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.

Scenes from The New River Birding Festival 2013 Part 1

Every spring I make the trek to south-central West Virginia to help out guiding, speaking, and performing at The New River Birding and Nature Festival. Those of you who've read this blog over the past several years know all about why this event is special to me. And each year it seems to get a bit more special. There are lots of things about "the New" that appeal to me: the incredible natural beauty of the New River Gorge region, the amazing variety of nesting, migrant, and resident birds, the chance to eat ramps... but I think the real reason is the people.

I've become great friends with the folks who founded and run the festival—we're like family at this point. But it's also the people who come as my fellow guides/speakers—they are some of the most talented field birders and fascinating personalities on the planet. And it's the folks who attend the New River Birding Festival as participants. It takes a special person to see the intrinsic value in a small, friendly birding event run deep in the middle of a state that is probably not naturally on the radar of the average traveling bird watcher.

But that's changing...

I speak and guide at a bunch of birding festivals every year. And lots of times someone on one of my trips will say to me "Hey Bill, I see that you do that New River festival in West Virginia every year. What's that one like?" I always say: "Man, it's great! Low key. Great birds, food, people, scenery." But what I really should say is: "You've gotta be there to experience how great it is."

In this post (and maybe one or two others coming up) I'm going to show some images from the 2013 NRBNF to help you get a feel for what it's like.

The pre-festival guides' meeting (with local micro-brew) in the gazebo. Festival hosts, from left: Lynn Pollard, Bill Hilton, Jr, Geoff Heeter, Dave Pollard.

Most mornings we meet for breakfast at Burnwood, a picnic area and campsite near the gorge. After fueling up, we head to our vehicles—if we can find them in the fog that sometimes blankets the gorge.

The fog burns off and we're into the birds. This is a group I led early in the week this year, on a new route called Hunt Club Road. We were looking at this:

Male golden-winged warbler

When we see a good bird like this, we take a moment to celebrate. Here is a photo of a low-key version of The Life Bird Wiggle (we didn't want to disturb the bird).

Then we're off after more birds...

There's a lot for us guides to point out...

Ernesto Carman from Costa Rica came to guide this year. He has incredibly good spotting skills.

Keith Richardson, one of the festival's organizers and hosts, points out a worm-eating warbler on the Nuttallburg hiking trail.

There are so many great birds that we get long, binoc-filling views of...

Male Kentucky warbler.

Male prairie warbler.

Male scarlet tanager.

There's a lot more beauty to enjoy than the feathered kind.

Roaring mountain stream above Nuttalburg.

Flowering pawpaw tree.

Spidery grape vine.

Swirling stone. What made this pattern in the mountain?

If this post piques your interest, make plans now to attend The New River Birding Festival in 2014. I'll be there and I can't wait!

Happy Earth Day 2013!

 

Happy Earth Day!

Yeah, I know that Earth Day has already passed for this year...I guess I feel like there's a little bit of Earth Day in EVERY day. Or there should be.

I'm not going to get too heavy here. Just want to share some images and thoughts that remind me of Earth Day and how much I love being connected to nature. Like the plant fronds above. That's a shot I took on an island in the Philippines, where the natural resources are being exploited at a stunning rate. The endemic species there are disappearing... This image reminds me of a fossilized plant, which reminds me of coal and oil...and our consumption of same.

A double rainbow in fall, shot from our birding tower in southeast Ohio. Being up high like this lends us a perspective that we don't get from the ground. It shows the vastness of the habitat in some views, but it also reveals fragmentation and all the things that come with it. In our part of the world we're beginning to experience the impact of hydraulic fracking for oil and gas. I wonder if our beautiful vistas will be the same in 10 years.

Each spring I get to experience the miracle of the songbird nesting season on our farm. Monitoring our nest boxes is such a treat. To watch birds such as these Carolina chickadees go from eggs to hatchlings to flying tots in just a few weeks—well, it boggles the mind.

I took this image of Phoebe on Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine. It wasn't posed. She loved climbing out on the rocks as the tide came in and I couldn't resist the image. Maine may very well be the place that my kids connect most closely with the natural world because it is so very different from the habitat and landscape (or seascape) where we live. I'm just happy they're connecting.

 

And speaking of young people...one of the best things about Earth Day is all the various activities that are available for youngsters to experience—and to connect with—nature. But we don't have to wait to do that until Earth Day NEXT year. Why not invite a young person (or a whole classroom!) to go outside with you and your birding/nature club or companions. It's the very best way to keep the spirit of Earth Day alive.

Tomorrow morning I'll get up before dawn to lead a passel of people on a long hike down the New River Gorge in West Virginia. There will be nature fans of all ages—a few youngsters and a many young-at-heart bird watchers. I'll do my best to show them a good time and to let them know why I think this area is so wonderful and special. But, you know, that's true of anywhere, as long as it's outside!

 

Happy Earth Day!