scanning the skies for these sharp-looking black and white birds.
As the sun set on our Florida adventure, one of our nemesis birds—Bachman’s Sparrow—finally put in a solid appearance, and in a place where my dad used to camp with his dad fifty years ago.
As our car raced towards the Alabama border, Nick and I decided to make one last stop. We were driving past Pensacola, where I’d gone for Thanksgiving the previous fall, and we headed north, heading to Blackwater State Forest following a Google Maps pin that supposedly had Red-cockaded Woodpeckers. The Honda Pilot pulled over on a dirt road as the sun began to set, dangerously low on gas, and we jumped out, cameras and binoculars in hand. Dixie immediately took off into the tall grass, covering herself in the mud formed by the intense rainstorm that had just ended. The longleaf pines towered upwards around us—this was the healthiest patch of this habitat we had seen during the whole trip. Suddenly, as we began walking, a melodious song echoed across the pine savannah.
“Bachman’s Sparrow!” said Nick, whipping out his phone to play for the bird. Almost as soon as the song escaped the phone’s speakers, a small, brown sparrow zipped towards us, landing on the low branch of a tree. I raised my binoculars, and sure enough, there it was–a bird I’d searched for and missed half a dozen times in the last six months. The bird’s plumage was not particularly special, but the music it created stuck with me for hours after we left. Several more sparrows began singing from the grass as the sun set, and were joined by a chorus of Pine Warblers and Brown-headed Nuthatches. On our way back to the car, we suddenly heard some loud calls similar to that of a Hairy Woodpecker. We looked over in the trees just in time to see a family group of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers fly in, moving up and down the pines energetically. I walked off into the grass in an attempt to get some photos, and called my dad back.
Despite the lousy photo, finding Red-cockaded Woodpeckers in a place my dad had spent his summers proved the perfect way to round up our epic adventure.
“We got the woodpeckers…hell, we got everything!”
We’d ended the trip right where we’d started, in these strange, fire-dependent southeastern forests. Not everything had gone right, but Nick and I had gotten a great story out of it. We’d seen so many birds, and mammals, and plants, and reptiles and more, and as I boarded the plane from New Orleans the following morning, wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed in a week and clutching my camera and binoculars, I smiled. Florida had dragged me in, and I couldn’t wait to return to the land of the grass pines.
Trip Statistics!
Miles Driven: 2,100
Hours Driven: 31
Bird Species: 197
States Driven Through: 4
Counties Driven Through: 43
Life Birds: 23
Year Birds: 143
Bird(s) of the Trip: Prairie Warbler, Swallow-tailed Kite and Bachman’s Sparrow
Birds to Date for Braden’s Big Year: 244 (at end of Florida trip)
We know you’ve been dying for Braden’s last installment of his Florida trip, but just to keep you waiting impatiently a bit longer, here is the first of a new series for you: our spring trip to New York—during migration season! Stay tuned for rapid installments, and to make sure you don’t miss a single one, be sure to subscribe by filling out the boxes down and to the right!
All birders have bucket lists and birding New York’s Central Park during spring migration stood close to the top of ours. Just when that would happen, we didn’t know, but this year the end of Braden’s spring semester, ahem, pigeon-tailed perfectly with my daughter’s desire to return to New York City, so we decided to make a family trip of it. We did not plan the exact dates around spring migrants, but first encounters bore promise.
Seeing an original copy of Audubon’s Birds of America in all its giant glory was an unexpected, great way to launch my New York birding experience!
Amy, Tessa, and I arrived Friday, May 6, but Braden wouldn’t pull into Penn Station until the following Monday and I tried to hold off birding until then. I failed. Despite a rainy day Saturday, we wandered back through Bryant Park after an excursion to the New York Public Library, where I got to see a copy of Audubon’s original Birds of America (WOW!). Bryant Park lacked good habitat, but in a few short minutes I glimpsed Gray Catbirds, White-throated Sparrows, and a Hermit Thrush. The message was clear: THE BIRDS ARE HERE! Even more exciting, Tessa and I planned to take Amy to a well-known hotspot, Governor’s Island, for Mother’s Day the next day. Alas, that night Amy came down with a crummy cold, so Tessa and I decided to instead plan a visit to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).
“I’ve been framed!” Actually, this Gray Catbird is not in jail—just visiting the Bright Lights and Big City Life on its way to breeding grounds.
The next morning, as is my wont, I rose way before Tessa so decided to do a bit ‘o bird reconnoitering before we hit the AMNH. Our overpriced, mediocre hotel stood fairly close to the Hudson and I thought There’s gotta be some birds down along the river, right? Uh, not really. Sure, I saw a cormorant, robins, a couple of fish crows (identified by their anemic calls) and the usual city birds—along with a giant aircraft carrier—but was disappointed by the paucity of greenery. On Google Maps, however, I noted a park a few blocks uptown and decided, “What the heck.”
My first cool bird of NYC, White-throated Sparrows are one of Braden’s and my favorites—probably because we have to work so hard to see them in Montana!
DeWitt Clinton Park would be considered a “postage stamp park” in Montana, but I’m guessing it’s an invaluable resource for its neighborhood New Yorkers, consisting of a doggie park and various courts. More important, even before entering I saw that it held trees and strips of shrubbery, and my pulse quickened with the possibilities. Sure enough, as soon as I walked up the first steps, I spotted a small shape scampering along a tree trunk—one of my favorite birds, Black-and-White Warbler! My Bird Excitement Meter surging, I hunkered down to some serious birding, and was rewarded by more catbirds and White-throated Sparrows, and then saw both Hermit and Swainson’s Thrushes. The biggest surprise? A Common Yellowthroat, very far from water—an obvious migrant passing through!
What are you doing here? Seeing a Common Yellowthroat in a postage stamp park in Manhattan both surprised me—and got me really excited about what else might be passing through the crowded megalopolis!
Returning to the hotel, I made sure Amy had what she needed for a day in bed, and then Tessa and I caught the C train up to 81st St. We had ANHM entry reservations for noon and arrived early enough for a quick stroll of Central Park across the street. I kept my expectations low as it was an overcast day and, well, I just didn’t know what spring migration might be like Out East. Within a couple of hundred yards, however, I spotted a small tan bird on the ground with a bold stripe on its crown. “Worm-eating Warbler?” I considered. “No, Ovenbird!” And not just one, but two.
Another bird challenging to find in Montana, Ovenbirds were evidently swinging through Manhattan in large numbers the week we arrived!
Emboldened, we continued walking, seeing catbirds, a blue jay, more WTSPs, a Red-tailed Hawk, and a surprise Chipping Sparrow. Then, a bold flash of yellow caught my eye. I had worried that I might not be able to ID some of the Eastern warblers, but this was a bright, bold male. Even better, it’s a bird I had for years been staring at on the cover of The Sibley Guide to Birds—Magnolia Warbler! Honestly, the bird was just stunning. I didn’t have my camera, but in a way that was better as I could just focus on enjoying this first male MAWA I had ever seen. Even Tessa, a non-birder, appreciated the warbler’s sublime beauty. With a twenty-minute list of 12 species (not even including Rock Pigeon!), we headed off to the museum, fingers crossed that the birds would still be here when Braden and I would get to bird Central Park in earnest two days later.
