This Black-throated Green Warbler foraged in the leaves next to the Magee Marsh boardwalk, oblivious to the crowd gathered less than 10 feet away to watch it. Photo by Matt Mendenhall
Last week, I offered three observations from the Biggest Week in American Birding. Now, after a Hectic Week of Producing our Rockin' August Issue, here are four more thoughts from my time in Ohio.
1. Note to self: If you're birding alone and don't have a camera, take a notebook.
I spent an hour or so on the afternoon of Saturday, May 14, birding the trails behind the visitor center of Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge. Unlike the Magee Marsh boardwalk, the trails were mostly empty of people. I saw perhaps 15 birders, 27 bird species, and one way-cool muskrat.
No one was nearby when I found an American Tree Sparrow working its way along the small trees and rocks of a ditch next to a road. Since the species only winters in our area, I was surprised to find one so late in the season. I studied it for a few minutes to be sure of what I was seeing — brownish bird, gray face, rufous cap and eye-line, dark spot on the breast, and white wing-bars. Try as I might, I couldn't turn it into a Swamp or Field Sparrow. But I wished I'd had a notebook to sketch it or a camera with a big lens to get a photo. Lesson learned.
2. Social networks have changed the game.
I know this isn't breaking news nowadays, but it's still worth mentioning. As I watched birds on the Magee Marsh boardwalk, I posted to Twitter and Facebook from my phone about what I was seeing, and other birders in far-off places replied. Even better were the tweets from the guides from Tropical Birding who were working the boardwalk and telling what they were finding at specific spots. Of course, I wished I'd have seen their tweet about the Connecticut Warbler at marker 4 a little sooner!
Here's yet another example, from here in Milwaukee this week. A Northern Mockingbird has turned up at Estabrook Park, Editor Chuck Hagner's local birding hangout. Our friend Paul Sparks shot a great photo of it, and posted it to Flickr and the Friends of Estabrook Park Facebook page.
3. It's still a thrill to hear about Ivory-bill sightings.
On Saturday on the Magee Marsh boardwalk, I ran into our friend Bobby Harrison (right), a long-time contributing photographer to the magazine. You may recall that we published a three-part interview with Bobby in 2007 about his sightings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. When we spoke at Magee Marsh, he said he hasn't had as much time to search recently, but he hopes to get out this fall or winter. As we chatted, he recalled a few of the glimpses he is convinced he has had of the bird. And despite the several years that have passed now without conclusive proof of the Ivory-bill's existence, it still sent a chill down my spine to hear him talk about the bird…in the present tense.
4. It's even more of a thrill to help a fellow birder find a treasured bird.
During my afternoon walk at Ottawa NWR, after finding a Swainson's Thrush and an Ovenbird, I heard a Wood Thrush singing in the woods behind me. A few minutes later, I found it perched on a thin branch, singing its fluty, forest-filling song. Two women soon walked up and wanted to see it, and I was happy to help them find it in the tangle of branches above us. One of the women said she had been hearing the song of the Wood Thrush for more than 20 years but had never seen the bird. Needless to say, she was thrilled to finally lay eyes on it.
I didn't ask her name, but she said that she and her friend had come to the Biggest Week festival from South Bend, Indiana. "That was worth the trip," she said. It was unforgettable for me, too. —Matt Mendenhall, Associate Editor