Sweet Birding on Sugar Creek

A vista along Sugar Creek Road, Fayette County, WV.

Among the many trips I've lead over the past ten springs at The New River Birding and Nature Festival, the one we call Sugar Creek is right at the top of the list. There are three warbler species that are the most sought-after birds at this annual West Virginia birding event: cerulean warbler, Swainson's warbler, and golden-winged warbler. Sugar Creek has many breeding pairs of the first two species, which makes it a sell-out trip most every year.

In this post I'm going to take you along on our Sugar Creek field trip from this spring.

 Sugar Creek Road has some big timber. The road itself is about 1.5 car-widths wide and gravel. It is cut into a steep mountainside and at places the road is so narrow that the school bus driver and the folks who drive the vans and buses during the white-water rafting season call out their positions and progress on CB radios to reduce the chance of a head-on collision on a blind curve—of which there are many.

The severity of the landscape is what makes this road special for cerulean warblers. And it's one of the few places where you can see tree-top-loving warblers (like the cerulean) in the tops of the trees BELOW you on the mountain.

Looking down on a flitting warbler.

My strategy for Sugar Creek is to walk the roadway as much as possible. Birds we are seeking are often heard before they are seen, so we ask our bus driver (usually Hank, a veteran driver on this road) to drop us at the top and meet us at various spots as we walk down the mountain toward the bottom where the Gauley River rages.

 

 

This past spring I got to guide the Sugar Creek trip with New River Birding Festival co-founder Geoff Heeter. Guiding with Geoff is always fun and rewarding for a number of reasons:

1. He speaks the native tongue.

2. He knows where the birds are each year.

3. He's mighty handy in a pinch.

4. He cracks a good joke.

5. He always dresses for birding success:

Fresh off the runway from the birding fashion show: Geoff "Hotlegs" Heeter.

This year my Sugar Creek trip also had Katie Fallon along. Katie is the world's most passionate fan of cerulean warblers. In fact, she wrote a really great book about them called Cerulean Blues. You should buy and read this book immediately—especially if you love warblers and appreciate good writing.

Geoff Heeter (in plaid Bermuda shorts) points out a treetop cerulean warbler for Katie Fallon.

Male cerulean warbler.

 

 One of our two primary target birds on the Sugar Creek trip: the singing male cerulean warbler. We found at least a dozen territorial male ceruleans along the route.

Female American redstart nest building.

We also saw lots of nest-building activity during the field trip from a variety of species including American robin, American redstart (above), blue-headed vireo, wood thrush, and worm-eating warbler.

There are other glorious things to see along the way. Hooded warblers are thick in the roadside woods.

We found some morels right along the road as we neared the bottom, but we left them in place for the local folks to harvest if they wanted to...

Ernesto Carman (in the orange hat above) was super fast at finding birds in his scope. He's had years of practice birding in the rainforest of Costa Rica and it shows. He generated a LOT of smiles with his scope-wielding talent.

  Down at the bottom of the mountain, Sugar Creek Road goes through a scattering of small houses and takes a sharp bend to the left when it reaches the Gauley River. This area is owned by one of the rafting companies, so it's not normally open to the public. And this is where we get our very best looks at the Swainson's warbler!

As I got off the bus along the river trail, I heard a Swainson's singing and, after getting everyone else off the bus and ready, I slowly walked forward to see if I could spot where the male was perched. It's always best to find birds doing their thing naturally, without having to resort to song playback, pishing, or bushwhacking to find them.

And there he was, left of the trail, about 35 feet up in a tree. Singing. Preening. Oblivious to the 35 gasping bird watchers who were focusing about $20,000 worth of optics on him.

Male Swainson's warbler.

After a session with the Swainson's, we headed to the end of the trail and had a picnic lunch, followed by a stroll back out to a spot in the river where a collection of giant boulders makes a perfect setting for a photo.

 

The Sugar Creek Birders along the Gauley River.

A big thank you to my expert fellow guides! I'm already counting down the days until next year!

L to R: Ernesto Carman, BT3, Katie Fallon, Geoff Heeter.

Worm-eating Warbler: Subtle Beauty

  

 I've always thought that the worm-eating warbler is our most subtly beautiful wood warbler. There's something earthy and attractive about those warm tans and browns set off by an olive back. And the pink legs and feet hardly seem out of place—perhaps they are just a way of accessorizing with a bit of bright color.

 It's the head stripes, though, that really strike me as lovely: black against ochre—simple yet so refined. Look in any color-chip book for a fancy-pants line of interior paint and you'll see the colors of the worm-eating warbler. Probably all on the same page, listed as suggestions by the taste masters for the would-be home decorator. I'd like to decorate a room in these tones. But it would have to be a room that had an aura of the deep woods, for that is where this creature lives.

 

 On our farm the worm-eating warblers spend spring and summer in the deep shady darkness of our two wooded valleys, rarely coming to the top of the ridge where our house is. No, if we hope to see them we must go to them. Finding them is not easy. They lead lives as subtle as their plumage.

If their colors do not impress with bright hues, the song of the male is even less attention-grabbing. It is a long, dry trill that could be passed off as a cicada or a tree cricket. More commonly it is passed off as one of the sound-alike members of the avian tribe for it is confusingly similar to the chipping sparrow, the pine warbler, and even the dark-eyed junco.

I saw what I suspect will be my last worm-eating warbler of the year two weeks ago, passing through the Aunt Lolly lilac along the north wall of our house. Fall is when the woodland birds come up to the ridge top to forage, and perhaps to squint at the sun that they've hidden from during the nesting months. We call it hill topping. They call it trying to live their lives—if they call it anything at all.

And speaking of words we use to describe things, the name worm-eating is quite a misnomer. The worm-eating warbler eats caterpillars, spiders, and other small arthropods. Perhaps an early ornithologist saw a worm-eating warbler eating a slug (which they do) and thought it was a worm, and yet another warbler was inaccurately named (see palm, magnolia, Cape May, Connecticut, Nashville, and Tennessee warblers).

No matter. The worm-eating warbler, to my eye, is our most subtly beautiful warbler in North America. I'll happily take retorts and rejoinders to this statement in the comments section.

Lifer #684

On Monday, June 27, at approximately 7:55 am Central Standard Time, I saw my life golden-cheeked warbler—an adult male—at a small cluster of ponds below a windmill-powered pump in Friedrich Wilderness Park, north of San Antonio, Texas.

This was my 684th North America life bird.

I'll tell the entire story about this lifer quest soon. Just wanted to share the news with my bird-head peeps out there in Interweb-land.

Counting the Months Until Warblers

Male blue-winged warbler in our orchard.

It's early November here in southeastern Ohio. Daylight Savings Time is no longer in effect, making the days seem shorter than they actually are. The air is cooler—verging on cold. The trees have lost their collective grip on their foliage, leaving dark spiderwebs of their naked branches etching patterns on (mostly) leaden skies.

I already miss the warblers.

Most years we have a dozen species of eastern wood warblers nesting at Indigo Hill. From April through early October we can see and hear them. Now in November, when the landscape seems tired—resigned to the killing frosts and weak sunshine of another winter, we have the occasional yellow-rumpeds passing through, issuing their soft tchups to one another. They won't linger here on the ridge where the wind blows cold. They'll spend the winter along the river eating dried pokeweed berries and poison ivy and sumac fruits, taking advantage of the micro hatches of insects on sunny winter days.

Yellow-rumped warbler in winter plumage.

I was editing some video the other day. It was footage I shot on our farm during an interview last summer. The amount of bird song audible in the background of the footage was stunning. Indigo bunting, common yellowthroat, blue-winged warbler, prairie warbler, hooded warbler, yellow-breasted chat, red-eyed vireo, white-eyed vireo—they've all gone south now.

Prairie warbler, male, singing along the edge of our meadow.

Funny how the spring and summer bird song chorus just sneaks up on you. A few more birds chime in each week until the singing is nearly constant. Yet your ears have grown accustomed to it to the point where you don't really notice it. Now, in the relatively quiet days of early winter, that bird noise on the video is a startling reminder of what we had all around us just a short while ago. My how things change with the seasons!

So I'm counting the days—months really—until the warblers and other migrant songbirds return and the air is once more filled with song.

Warblers Up Close

Bay-breasted warbler, probably an old female, at Magee Marsh.

Having lived in Ohio for most of my birding life as a grown-up (relatively speaking), you'd think that catching the phenomenal warbler and songbird migration at Magee Marsh along Lake Erie's southern shore would be something I'd experienced annually. Most avid bird watchers in Ohio (and in the surrounding states for that matter) get to Magee at some point during the height of spring migration—between mid-April and mid-May.

To a migrant songbird in spring, Magee Marsh is the perfect rest stop before flying over Lake Erie and into Canada. When the wind is blowing from north to south (a headwind for migrants) the birds drop into the trees at Magee to rest, forage, and wait for more favorable traveling weather.

I'd been to the famous Magee boardwalk in spring, but always a bit too early or too late to catch many migrants. And I was there once with a team of birders trying to break Ohio's Big Day record. We timed things perfectly for everywhere in the state, except Magee, which was practically birdless on that May morning. Perfect weather—clear skies and a south to north wind—encourages the northbound birds to keep on moving across Lake Erie. And we chose for our Big Day attempt, a perfect weather day for the birds to keep on flying north. We ended that day deep in the wilds of southern Ohio, with 186 species (well short of the record) and with a bunch of unchecked boxes among the warblers on our checklist.

Last weekend the Ohio Ornithological Society held its annual meeting not too far from Magee Marsh. As a board member of this fine organization, I was required to be at the meeting, with the happy knowledge that it would REQUIRE me to spend two mornings watching birds at one of North America's most famous warbler hotspots.

The first day, Saturday, was overcast but warm at the start. By the time we left Magee around 11:45 AM to head to some other local birding sites, it was getting cooler and starting to rain. Still, we saw 20 warbler species, three vireo species, three thrush species, and so on. It was my best day ever at Magee. My fellow bird watchers chuckled at my enthusiasm.

Then came Sunday. Sunny and cold at daybreak, it did not really warm up until well into the afternoon. Bird watchers along the boardwalk gathered in crowds within the scattered pools of sunlight. If I'd thought Saturday was good, Sunday was amazing. Thousands of newly arrived birds moved through the trees, brush, and undergrowth. Everywhere you looked there was movement and song. People called out warbler names to no one in particular, with a mixture of joy and wonder in their voices. I thought to myself: This must be what heaven is like for birders. Except heaven would have a few more Porto potties and beautiful angels would be plying us all with warm doughnuts and hot coffee. But this was pretty close!

The boardwalk at Magee is crowded with bird watchers from late April through mid-May.

There were more female warblers present on Sunday, and more young, first-spring males, giving us a chance to note the subtle differences in plumage. However the most incredible thing about Sunday's bird action was the behavior of many of the migrants. Whether it was hunger, the cold temperatures, or just the rush of the migratory imperative, many of the warblers were low in the vegetation, foraging and singing actively, seeming to be oblivious to the humans a few feet or even mere inches away! And it's not like we were all being quiet and respectful. Cameras clicked, beeped, whirred, and flashed. Birders shouted to one another and narrated the birds' every moves:

"OH MY! LOOK at this bird! COOL! He just caught a bug! Now he's flitting over here! He's attacking that other bird. Oh, he's gonna poop! WOW! What a great LOOK! I can't BELIEVE THIS!" and so on.

But that was not all.

I heard at least three throaty cries of ecstasy—the kind of sounds that are usually accompanied by bad dialogue, cheesy jazz, and a rating beyond the reach of NC-17.

Like I said, the birding was good.

To illustrate one of my own close encounters of the warbler kind, here is a short video (rated G) that I shot with my point-and-shoot camera.

You can hear some birders talking in the background, including Jon Dunn, author of several key field guides, including the National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America. This male black-throated blue warbler was less than two feet from me, on the trunk of the tree, completely unperturbed by all the chattering humans draped in expensive optics.

I already know where I want to be when the birds come back next May.

Washington County Big Day 2009

What is that old saying about publicity? I don't care how you talk about me, just talk about me?

Saturday morning, May 9, 2009, came mighty early for those of us who were playing a gig at the Whipple/Wrangler Tavern the night before. But did that stop us from getting up at some ungodly hour to tally birds in the Mostly Annual Washington County, Ohio Big Day? Nope.

When I was a mere boy bird watcher, under the watchful tutelage of Mrs Pat Murphy and my mom Elsa Thompson, it was an annual ritual each May to try to see 100 species within Washington County, Ohio, where we all lived. We called it a Century Day—get it? Century=100 species!

I think I remember maybe one year when we got 100+ species. Nowadays with all our newfangled technology, including the Tubes of the Interwebs and The Google, we can pinpoint the location of happening bird action on a minute-by-minute basis. Our friends can tell us where all the warblers are warblering and where all the tanagers are tanagering.

These days, three full decades removed from Pat Murphy's Century Days, it's The Whipple Bird Club that has taken up the chalice and taken on the challenge of trying to top 100 species in little old Washington County, Ohio. This is an account of how things went on Saturday.

After we finished our gig on Friday night/Saturday morning, we loaded up the vans and cars with gear and everyone hit the road. I stayed behind a moment to collect my thoughts—the only person still extant at The Whipple/Wrangler Tavern. And I was rewarded for my fortitude by the nocturnal flight call of a Swainson's thrush! A mere 20 minutes later, as I traipsed up the walk to the house, I added species #2: An American woodcock which kindly peented its way onto the list.

And then I slept for 2.5 hours.

To start the daylight portion our Big Day, I rolled my tired carcass up the stairs to our birding tower. Day was dawning and the birds were already aloft, calling, or stirring themselves to life. But the clouds in the West indicated a day of unsettled weather. In quick succession I heard or saw a dozen, then two dozen species. By 7:15 am I was up to 45 species. That's when Shila showed up and added her bird-spotting skills to the team effort. The wind picked up and we pulled on additional coats against the wind. At least it was not raining.

The day started off promisingly from the birding tower.

The Whipple Bird Club is four core members: me, Julie Zickefoose, Shila Wilson, and Steve McCarthy. We've got lots of honorary members, but, it's the four core peeps who wave the flag of the good ol' WBC.

Every Big Day has a few birds that are total surprises and a few that completely skunk you. One of our early surprises was a merlin that Shila and I saw skirt the tower not once but twice! I got a bad photo of it flying away, having missed on its chance to nail a tree swallow.

Julie floated up the tower stairs about 8 am, bearing more coffee and some munchies. We were somewhere north of 50 species. Three hours later we were ready to leave Indigo Hill for the rest of the county and we had 70 species.

Pine siskins were still hanging around after last winter's influx.

A gorgeous male rose-breasted grosbeak came close enough for digiscoping.

Our male blue-winged warbler sang from the end of the orchard.

Phoebe and Chet came up to check on us in the tower.

Down the road just a couple of miles, we came across an eastern box turtle. It was a beautiful adult male and we helped him across the road to wherever he was going.

The box turtle we saved.

The Whipple Bird Club flashes its gangland hand signs near the Belpre Bridge (where there were no peregrines).

After poking around the western part of the county in a largely fruitless search for some long-shot species, and waiting to pick up the Royal Meteorologist of the WBC, Steve McCarthy, we headed back toward Marietta, the county seat, for some more familiar birding turf. We got the bobolinks not far from Route 676 where they've nested for a few years. We got American kestrel and killdeer there, too. Then it was off to the Kroger Wetland for some target shorebirds. We got both spotted sandpiper and solitary sandpiper there, plus willow flycatcher and house wren. A bonus yellow-billed cuckoo flew over. We dipped out on phothonotary warbler, however.

It was 5:00 pm and we had 96 species. The county record (unofficial) is 110 set by Steve, Shila, and me in 2007. We ate LEAST wanted to tie that. Preferably we'd beat the living tar out of it.

Spotted sandpiper at the Kroger Wetlands.

Steve scans the Kroger Wetlands while Liam and Phoebe dream.

Then we headed up the Ohio River for some other hopeful hotspots counting every species we got and plotting to add the next bird. We ran into a streak of shorebirds at the tank farm along Ohio 7: greater and lesser yellowlegs, plus an unexpected snowy egret. Then we hit Newell's Run. By this time it was already dinner time and the sun was sinking below the hills. We added a few of the expected warblers along Newell's Run: Louisiana waterthrush, yellow-throated warbler, and

Trying to drum up a few target birds on Newell's Run.

Bored kids will find something to climb.

By 8:30 pm we were deep in the woods of Wayne National Forest, hoping for a cerulean warbler. We got no joy. By 9:10 pm it was actively dark and the kids were weeping from hunger (as were we). A calling whip-poor-will came in as species #108 and we called it a day.

We pulled out ALL the stops in our effort to find more than 100 species.

I stepped outside the house a couple of times before midnight, but the wind was howling and the rain spitting and I knew that no self-respecting owl would be calling in such weather.

108. One shy of tying the record, which still stands.

Of course, the next day dawned clear and sunny and still and I felt like doing it all over again.
But would I?

Wet Birds & Birders

A (wet) male black-throated blue warbler on Sugar Creek Mountain.

The rain came down on a regular basis from Tuesday evening through Sunday morning at the New River Birding Festival near Fayetteville, West Virginia. Wet weather is typical of the Appalachian Mountains in spring—it's one of the reasons the area is so lush and green.

While the bird watchers were undaunted by the precipitation, it was horrible for bird photography. I didn't even bother carrying my camera outside the van on most of the trips I lead. There was no light and nice cameras and wet, humid weather are unhappy bedfellows.

I did manage to get a few non-keeper shots of my favorite warbler: a male black-throated blue warbler which we found on the Sugar Creek mountain trip. There's something about this bird's color scheme that I find incredibly appealing. You can see how wet it was—there are water droplets on every branch in the photo!

More from the New River Birding & Nature Festival tomorrow when I will take you on a tree-top adventure.

New River Postings (or not)

Worm-eating warbler, singing between episodes of eating worms.

Gentle readers of Bill of the Birds. I am back at the New River Birding Festival, which this year has seen an infestation of bird /nature bloggers like you would NOT BELIEVE! Anywho, this makes it nigh on impossible to get any posting done for several reasons:

1. There is not enough bandwidth to go around, so the connection is gone by the time I am free in the late afternoon or late evening.

2. The birds call me forth to the glorious montane woods and I forget myself.

3. Warblers, baby!

I beg your forgiveness for my sporadic posting. Please bear with me and I will share some tales from this grand event and location.

Hog Island Butterbutt

Male yellow-rumped warbler.

The sun came out for a few hours this afternoon on Hog Island and the birds went crazy. This male yellow-rumped warbler was particularly cooperative perching in the dawn redwood that was planted in the main camp yard.

He made sure we knew why his nickname is "butterbutt."

Sorry to be so brief, but we're birding from dawn to dark and eating like, well, hogs.

Scenes from New River

Dear Readers:

I am still laboring to fill the pages of this new (temporary I hope) home of BOTB all the while living in the transient state known as Bizzyville. I got home last night from the chilly rain-soaked hills of West Virginia. I head out tomorrow for the human-made mountains and canyons of New York City.
I'll be doing a few media thingys in NYC. If you've got Sirius Satellite Radio, tune in to channel 112 for The Martha Stewart Living Today radio show on Thursday, May 15 at 2 pm to hear the host, Mario Bosquez, interview me about The Young Birder's Guide.

To prepare my brain for The Big Apple, I am meditating on my time in the Appalachians with good birds and good friends. Here's a final visual sampling from The New River Birding Festival:

Bucolic farm scene from Glade Creek Road.

Event host Geoff Heeter feeds The Wild McCormac breakfast before a field trip.

Wild pink azalea growing in swampy woods near Fayetteville.

A beaver swamp near Fayetteville where Paul Shaw and I tramped around looking for prothonotary warblers. No prothos, tho.

Leaping Canada warbler.

This blue-winged warbler sang a perfect golden-winged warbler song. Clearly he's a GWWA trapped inside the body of a BWWA.

Father flicker guarding the nest hole. No sign of the sneaky mother flicker.

Festival co-host Geoff Heeter, squire of Opossum Creek Retreat.

Festival attendee Marcy models the latest in birding rainwear.

The birding on the field trip to Muddlety was done in the fog and rain.

We saw no camera but we weren't going to litter anyway. In fact, we picked up trash.

Red eft loving the rainy weather much more than the birds and birders were.

Steve McCarthy, stalwart member of The Whipple Bird Club, and field trip leader at New River put Chet Baker to sleep with his petting.