Category Archives: Sparrows

Braden’s & Nick’s Epic Florida Adventure, Day 5: Diving into Ding Darling

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Braden and Nick are close to the finish line! This penultimate day of their epic Florida adventure would bring revelation, frustration, traffic jams, and finally, the realization of a key (no pun intended) target species of the trip. They also happened to be nearing their goal of 200 species for their expedition—as well as moving Braden significantly along in his quest to see 400 species during his 2022 Big Year. Read on to find out what happens . . .

Unfortunately, sleep was not in our immediate future after leaving the Keys that night. We pulled back into the Everglades, passing the campsite I’d enjoyed the night before, Chuck-will’s-widow calls sailing through our rolled-down windows. As we drove south in the dark towards Flamingo, the “town” at the bottom of the glades, we scanned the roads looking for our targets: snakes. Soon enough, Nick spotted one, and we pulled off the road, turning on our emergency lights so oncoming cars wouldn’t run us, or the snake, over as we walked down the road towards it. We left Dixie in the car, given that this snake was a Florida Cottonmouth, and probably could have killed Dixie if she got too close. The snake coiled on the warm road, its mouth open, and we showed another group of people that pulled over to see what we were photographing. Our spirits high, we headed back to the car—only to discover that Dixie had peed all over both seats. The smell infiltrated our noses, and we wiped up the mess with various towels and toilet paper that would be going in the next garbage can we came across.

Half an hour later, we rolled into the dark parking lot of a wooded trail near Flamingo. We set off in the dark, using a stick to brush spiderwebs out of the way and looking back frequently to make sure we wouldn’t get lost. Eventually, the trees gave way to a massive field of saltbush, slightly silver in the moonlight. This was the winter home of another incredibly elusive species, the Black Rail. This bird, a member of a group of birds already known to be difficult to find, was the size of a mouse and completely nocturnal. If Mangrove Cuckoo wasn’t the hardest regularly-occurring species to see in North America, it was definitely Black Rail. While hearing them was slightly easier, they didn’t seem to know that as we played for them in the dark, and we walked back to the car, our legs covered in scratches from the saltbushes, after forty fruitless minutes of searching. Nick fell asleep immediately as I took the wheel, just trying to get a little further north before crashing so the driving would not be as terrible during the next few days. I didn’t get far, however, and pulled into another parking lot. Between the smell of urine and the oppressive humidity, I didn’t get very much sleep that night.

Birds such as this juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron helped compensate for a terrible night’s sleep and Dixie’s, ahem, perfuming of the car seats!

At seven, Nick drove us to our next spot, a place called the L31W Canal, a little northeast of the Everglades. Struggling against my fatigue, I stepped out of the car in the brightening sky, and we began trudging along a straight road bordered by brambles on one side and grassy pine forest on the other. We had several goals here, the primary one being a Smooth-billed Ani that had been hanging out for a while. After doing some digging on eBird, I discovered that the ani was a ways down the dusty road, and I sighed, preparing for a long, hot, uneventful hike. Fortunately, I was quickly proven wrong.

We passed another pair of birders, one of them guiding the other. Nick pointed out the calls of Northern Bobwhites, quail I hadn’t seen since South Texas and had never before heard, and all of a sudden, an orange blur caught my eye. I looked to the right, where a beautiful Barn Owl had just alighted on top of a tall, branchless snag.

This was the best photo I could manage of my first really good look at a Barn Owl.

“Holy cow, look!” I said, pointing as all four of us birders turned towards it and raised our various devices (camera, binoculars, and in the guide’s case, a scope). The bird had dark eyes and a grayish, circular face peering at us in the morning fog. It took off before I was able to secure any good pictures, its flight reminiscent of a bounding rabbit. We watched the Barn Owl, a species I had only seen the butt of before, our eyes transfixed on the vibrant orange of its wings as it floated around for a while and then disappeared. It was almost like the birds had seen my poor mood and responded accordingly, putting the smile back on my face—and they were just getting started. In fact, the best birding of the entire trip unfolded before us.

As we scanned the pine savannah to our right, searching for White-tailed Kites, Nick pointed out Eastern Meadowlarks, a bird I somehow hadn’t seen until now. Pishing in agricultural parts of the walk yielded a variety of sparrows, including Savannah and, surprisingly, a Grasshopper Sparrow, a bird I associated with the shortgrass prairie of Eastern Montana rather than the humid scrubland of south Florida. More Swallow-tailed Kites appeared above us, circling above the pineywoods as if cheering us on. At one point, a bright red bird zoomed across my path, briefly perching up in a low bush—a male Painted Bunting! The bird was even more stunning than I’d expected, with its deep blue head, green back and brilliant crimson belly lit up in the sun. 

The L31W Canal continued to deliver great birds with my first ever Eastern Meadowlark and a spectacular male Painted Bunting.

While we didn’t find the ani, the other birders pointed out other rare species to us. This place seemed to be a rarity hotspot, which became apparent with a kingbird flock we found. Western Kingbirds were regular winter residents in this area, but this flock also included both a Cassin’s Kingbird (a Western species) and a Tropical Kingbird (a tropical species), and I learned the difference between the three as we watched them fly around us. As much as Nick and I wanted to stay longer, we had miles to cover and Mangrove Cuckoos to find, so we said goodbye to the other birders and began the drive through the glades towards the Gulf Coast.

This was my first time getting to directly observe the differences between Tropical (shown above), Cassin’s, and Western Kingbirds in the field.

Yet again, we drove through prime Snail Kite habitat, and yet again, we found no Snail Kites. The sawgrass marshes gave way to densely forested glades as we drove along the Tamiami Trail, and we pulled into the visitor center for Big Cypress National Preserve for a quick glance around the center grounds. While we did see a fair number of birds along the drive and at the visitor center, the main attractions were the aquatic creatures. Amazingly, we spotted a pair of porpoises in the canal as well as a Brown Pelican, both an unusually far distance inland. That meant that somehow, this canal must have had some saltwater. What’s more, at the visitor center we found large schools of fish, including mean-looking Florida Gar. In front of our eyes, a Softshell Turtle snagged one of them and was promptly ambushed by several more. However, the most mind-blowing animals were the alligators. Dozens sulked in the canal, and at the visitor center alone I counted thirty or so, all within several feet of the humans peering at them from the safety of the boardwalk. 

Eventually, the scenery changed as we left Snail Kite habitat and entered the habitat of the snowbirds, people who migrated south from the northern United States to their homes in the warmth of Florida. More specifically, we were in Cape Coral, a hot, concrete-covered town known for its tourists as well as another species that I’d only seen previously in the prairies of Montana: the Burrowing Owl. A threatened, urban owl population existed in this part of Florida, surviving in parks, yards and abandoned lots here only because of the protection the city provided. As we pulled up to the Cape Coral Public Library, we saw the fencing and stakes marking their burrows, although no birds were to be found. The heat of the day seemed to be keeping them down, so we headed west, towards our last chance at Mangrove Cuckoo: Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island.

Fish Crows entertained us in many of South Florida’s habitats, including mangroves.

Again, this refuge caught me off guard. I’d expected large marshes and ponds, similar to Montana’s refuges. Instead, we were met with thick, tall, healthy mangroves. The trees were larger and denser than what we’d seen in the Keys, and more accessible too. We drove the main refuge loop, stopping at various trails to play for the cuckoo. One boardwalk in particular displayed the complexity of the Red Mangrove ecosystem, giving us great looks at the trees’ prop roots as they plunged into the shallow, salt-covered mud, and the crabs scampering up their trunks. Fish leapt from the water of the mangrove-encased bays, and we spotted a few shorebirds and waders wherever land showed itself. Here, again, the primary songs we heard were those of Prairie Warblers, singing from all around us in this perfect breeding habitat. And yet again, more Swallow-tailed Kites flew over us, reminding us of the excitement we’d felt when we’d first seen them at Merritt Island.

As we left Ding Darling, cuckoo-less, we discovered what else the area was known for: traffic—the worst traffic I’d ever been in, hood-to-bumper cars stretching for miles as people tried to get off the island. We probably could have gotten off Sanibel faster if we’d been as we covered three or so miles in roughly an hour. Eventually, though, we made our escape, and headed to a nearby baseball field in a last ditch attempt for Burrowing Owls. Again, though, after half an hour of walking around, they evaded us, frustration rising inside us. While the day had been great, we’d missed every single target—no ani, no cuckoo, no kites and no Burrowing Owls, not to mention the uncomfortable night spent looking for nonexistent Black Rails. As the sun began to set, a baseball game started next to us. I stared as the young Little League players hit line drives over each others’ heads. A single ball flew into the outfield, and then I saw it: yellow fencing, located just beyond the baseball diamond. I raised my binoculars, revealing two brown lumps perched on the chain link fence within the yellow caution tape.

“I’ve got em!” I said, and Nick and I began running, Dixie leading the way. As we got close, we put Dixie on a leash, lying down to photograph what we’d found: two incredibly cooperative Burrowing Owls perched in front of us, one on the lawn and one on the fence above the first. They stared at us, their mottled brown-and-white pattern complementing their intense, unmoving eyes. Nick and I moved a little further to take a selfie. Finally, we’d found something we were looking for! 

Finally, after an afternoon-long search complete with horrendous South Florida traffic, we were rewarded with a great look at Burrowing Owls in Cape Coral.

We ended our day at a campsite just south of Gainesville at roughly eleven o’clock, a surprisingly earlier bedtime compared to the rest of the trip. While my goal was sleep, Nick went off in search of Eastern Whip-poor-wills. I lay there, in the back of Nick’s truck, thinking about where we’d been. After spending the day in the glades and the mangroves, we were back in the Pineywoods, hoping for another chance at their birds tomorrow before heading back to New Orleans. While we’d gotten several of my target birds for the trip so far, we’d missed an unfortunate number, and I’d hoped that tomorrow would go better. Would it? Or would we miss everything yet again, to return to Louisiana only with a few of the birds we’d set out to find? Stay tuned to find out!

Our First Guest Post: “Rare Rail Round-ups” by Nick Ramsey!

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This week we are thrilled to offer a post by our good friend and Montana Native Son, Nick Ramsey. Helping to lead a new wave of outstanding young birders dispersing throughout the country, Nick was there at the beginning as Braden and I took our first tentative steps into serious birding. The list of “firsts” he showed us would take up a whole blog by itself, but includes our first Black Terns, Northern Saw-whet Owl, and perhaps most memorable, Sprague’s Pipit. Currently, Nick is a sophomore at Louisiana State University majoring in Natural Resource Management and Ecology with an emphasis on Wildlife Ecology. We hope this is the first of many blogs he will write for FatherSonBirding. (Nick shown here holding a Yellow Rail.)

Our Special Guest Contributor Nick Ramsey holding a Yellow Rail captured for banding.

Yellow Rails are one of the most sought-after, most elusive species for birders in North America. Usually, they are near impossible to see. Most people that have them on their lists have gone in the evening to tall upland marshes in their northern breeding range, just to hear a soft song akin to pebbles getting hit together. Finding one in the winter is nearly impossible – right?

Not quite. I’ve serendipitously encountered Yellow Rails twice. Once, in eastern Montana with Braden and Sneed, we were looking at our lifer Nelson’s Sparrows at Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge, one of their westernmost breeding sites in the state. The habitat looked great for Yellow Rails, and it was on the back of my mind. While I was taking photos of the sparrows, Braden asked for us to be quiet. Soon, I heard what he was hearing – the clicking of a distant Yellow Rail! And in broad daylight, no less! A lifer for all of us, and quite a rarity for the state of Montana, although there were historical records from the area. We were never able to see the bird, which is just part of the experience with Yellow Rails. 

Audubon Marshbird Biologist Jonathon Lueck holding a secretive Yellow Rail—a bird Nick, Braden, and Sneed first encountered at Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge.

The second time, I was stomping around an old helipad at St. Mark’s National WIldlife Refuge in the Florida Panhandle. The tall, wet grass was home to a wintering LeConte’s Sparrow and potentially Henslow’s Sparrows. As I worked the grasses, hoping to flush one of these seldom-seen sparrows, a bird jumped up. It wasn’t much bigger than the sparrows I was searching for, but its legs were dangling beneath it. And – it had white secondaries!! It was a Yellow Rail! It landed only about 15 feet from me, but despite another hour of searching I was unable to flush it again. I was hooked – these shy rails had quickly become one of my favorite birds.

In Louisiana there is an active effort to survey populations of Yellow Rails, in conjunction with work on endangered Black Rails and other secretive marsh species. We are also home to the Yellow Rails and Rice Festival, where people from all over flock to Louisiana’s rice fields as combines flush rails during the rice harvest. Researchers use this opportunity to band rails and monitor Yellow Rail populations. As with most conservation efforts, they operate on a tight budget, so they love volunteers. They especially love college students, because when we trip in a marsh or a rice field after chasing a rail, we bounce. The older subset of birders that volunteer is not quite as bouncy. 

Jonathon Lueck holding a prized Black Rail.

On three occasions this winter, I’ve been able to volunteer on rail surveys, targeting Black, Yellow, and other rails. The primary method for these surveys is the “rail drag.” Four to eight people drag a rope about 50 feet long through prime rail habitat – wetter for Clapper, King, and Virginia Rails, dryer high marsh for Black and Yellow Rails. The line is fixed with a few gallon jugs full of cat toys spread out evenly. These serve two purposes. First, they weigh the line down, assuring no rails just hide in the grass while the line passes over them, and second, they make a ton of noise, frightening the rails into flight. These drags are conducted at night, and everyone carries a net and a flashlight. Once a rail is spotted, the lights temporarily freeze the bird and we gallop through the marsh to go catch it! This is my favorite part. 

Jonathon Lueck with a Clapper Rail in hand.

The first time this winter that I volunteered we were lucky to catch Black, Clapper, Yellow, and Virginia Rails on the Cameron Coast of southwest Louisiana. I personally netted a clapper, and chased after lots of other birds. We also netted a couple of Sedge Wrens, abundant in the drier marshes we dragged. Several weeks later, I was able to get back out to the Cameron coast with my friends Kraig and Ravynn, who’d never birded outside of Baton Rouge. After a fruitful day birding near the coast with 100 species, including my stater White-tailed Kite and over thirty lifers for my friends, we set out to go catch some rails. We met Audubon Delta’s marsh bird biologist, Jonathan Lueck, as well as a couple other volunteers, at the site. Jonathan is a character – he had a skinned-out otter and a skinned-out raccoon in the bed of his truck amongst the rail netting supplies. He found them on the side of the highway and was using the fur to make gloves, hats, and other products as a side hustle (ornithology is fun, but it doesn’t pay very well.) Jonathan passed out the nets and lights, and we got started! The first two transects didn’t yield anything, but there was another site just down the road that needed to be surveyed as well. On the way back to the car, I flushed a Clapper Rail! Kraig ran ahead and caught it. It was his first time seeing one, and getting to hold it made it that much cooler. After processing the bird, we went to the next site. This one was a lot more productive, yielding two Yellow Rails! We also flushed several of the larger species, but weren’t able to catch them. Kraig was the man of the hour, catching a Yellow Rail and a Clapper (as well as spotting many of our best birds earlier in the day, like Limpkin and American Bittern.) After a great night, we made the three hour drive back to Baton Rouge, capping off 22 hours straight of birding and travel. 

I’ve been very lucky to get involved with a ton of fun research here, and the Yellow Rail banding might be my favorite. Every time we catch one we widen the window into the natural history of these adorable little birds. 

Rail-hunting can lead to some great bonus birds such as this Henslow’s Sparrow with new bird band.

All photos copyrighted, courtesy of Nick Ramsey.

Battling the February Birding Blahs

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In a recent Redpolling poll, voters overwhelmingly chose February as the worst month for birding (except for a few cheeky Floridians who lorded it over the rest of us). But is February really that bad? In Montana, after all, you can go find some wonderful winter residents such as Rough-legged Hawks, Northern Shrikes, and Snow Buntings. On the other hand, by February you’ve usually seen those already so where does that leave you?

February is a great month to catch up on bird-related reading. For my review on this and other excellent titles, Follow @sneedcollard on Instagram.

For me personally, February is a time to get a lot of actual WORK done such as writing birding articles, banging out new children’s books, writing letters to the editor and my senators about bird conservation, and reading bird books. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m not curious about which birds are around—while remaining optimistic that I’ll find some surprises if I go out. On a morning dog walk recently, for example, a Northern Goshawk flew right over me and Lola! This last Sunday morning, Lola and I again headed out wondering if we might see any other surprises.

Just to prove that in birding you never know—even in February—a Northern Goshawk flew right over me and my dog Lola only a couple of weeks ago! It was the first I’d ever seen on my own.

We decided to do a loop I only rarely traverse anymore, through a private neighborhood that COULD be great bird habitat but has instead been landscaped with acres of lawn and over-pruned trees. Still, even before we got to that neighborhood, I noticed that our resident birds have shifted into courtship mode. On Valentine’s Day I heard the first two-note song of a chickadee for the year and also the first throaty warble of an advertising Northern Flicker. This morning, I heard both of those—plus an amazing number of Song Sparrows also advertising. I haven’t kept track of “first spring calls” before, but I wondered if they are on a trend toward “springing out” earlier and earlier every year?

After not hearing a Song Sparrow call for many weeks, I was gratified to hear four of them singing in different locations on our recent Sunday morning walk!

In the private neighborhood itself, we heard some distant wild turkeys, a Red Crossbill, and an unknown high-pitched cacophony. My hearing is so sucky anymore I couldn’t tell who was making this chattering, but whipped out Merlin’s Sound ID, which ID’ed them as Pine Siskins. But where were they? I walked forward a bit, turned around and there they were—more than forty of them in a tree! Okay, so it wasn’t a Northern Pygmy-Owl, but I was still happy. Lola and I had headed out expecting maybe 6 or 8 species and ended up with sixteen! Just goes to show you that, even in the February Blahs, birds are around and ready to teach us new things.

A flock of 40 Pine Siskins proved a delightful highlight of our unlikely February neighborhood walk.

Rare Bird Hat Trick!

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In my last blog, My Accidental Big Year, I recounted my fun birding adventures with some of Houston’s top birders in my quest to “accidentally” break my Big Year record of 336 ABA species. Even as I posted that blog, I harbored serious doubts if I could do it. However, after this week’s—dare I call them shocking?—events, I am more optimistic. It all started when I got a great email from Will Sebern, who had read my last blog and asked if I had gotten an Anna’s Hummingbird for the year and, if not, would I like to come over and see the one visiting his feeder. The answer: No and a resounding Yes! Less than 24 hours later, I was pleasantly chatting with Will on his porch admiring a gorgeous beauty sipping at his feeder. Ka-ching! My year count rose to 328—only nine short of my goal! Thank you, Will! (Note, I picked up number 327—Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay— during a daddy-daughter trip to Salt Lake City last week!)

Anna’s Hummingbirds sweep through western Montana every year, but Braden nor I had ever seen one—until my surprise invitation from Will Sebern!

That said, nine new Year Birds in Montana—in winter—was not a small number. For one thing, I was not willing to race everywhere across the state to chase birds. Burning up gasoline to see birds, birds that are directly harmed by carbon dioxide emissions, has become more and more of a concern for me and other birders. I was willing, though, to travel an hour or two, especially if I could carpool with others. “Maybe,” I thought, “I might be able to run into two or three rarities fairly close to Missoula,” and began eyeing eBird rare bird alerts. During my trip to Texas, I missed quite a few opportunities, but then, a few days ago, Montana eBirder Sharon Dewart-Hansen posted a picture of a Long-tailed Duck at Brown’s Lake only an hour from Missoula! I couldn’t go that day or the next, but called Braden and asked, “Do you think it will still be there tomorrow?” He answered, “Well, ducks often stick around for a while. I’ll bet it will.”

One of the delights of our day was the first sightings of so many of Montana’s western winter birds—including this immature Northern Shrike!

I fired off a text to several local birders to see if they wanted to join me—and no one could make it. “That’s okay,” I thought. “I’ll take the dog and we’ll have a good time whether or not we see anything.” The next morning, though, Steve Flood texted that he could make it after all. We rendezvoused at the truck stop in Bonner and merrily headed up Highway 200.

Arriving at Brown’s Lake, a surprise flock of Common Redpolls greeted us, but though we saw some cool grebes and ducks, THE duck was nowhere in sight at our first stop. We kept circling the lake, though, and spotted a suspicious critter near the campground. I hit the brakes. “Is that it?” Steve answered, “I think it is!” Sure enough, the Long-tailed Duck paddled only fifty feet offshore. The duck, however, was just the beginning. At the campground, Steve found three distant Pacific Loons while I spotted two gulls that turned out to be Bonaparte’s Gulls. A pair of American Tree Swallows—the first of winter—put an accent on our finds.

Seeing only my second Long-tailed Duck ever will long lodge itself in my memory banks. Never did I suspect it would be the first of three Big Year birds Steve Flood and I would see that day!

Elated with our finds, we headed out along the backroads behind Brown’s Lake, which I had never birded, but Steve knew well. More surprises greeted us including a bevy of other new winter arrivals including my first Rough-legged Hawks, Bohemian Waxwings, and Northern Shrikes of the season! Since we were on a roll, I asked, “Hey Steve, you want to take a quick run up to Seeley Lake on our way home?” Steve was game. We turned right at Clearwater Junction and twenty minutes later pulled into the River Point picnic area on the lake’s west side. I had few expectations, but we saw Common Loons, Western Grebes, Hooded Mergansers, and another surprise flock of Common Redpolls. Then, looking through his scope, Steve said, “I have a present for you.” I peered into the eyepiece and saw . . . A beautiful Pacific Loon! Er, check that . . .

Birding with top-notch birder Steve Flood proved not only a way to learn a lot and help reduce our carbon footprints, it was a great way to make a new friend!

It was the same Red-throated Loon Steve had discovered a couple of weeks before! Neither of us had any idea it would still be around, and it capped a remarkable day, one that not only netted me three new Big Year birds, but almost every winter bird that Braden and I work hard to find every year. Well, okay, except for Snowy Owls, Great Gray Owls, Lapland Longspurs, and Snow Buntings. You’ve got to save something for later, right? Even better, I felt like I’d made a new friend in Steve, who is not only an excellent birder, but a pretty darned good guy! Once again, it brings up the adage, “In birding, you just never know—but you won’t unless you keep getting out there!”

A Tornado of Warblers (Braden’s first report from Maine)

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My dad and I were hungry. Not for food; we’d already eaten at a fabulous breakfast place in Bar Harbor following the cancellation of our whale-watching trip (which we weren’t all that disappointed by). No, my dad and I wanted warblers.

Earlier that week we’d gotten a taste of the eastern warblers we’d heard so much about, nabbing Common Yellowthroat, Yellow, and a nice Black-and-White Warbler in Massachusetts. The day before today we’d gone to Taylor Bait Farm, a well-known hotspot in Orono, Maine, where the University of Maine (my new home for the next few years) was located. The farm was fairly productive, nabbing us a few cool county birds like Solitary Sandpiper and some Great Egrets. The best part about Taylor Bait Farm, however, was the warblers—specifically, a bright, nonbreeding male Chestnut-sided Warbler that posed for us below eye level for thirty seconds before diving back into the bushes! It was a first lifer warbler in several years, and probably the best-looking one in terms of nonbreeding plumage. During our whole outing at Taylor Bait Farm, we saw a few more Chestnut-sided Warblers and Northern Parulas, and got a really poor look at a Palm Warbler, another lifer, in a tree above us.

Chestnut-sided Warbler proved our Bird of the Day when my dad and I visited the Taylor Bait Farm in Orono.

But it wasn’t enough. Furthermore, we had ended up at Acadia National Park, which was known for its beautiful views and seabirds, not its warblers. My dad and I started driving around the main park loop, stopping at parking lots to try to pick up some of the eastern seabirds that we needed. After a few stops with nothing but eiders and Great Black-backed Gulls, we finally got our dose of Atlantic birds with a few Black Guillemots floating offshore and a distant Northern Gannet flying through the sea fog, both lifers for my dad. Unfortunately, it looked like that very fog was going to limit our chances of seeing things like shearwaters and storm-petrels from shore.

At the third parking lot, as we piled out to scope the beach, I happened to look up at a tree just beginning to turn yellow and I spotted a small yellow bird foraging in it. I brought my binoculars to my eyes and yelled, “Daddy! There’s a Blackburnian Warbler above you!” As he looked up, I started to see that the Blackburnian Warbler, a species we hadn’t seen since 2016, was not the only bird above us. There were passerines flying between and feeding in trees all around us.

We started calling out names as we followed the mixed flock. 

“Red-eyed Vireo! Black-and-White Warbler! American Redstart!”

One of our favorite songbirds, Black-and-White Warblers have become almost commonplace for me since moving East.

As the flock moved into a group of conifers I glimpsed one of our target species for the trip feeding on the left side of a spruce. “Magnolia Warbler, get your eyes on it!”

We left the parking lot (and the people wondering what we were gawking at) and walked into the woods, continuing to see if we could pull more warblers out of the already insane mixed flock. I spotted several “Baypoll” warblers at one point, a group that includes Blackpoll and Bay-breasted Warblers that look notoriously similar in fall. Finally, I watched one long enough to see a hint of a bay-colored side, identifying it as a Bay-breasted. The mixed flock, in total, had 14 species including 8 species of warblers—more than we’d ever seen in any flock in Montana!

https://ebird.org/checklist/S93635091

Unfortunately my dad had to fly home a few days later, but the warblers weren’t done with me yet. September, the best birding month in much of the east, had just begun, and the University of Maine campus happened to be located next to some perfect habitat for warblers during fall migration. I began birding a trail near my dorm, called the Cornfield Loop, several times a week to search for my other eastern target species: Canada Warbler, Cape May Warbler and Philadelphia Vireo.

The hits came fast. After about a week of scoping the area out, I started seeing large mixed flocks of migrating warblers coming through and in one spot had both of my first two targets within a few trees of one another! My reaction for both of them was the same: I can’t believe this bird actually exists! Warblers became the norm, and I got used to listening for chickadees in order to tell me if there might be something else nearby. Red-eyed and Blue-headed Vireos, Northern Parulas, American Redstarts and Common Yellowthroats popped out of every piece of plant life available, and one marsh yielded huge flocks of sparrows every time I walked through it. Seeing familiar warblers was also a treat: I found both Nashville and Wilson’s during my walks, the latter of which isn’t the easiest to find in the east. Here is one of my lists:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S94686023

It is odd seeing warblers, such as this Wilson’s Warbler that my dad and I see fairly frequently in Montana, back here in Maine—especially since they are more difficult to see here.

It wasn’t just the Cornfield Loop that had warblers; campus was covered in them. Several mornings I left my dorm for breakfast to be greeted by Black-throated Green Warblers foraging in my face. One night as I walked back from a movie with friends, I began to wonder what all of the high-pitched chips I was hearing were. Could they be sleeping chickadees? No, that doesn’t sound right…and then it hit me. The east was known for its nocturnal migration, and the University of Maine sat right in the middle of the Atlantic Flyway. This meant that the chips I was hearing were the nocturnal flight calls of hundreds, maybe thousands of birds passing over in the dark on their way south to Texas, Florida and beyond! I stared up at the stars, hoping to catch a glimpse of a silhouette as one of these migrating champions flew over.

I got my Philadelphia Vireo by mid-September, pointed out to me by a non-birder friend. 

“Hey,” he asked, “What kind of warbler’s that?”

Before I even had my binoculars up I could see the yellow breast, dark eyeline and cute demeanor of a species I’d been dreaming about finding in Montana ever since my friend Nick first alerted me to it. “Philadelphia Vireo, nice find!”

Philadelphia Vireo has definitely been one of my favorite new eastern birds, and I’ve seen them multiple times right on the Cornfield Loop right across from my dorm!

On one walk about a week ago, I was running through the options in my head as to what warblers I still needed for Maine. I had not yet found a Tennessee or Blackpoll Warbler, which was kind of funny considering those were two species my dad and I have found the last few springs in eastern Montana. I was also somehow missing Black-throated Blue, a supposedly common bird that I still needed for my life list.

Suddenly, I spotted a skulky, heavyset passerine fly into a bush near me, making heavy calls. It was acting a lot like a Common Yellowthroat, by far the most common warbler on campus, but I continued to watch it just in case it was one of the rarer species. Sure enough, it briefly popped into view before flying over the trail and out of sight. It flashed me a very dark chest spot contrasting with a complete gray hood as it flew, what I would have called a MacGillivray’s out west. That meant that I’d just scored a Mourning Warbler—MacGillivray’s eastern counterpart and a supposedly much more difficult bird to find. No way!! While Mourning had been on my radar, I hadn’t expected to get it or any of the rarer warblers given that I’d just gotten to Maine less than a month before and was still very content with the common birds.

Though not as flashy as many other species, Palm Warbler surprised me and my dad, and was a welcome addition to our Life Lists.

This past week I’ve gotten both Blackpoll and Tennessee Warbler on the Cornfield Loop, bringing the total number of warbler species of seen in Maine to 20, all of which I’d seen in a month compared to the sixteen species of warblers I’d seen in Montana across seven years of birding. I still don’t have Black-throated Blue (though it is definitely still possible), but unfortunately warbler migration is beginning to die down here. Just yesterday eBird marked my report of American Redstart as rare, meaning that a few species are beginning to leave for good. The warblers are now moving through much of the southern United States, including Texas, which you may get to hear about soon from my dad!