Every year my friend and I try to see at least 100 species of birds during spring migration season. This year we broke a time record by hitting 100 on April 30th! I’m amazed because the weather this spring can only be described as dreadful. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen the sun in the last month, and it’s been raining or snowing and/or CHILLY just about every day. How could there be so many migrating birds here already? If I were them I’d still be hanging out in Florida where it’s warm and sunny!
But they have a schedule to keep—there’s only so much time to arrive on their breeding grounds up north, declare a territory and find a mate. They aren’t going to let any dreary weather slow them down.
Over the weekend we hit 100 species while visiting a local conservancy which has a lot of oaks and hickories—a favorite of migrating warblers. While most of the warbler species still aren’t here yet, we found some first of the year Black and White Warblers and two gorgeous Magnolia Warblers. When I tried to log the Magnolias into eBird I was asked to prove the sighting because it’s early for them (just like last weekend I was asked to prove I saw a Rose-breasted Grosbeak in my backyard—very early for that species).
Thankfully my friend carries along a camera when we go birding. Most of the pretty migrating birds are too high up and move way too quickly for any decent photographs, but the images sure come in handy for helping to identify species or proving we saw them.
Here are some of the warblers we saw over the weekend (proof of life shots):
At this time last year we’d spotted only 53 species, so it will be fun to see how many more we can tack on in the next two weeks!