Birder Inferior Jumped the Gun

When  does a hobby become an obsession? Is there anything in between, something that sounds more balanced? Probably so. If you're getting a bit worried and starting to wonder, one sign that one is more than a mere inheritor, hobbyist, or enthusiast would be if one finds oneself embarking on a pilgrimage. 

For baseball fans it's Cooperstown. For Catholics it is maybe the Camino di Santiago. For Floridians it is Gatorland. For birders, it is Magee Marsh. This lengthy but unassuming boardwalk is world-renowned as the site of the Biggest Week in American Birding and a veritable Mecca for both birds and birders come mid-May.

In early April, I found myself eyeing a weekend getaway with Butler's Bird Sr., a birding spectacular of feathered frivolities where the only limits would be the daylight and our knee cartilage. Of course, seasoned birders and people who didn't grow up in the dessert alike will be quick to note there's another factor here, one insufficiently included in the planning. We were looking at the first weekend of May, the very beginning of the month, as it turned out. 

But which way to go, North or South? Swallows or Flickers? Either one sounds like a hot date.

Choices: We could head to South Texas and try to catch the passerine emigrants as they on-shored from their Caribbean commute, or head north to the south shores of Lake Erie and look for those trailblazers preparing to cross into the great boreal beyond. I know what you're thinking...beginning of May? That's early dude. Make like a duck and head south. And that is totally what we should have done. 

But I don't know...the Hajj called. I wanted it to be Magee. I had never been. I had been to South TX (in July...). And Magee was meh : /

It was with fair consternation that I watched the migration and weather reports preceding our trip. A week prior, a number of potential  Lifers were reported in the area, but as the days drew nearer, the forecast looked bleak. This is not to say the birding was poor overall, but relative to opportunity costs and potential, rushing it did not pan out.  

Any day with sentry Wood Ducks is a good day. But if you go to Magee Marsh and the best bird of your weekend there is a Northern Waterthrush - not just yours, but the best bird reported for the weekend on the community boards - then you know something was off. 

Inclement weather throughout the Midwest in the preceding week basically grounded all northerly migration to our area. The Saturday we hit the ground say clouds, wind, and scattered showers with high temperatures in the 40s. There would be very few new arrivals, and what migrants or residents had already arrived would be hunkered down, Catbird style.

It made for some nice sunset angles at least. Almost as Glorious and the Golden-winged Warblers and Blue-winged Warblers that could hAvE YoU Know WhAt NeVeRmInD...

We patrolled that famous boardwalks like sentries on inspection, but failed to turn up much of note. Cruelly, the best bird of Saturday was a Prothonotary Warbler, which breed in the swamps around home. We did out best to help other folks get on what scattered and retiring birds we could, but by midday still had not seen anything that wasn't available down the road at home.

One of the many, many cool things about this area is how many preserves and parks are adjacent on the south shore. Just down the road from Magee Marsh in Ottawa NWR, which also boasts wonderful community spaces and accessibility - seriously inspiring stuff and beautiful grounds, all for $0 admission. They even had complimentary facemelt cream at the visitor center, an amenity provided, no doubt, after feedback from patrons about the abiding Tree Swallows.

As a quick sidenote, I just want to say that this is not a good picture of an American Goldfinch, but American Goldfinches are a special kind of yellow all the same. Kudos to Iowa for recognizing the game, and making them the state bird. Carry on, Goldfinch. Carry on, Iowa.

Drab Gray Catbird for Comparison I guess...

While the overall scene at Ottawa was encouraging from a sort of "future of birding, good of the community" perspective, the species array itself was no improvement on Magee. It was time to chop things up a bit, time to hit the "metzgerei" (butchershop, in German, if college class served me well).

Metzger Marsh was the best of the three sites for May 2nd, delivering a couple of new passerines for the trip (Black-throated Green Warbler, Nashville Warbler) and the chance to break wind without having to worry who's behind you on the boardwalk. 

The migrant trap portion of Metzger Marsh is tiny, a small hovel of trees south of the dam where someone from the Black Swamp Observatory resolutely counts the migrants every a.m. But the small space amounts to high concentrations of birds in a small area (that is also fairly human-lite). Warbling Vireos were the most vocal presence here but it was certainly the most active area we hit, and the lack of shoulder-bumping was a definite plus.  

If you made a pile of all North America's Red-bellied Woodpeckers next to all the Downy Woodpeckers, which pile would be bigger?

The real gem of Metzger Marsh is the wetland drive preceding the dike. If Trumpeter Swans are a junk bird, you are in a good spot. One could pick nits about their unbecoming brown, but why would one want to do that? Then one would just have a bunch of nits in one's hands, and what good would come of that? Best to leave those nits alone and enjoy North America's heaviest flying bird and largest waterfowl as they are.    

Also there were some Sandhills Cranes with a colt nearby. That's fine too. Once you've seen 20,000 at the Whitewater Draw in Az, you've seen them all.

Given the limited access at Metzger, once one has scope main spots there's really not much else. We tried another off-strip area (Touissant NWR) without mush to speak of other than some dead geese floating in the retention ponds. We resupplied and planned a resurgent Sunday while enjoying cocktails and tacos. The Kentucky Derby was also running, a fun and frantic 2 minutes that makes one nostalgic for home...

Color Me Surprised...Business Or Pleasure?

I never played the Call of Duty games, but nonetheless I can admit that, sometimes, duty calls. Needing to check out a potential vendor/manufacturing partner, we flew west to the land of Magpies and and Mile Highs, where the colorful mountains and marijuana fountains abound.

Shortly before our time in Canon City, Bailey, and Denver, CO, an April flurry dropped 6 inches of snow. Not to be deterred, we still struck out for a hike at Staunton State Park. There was only one real target bird for this trip: The Black-billed Magpie.

Why? I dunno, because somehow, for some reason, despite many moons in Colorado, I'd never clocked them for the photo list before. This is a roadside bird in CO. In fact, we had way better visuals while driving than on any trails; did not do it justice at all.

We really don't talk about Magpies enough. They're large and scrappy, strikingly patterned while being subtly colorful, hyper intelligent, have plumes that would be the envy of many tropical species, and make their homes in the Rockies (among other places) throughout the year. Elegance and toughness. Gumption.

At any rate, between the Magpies, the Stellar's Jays, and Ravens, Corvidae is well-represented around here.

Northern Flickers are cool too but, I dunno, they just don't excite in the same way, at least for me. Maybe I'm just not a Woodpecker guy. That's not true actually; I'm a big fan. Just need American Black-backed to complete my North American Woodpecker set. Red-shafted or Yellow-shafted, what's your preference?

It has been a weirdly nuthatch-less year so far. I thought they liked me? Some years are like that. Brown Creepers have been plentiful, both in CO and NC. Gotta give props to a little perv that's willing to work for their gratification.

I love exploring the liminal spaces that montane areas present - where grassland meets treeline, where rock meets river, where mud (hopefully mud!?) meets backside. 

These meeting points tend to be confluences of life forms, the best places to see birds or otherwise. Somewhere below hides something special. 

I can honestly say, this was the stockiest coyote I had ever seen, much more filled out and winterized than the AZ varieties I cut my teeth on. Really wanted to turn it into a wolf at the distance. But look it those stubby lil' legs. The acme of foolishness. Big game abounds near the Rockies. Pronghorn, Mule Deer, and Bighorn Sheep made for a notably mammaly morning. 

For a much more thorough and ecologically diverse recounting of good times and hikes in CO, please review HERE, a TOP 10 All Time North American Butler's Birds hike. 

If you're more for crags and peaks, still got you covered:

April Appraisals

It has been lovely of late in East NC. We have enjoyed many of those clean clear spring days that bring everyone outside, the kind that reveal neighbors you didn't even know you had. Clean is maybe an exaggeration...there's more pollen, by mass, in the air than there is water vapor right now. But who can be grumpy at flowers?? Plants just want to party too. 

Given these precious and pulchritudinous spring days, I really have not been birding as much as I should. Work called us away for one whole weekend, but afterwards we got the crew bumbling down to Cliffs of the Neuse S.P. It's a funny thing; I want my kids to get into birding and nature time, but having them in tow really restricts the time of arrival and time of departure : /

Like most of the state, Wayne Co. is experiencing drought right now. The river levels are low even if the banks are lush. So let's add drought and drought-related crop issues and sky-high fertilizer and fuel costs to the list of bad-to-worse that 2026 is coughing up. 

Most nobody likes a drought, just like most nobody appreciates rising fuel and energy costs (except CEOs of Duke Energy, Exxon Mobile, etc). However, these Skinks seem to be holding up fairly well. The Anhingas deemed the river too low to bother with despite there being no shortage of river debris for them to manakin upon.

On the Spanish Moss trail, we were peppered with a strange and spastic sentry cry. It was nothing with feathers nor a stepped-upon frog...clearly a distressed rodent of perhaps a distressed rodent-sized dog. What would make a squirrel freeze in place and vibrate out a DefCon 1 alarm?? 

Surely they weren't upset about...me!? I walk amongst the woods and leaves with the silent feet of a ballerina cat, with the grace and poise of a swan that went to French finishing school, with care and compassion for all creatures like an ecumenical Disney prince, why so distes...OH I get it...

 

This time of year is prime time for Barred Owl. Everyone's favorite dark-eyed, river-of-the-woods-loving murder machine. The FB groups doth overfloweth with photos. Everyone loves their company. So why is it embarrassing to take a Barred Owl out to dinner???

...Because it always asks to see the chef (see what I did there!?)

We also clocked several more FOY birds for the county list, including Louisiana Waterthrush and Prothonotary Warbler, on the far side of the river. The Yellow-rumped Warbler numbers have thinned considerably, but those late bloomers lingering behind are starting to bloom nicely indeed. 

Also there were Chipping Sparrows. I miss the better winter sparrow variety. I just don't like Chipping Sparrows very much. I know I know...should love all birds etc.

I don't wish them ill, but if they were a channel on Sparrow TV, it would be like the QVC channel. I would change it every time. 

For more information concerning strong and unsolicited opinions about sparrows, please read HERE

By and large, having kids in tow on a hike is ok. Having kids in tow on a bird-centered hike often is not. Every once in awhile it can be a little magical.  

Cliffs of the Neuse is probably the best place in Wayne Co. to go for a scenic hike, and it has a respectable banister of birds throughout the seasons. However, if you are looking for lots of great visuals, especially on migrant passerines, it is less than stellar. There are very few places that afford one steady, near-level views of the canopies, unlike say the ridge-line hikes abounding in the Blue Ridge.

Residential breeders are pretty apparent, but I have never had much luck here tagging birds that are just passing through. Like anyone else on a lay-over, they're just eager to use the bathroom and cram some junk food between flights, and aren't looking to make friends along the way. 

The b*tch of it is if you're doing some kind of birding competition, even if nobody asked you too (yo!), picking up migrants is essential, and I am not able to contravene a $150 Million government plane w/  to do so (though at least I haven't been fired either).

On an annual basis, one can be fairly confident in picking up all the residential (breeding or wintering) species with enough attempts in the right habitat (though public access to said habitat is not something to be taken for granted in Wayne Co). Migrant traps are the difference maker, areas that offer suitable habitat but condensed and scaled down for rapid scanning by avian twitchers. 

If the passerine migrants are 50 feet in the air and largely silent amongst dense canopy, your odds of randomly looking up at the right time and spotting that Cape May Warbler are paltry.

Or maybe I am just bitter and under-developed because I cut my teeth birding the low scrub and wadis of Arizona. Sometimes things can be two things.

At any rate, the wastewater treatment plant trades in the vertical space for horizontal space, albeit with more open views and habitat variety. Not too many spots can boast Green Heron and Turkey as neighbors.

It is also about the only public land you can find waterfowl of a species type that doesn't rhyme with "scormorcant." There were multiple clutches of Wood Duck this past week, complete with protective mothers doing their injury-imitating flap swim like an aqueous Killdeer. It did not fool me...but neither did I eat all her ducklings, so as far as she is concerned, it worked.

By category, shorebirds are the best way to add some bulk to a species list, if not so much to the Crush List. The GWWTP was good for Least Sandpiper, Solitary Sandpiper, Spotted Sandpiper, and the two Yellowlegs cousins. Poking along the Neuse shoreline I was pleasantly surprised to find Solitary and Spotted sandpipers again. Mudflats and tidal areas are precious hard to come by here. If you came to this blog hoping to see distant, grainy, barely-diagnostic shots of expected waders and peeps, you have come to the right place!

I have a soft spot for Spotted Sandpipers, a spot on my heart, you might say. They're readily recognizable by size, habit, and plumage throughout the year, and they turn up in odd areas. They're the least snobby for habitat of their type, (except for Killdeer of course) and they like to get down. Females will lay multiple egg clutches and leave different males to do the incubating. This polyandry is the secret to their success, that and being cute.

This would have been a really nice shot of some random bamboo shoots if that pesky blurry FOY Blue Grosbeak and Eastern Bluebird weren't ruining it : ::sigh:: : C'est la vie.

Not usually, but sometimes Parulas act like Cuckoos. Why do they trill like insects when other Warblers warbled? I would be curious to read up theories on the auditory divergence and evolution of these types of birds. Did the early Parula ancestors just spend lots of time with Cicadas during their formative years? 

Hooded and Prothonotary (which autocorrect likes to change to 'Probationary,' by the way) Warblers are now fairly common in the right habitats. I have never turned up Swainson's or Worm-eating at the Cliffs, but have found Kentucky on occasion. Bet we can land those others as well. Maybe the problem is my eyes are dilated from spending too much time with yonder swamp candles.

A lay-up counts the same as a slam dunk; a 2 yard TD scramble the same as an 80-yard hail mary. In competitive birding, as in sports, a tick for a cool bird counts the same as a House Sparrow. The species count has definitely swelled in the last few weeks. There were calling FOY Yellow-billed Cuckoo and the warm-weather Vireos sp. with their various colored eyes. No flycatchers and thrushes yet but good ol' Eastern Phoebe is here. All Phoebes are good Phoebe's, but Eastern is the most boring by far.

Given other plans and obligations, it will probably be more than a month before returning the Cliffs of the Neuse. Growing that Wayne list will require targeted missions for specific species - nocturnals, liminal grasslands species, daring daylight raids of the local emu farm, etc. It's just tough because knowing Proths are around, and then not coming home after crushing some Proths...it feels like a wasted day.

On the podium! Place your Kalshi and Polymarket bets now.