Some spring days have a special kind of magic, don’t they? Especially in May when the trees dance with small tender leaves, the air is cool, the sun is warm – and the birds of summer arrive in all their mating finery. Wednesday, May 17 was one of those days. (Birding friends, Aaron Carroll and Joan and Bob Bonin shared their photos with me for this blog. Thanks to them all!)

Our Oakland Township Wednesday Birding Group gathered in the parking lot, but Aaron Carroll had arrived early and walked the trails through the eastern fields. In the hedgerow between them, he’d spotted a pair of male Northern Flickers (Colaptes auratus) jousting among the greenery. (Gender ID is easy with this species. Males have black “mustaches.” Females don’t.) In the first photo below, one bird has its beak straight up in the air, the very pose that author Donald Stokes (Stokes Guide to Bird Behavior, Vol. 1) describes for both male and female flickers when skirmishing over territory or potential mates in spring. Stokes adds that this position is usually followed by a chase, which seems to be what’s happening in Aaron’s second photo. Good job of catching the action, Aaron!

Once the whole group arrived, we took the northern path from the parking lot, crossed through an opening in the hedgerow and cut through the pathless forest full of dappled light. We emerged at the top of a large meadow and waded through soft grass where it sloped down toward a large marsh. At its edge, we could see and hear multiple Song Sparrows (Melospiza melodia) whisking about singly and in pairs at the edge near the water. The males serenaded their lady friends and fended off the competition with songs they’d learned from nearby adult males when they were mere fledglings. I couldn’t record their songs while in the birding group, but here’s a Song Sparrow I saw and recorded at Watershed Ridge in 2018, just to refresh your memory. (Click red arrow for sound.)

Two small gray birds flitted about within the branches of a gnarly old tree at the edge of the marsh. Binoculars raised, we identified them as Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers. Then suddenly we recognized their elegant, cup-shaped nest nearby. According to Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website, it’s built in flexible layers of bark strips, stems and grasses outside and softer materials inside like downy plant fibers and feathers, then decorated with lichen. And imagine this! These little birds use spider or caterpillar silk to hold it on the branch and bind it all together, which, some sources say, allows for some flexibility as the baby birds grow. Clever little artist/engineers, these tiny birds. I love Aaron Carroll’s sequence of photos below. He saw both adults taking turns on the nest, which Cornell reports as a gnatcatcher trait! Nice cooperation!

We used a handy rock for crossing a small stream beyond the marsh to explore the field and pond beyond. I enjoy cresting the small slope beyond the stream to see the small wetland below because it often hosts water birds. And sure enough, three different migrators had dropped in for a visit. A Great Egret (Ardea alba) flew up from the shore, while down below, a Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) scuttled about the muddy edges and a Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes) foraged beneath the surface with its long beak.

A Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) chattered in the thicket at the edge of the meadow. It never made an appearance for fellow birders, Ralph and Andrea Wampler and I. But if you’d like to hear a bit of Catbird conversation, here’s one from Bear Creek a few years ago.

The Big Finish!

From the meadow, we crossed back over the creek and headed up into the trees. Suddenly the people at the front of the group turned to the rest of us, gesturing with their index fingers to their lips and whispering, “ssshhh…!” We gathered quietly. About four feet off the trail, a very focused female Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) drilled furiously at a short stump. We all froze. We couldn’t quite believe our luck at being so close to such an impressive bird. As you’ll see in Aaron Carroll’s video below, she was making the wood chips fly as she drilled for insects in the rotting bark. And she went on drilling for several minutes, apparently oblivious to the presence of the birding group! All of us stood in amazement.

Finally the Pileated raised her bright red crest and flew farther into the trees. Perhaps she was annoyed at not finding the insects she sought or maybe she suddenly realized she was being watched by a group of rapt birders! We all stood there for a few seconds in disbelief after she departed and then we started exclaiming. “Amazing!” “Boy, I’m glad I was here!” “What a sight that was!” “Well that may be my most incredible bird sighting ever…” We felt a bit dazed but very pleased with the morning’s events as we started up the trail again. But it turned out that nature had one more treat in store for us.

The up-and-down ripple of paired notes of the Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea) reached us from the canopy. Ben led the way and there he was – the male Bunting which Cornell ornithologists describe so beautifully as looking “like a scrap of sky with wings.” This male’s dark wings may have carried him from the Caribbean, Central America or as far away as the northwestern tip of South America. We can hope that he’s arrived to nest and breed at Watershed Ridge Park. We’d be honored to host him.

Lest You Believe That’s All We Saw….!

The birds above are just a few of the 35 species we saw and/or heard that spring morning. They’re the ones that posed nicely for my photographer friends! So here are a few of the other migrators we saw or heard that morning in photos my friends and I have taken on other days. And this slideshow doesn’t even include the “regulars,” like the cardinals, various woodpeckers, the tufted titmice and such that we see on almost every walk but which delight us with their presence too!

You Don’t Have to Be a “Birder” to Enjoy Our Birding Walks

I’m NOT your classic “birder.” I don’t keep a “life list” of birds that I’ve seen. I recognize maybe 10 bird songs from memory. I only travel relatively short distances to go to occasional bird festivals or “hotspots.” We keep feeders in our yard and dedicate a bookshelf to bird identification/ behavior books. I’ve monitored bird boxes and have Cornell Ornithology’s Merlin app on my cell phone to help me identify birds and their calls. So I guess that makes me a bird enthusiast rather than a serious “birder.”

And I just love the Wednesday Bird Walks. This congenial collection of bird fanciers has become a community for me. Our group is a mixture of men and women from late teens to late seventies with a variety of gifts to share. Younger ones bring their energy, enthusiasm, good ears, and sharp eyes, as well as info and insights they’ve gleaned recently in academic settings. Some of us older ones bring years of accumulated bird knowledge and experience. Some can accurately describe almost any plumage pattern or carry a symphony of bird songs in their heads.

We walk at a relaxed pace. Once someone spots a bird, we gather, craning our necks, peering upward through our binoculars, trying to find the bird’s location. “See those two bushes with white flowers? Look about 30 feet up at 3:00,” (which means about halfway up the tree on the right side. ) “It’s at the tip of that bare limb…Oops, it just went down in the grass – but wait. Bluebirds often come right back up.” “I’m hearing a Brown Thrasher but I can’t see it yet.” And so on.

Like me, most bird walkers just enjoy the company of birders as much as we enjoy birds. We share personal stories, laugh, commiserate, chat along the way. We’re silent when we need to be. We mute our phones and look at them only for info or the occasional bird call. We come because we like the people and we love seeing birds, hearing their songs and hanging out together for a couple of hours surrounded by nature. And our stewardship staff reports our weekly discoveries to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s citizen science website, eBird.org. That also allows our stewardship staff to keep a record of bird species in our parks each week over many years.

You’re welcome to join us if any of that sounds appealing. Just bring your curiosity and good will. Wear comfy clothes, sturdy shoes and bring binoculars, or our Stewardship Manager Ben VanderWeide will happily loan you a pair on the spot. The summer schedule is listed here . If you’re interested but unable to hike with us for any reason, I’m glad you’re joining us here at Natural Areas Notebook!

After all, on some delightful spring morning, YOU might get lucky and find yourself up close and personal with a glorious drama queen like the one below!