Special K

Kirtland's Warbler: the rarest songbird in North America

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: In my previous post on May 30, I mentioned that I'd been making predictions for the migration throughout the Biggest Week In American Birding: checking to see what birds were around, watching the weather reports, trying to predict which days would have the biggest arrivals of migrants. For the first 8 days of the event, this was an exercise in mild frustration, because the weather patterns just weren’t lining up to produce any major migrant wave. We were seeing excellent diversity of migrants -- and the guides from Tropical Birding were making sure that everyone on the scene got to see a lot of different species. But the kind of day that we dream about in northwest Ohio, with migrants everywhere, the trees filled to bursting with warblers and others, just had not happened yet as late as Thursday, May 13.

Based on the weather forecasts, I had been predicting for days that Friday, May 14, was going to be a big day. There’s a certain amount of pressure involved in making predictions like this, especially if people take you seriously! I knew from conversations with birders that many people were planning days off from work, or playing hooky from school, based on my predictions, so I was really sweating it at dawn on May 14th. No matter how closely you study the weather forecasts, it’s always possible that the wind will shift unexpectedly and the predicted big day will turn out to be a dud. But as soon as I arrived out at the Wildlife Beach at Magee Marsh, just after sunrise on May 14, I could tell that this was a great day. Birds were everywhere. The place was swarming with catbirds, orioles, Least Flycatchers, and more than a dozen species of warblers. Silent flocks of Blue Jays were streaming overhead, while thrushes bounced around in the thickets. Anyone who came out on this day would not be disappointed.

I knew that the guides from Tropical Birding (and hundreds of other birders) would be concentrated at the Magee Marsh boardwalk, so I decided to work east along the Wildlife Beach to see what I could find there. I’d been birding the thickets and low trees of this area for a couple of hours, and was just about to turn around and head elsewhere, when I spotted a bird moving across an opening far ahead of me. Superficially it looked like a Palm Warbler, with tail-bobbing habit and all; and I had been seeing a lot of Palm Warblers out there. But something about the bird looked odd. I walked on up to double-check on it.

When I got to the spot, there was a Palm Warbler perched up in a low willow, and at first it seemed that must have been what I saw. But then I froze when I heard a distinctive birdsong from the thickets. A warbler song, but low-pitched and choppy and emphatic for a warbler.

Oh, yeah. Special K.

Kirtland’s Warbler is one of the rarest birds in North America. It was very close to extinction in the 1970s and 1980s, when its population dipped below 350 individuals. Thanks to a lot of hard work by dedicated conservationists, its population is now up over 3000, but that’s still a terrifyingly low number for a songbird. Kirtland’s Warbler nests mainly in a few counties in Michigan and winters in the Bahamas, and extremely few are seen in migration. Our area of northwest Ohio is the best place in the world to see migrating Kirtland’s, but even here the species is not seen every year. Some birders have been coming here for many years without ever seeing one.

But there was a Kirtland’s Warbler singing from the thicket in front of me, and there were hundreds of birders, maybe thousands, within a couple of miles of where I stood, because this was the Biggest Week In American Birding. And because it was the Biggest Week, we had made arrangements to get the word out quickly about rarities. I pulled the iPhone out of my pocket and quickly composed one of the short little notes that is fancifully called a "Tweet" in the service called "Twitter." I just tapped in this note:

"Kirtlands on Magee east beach 300 yards east of parking lot Kenn K"

And then I called Kimberly, who was, of course, at the Black Swamp Bird Observatory, the center of the action for the big birding week. At the registration tables at BSBO, we had a giant screen set up to display the Twitter updates, and as Kim answered the phone, my note about the Kirtland’s Warbler popped up on the screen.

If I’d had any doubts earlier about the value of using Twitter for the Biggest Week, those doubts evaporated as the word went out about the Kirtland’s. Out on the Magee boardwalk, out on the trails at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, over at the shorebird sites on Stange Road, cell phones beeped and birders read the text message about the rare warbler. Word of mouth spread rapidly from a hundred separate points. I had been all alone on the beach, but within minutes, a stream of birders began arriving.

Ever since I had heard the warbler sing I had been hanging back, staying well away so I wouldn’t risk scaring it before the birders arrived. But as the crowd began to gather, it became apparent that the bird was utterly unconcerned about our presence. It hopped about in the low sumacs and willows, sometimes disappearing into dense growth for a minute but more often coming out to hop on the sand in the open. As the birders gathered, a hundred or two hundred or more at a time in a wide semicircle on the beach, the Kirtland’s Warbler continued to perform like the superstar that it was.

At any moment, the Kirtland’s could have flown a hundred yards south into a closed section of the wildlife area, and it never would have been seen again. But it stayed, and stayed, out in the open. From the time I sent out my "tweet" about the bird at 9:17 a.m. until I finally left after 1:30 p.m., the bird was seldom out of sight, and my best guesstimate was that more than a thousand people came and had great looks at it. Other bloggers who stayed later in the afternoon estimated that more than three thousand people saw the bird! It was so obliging, often moving toward its admiring audience, that even people with little point-and-shoot cameras were able to take pictures, while more serious photographers filled up whole memory cards. Indeed, I suspect that this individual became the most-photographed Kirtland’s Warbler in history.

Swamped with visiting crowds at the Black Swamp Bird Observatory, Kimberly didn’t get out to see this individual; at the only times when she could have gotten away, she stayed to mind the observatory so others could dash back to the beach and see the bird. Of course, Kimberly has seen several Kirtland’s in this area in past years, starting before I ever moved to Ohio, so she was able to visualize the scene and vicariously share in the excitement. This Kirtland’s stayed the entire day, so that people arriving that evening were able to go out to the beach after 7 p.m. and see it. The following morning it was nowhere to be found; so it was a one-day wonder, as migrants often are. But for that one day, that one bird provided tremendous excitement for a lot of happy birders.

Whitewater

From the far side of the rapids, Kenn writes: We screen the comments that come in before they’re posted on the blog. Most of the comments are wonderful, all are appreciated, and we post almost all of them. One that we didn’t post came in from "Anonymous" a couple of weeks ago -- taking us to task for the fact that we hadn’t updated the blog since April 10th. "Why bother to have a blog, there in the ‘warbler capital of the world,’ if you never post to it?" It went on to imply that we must be pretty lazy, or worse, to fail to keep the blog rolling.

Gee, "Anonymous," we’re glad that you missed us. A lot has been going on here. The best analogy that comes to mind is that being here in northwestern Ohio in May is like a modified version of whitewater rafting. But instead of roaring down the river, the raft is tethered to one spot, bucking and pitching wildly while the whitewater rapids of spring migration come pouring around and under and over those of us who are clinging to the raft.

The Lake Erie shoreline in northwest Ohio -- specifically the area centered on Magee Marsh Wildlife Area and Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge -- is one of the best spots in North America to see concentrations of spring migrant songbirds, especially warblers. I wrote about this area in Birding, the magazine of the American Birding Association, earlier this year; you can read the article here. Every spring, hundreds of thousands of birds, and tens of thousands of birders, come pouring through this region.

Numbers of visiting birders had been growing in recent years, so this year we decided to hold an event to engage with them and try to enhance their experience. Wild brainstorming about it a year ago led to the formation of the BIGGEST WEEK IN AMERICAN BIRDING -- and it was big! For starters, it was a week that was eleven days long, May 6 through 16. It was hosted by five different organizations: Black Swamp Bird Observatory, Tropical Birding tours, Kaufman Field Guides, Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, and Magee Marsh Wildlife Area (a unique partnership of a nonprofit, two for-profit companies, a federal agency, and a state agency). Of course, Kimberly and I represented two of the five partners, so we were kept busy! It was sponsored by a wide variety of organizations and companies, from Leica Sport Optics (Leica's Jeff Bouton gave many digiscoping demonstrations) to the American Birding Association. Sean Logan, the director of Ohio's Department of Natural Resources, came up from Columbus to speak at the opening ceremony, and U.S. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (in whose district the event took place) sent a letter and sent a top-ranking member of her staff to the opening ceremony as well.

Throughout the event, there were multiple field trips and birdwalks every day, many of them free of charge, led by skilled guides from Tropical Birding. Throughout the event, there were daytime workshops and evening programs held at multiple sites. I personally gave evening keynote talks on nine different nights! Throughout the event, we were doing constant updates on bird sightings via Twitter, making this the first bird festival to use this new opportunity. Throughout the event, and for weeks before and after, Kimberly was working 14 to 17 hour days, since Black Swamp Bird Observatory was the center for organization and registration for the event. Throughout the event, we had to stay on our toes, since Kimberly and I both wound up on radio or television or in the newspapers multiple times, talking about birding. And throughout the event (and before and after), I was keeping up almost-daily updates on weather, migration, and latest bird sightings, by way of another blog that "Anonymous" apparently didn’t know about (you can read it here) -- I wrote no fewer than 30 posts on that blog between mid-April and the end of May.

The whole 11-day event was a fabulous time, with lots of birds, lots of great friends to share the birds with, and lots of opportunity to introduce brand-new people to birding. My very favorite day, however, was Day 9 of our long week. I’ll describe that in a separate post.

Birders: Myth and Reality

From Port Clinton, Ohio, Kenn writes: As amazing as this might seem, there are still some people out there who are so totally uninformed that they think of birdwatchers as nerdy, dorky, or dull. (Of course, there are some people who think the earth is flat. When the real information is so readily available, at some point the ignorance becomes the fault of those who carry it.) For anyone who is so backward that they still cling to a belief in the "nerdy birder" stereotype, I wish I could have plunked them down in Mango Mama’s last night.

Our band, 6-7-8-OH, was playing a gig at Mango Mama’s in Port Clinton. Unlike some of our gigs, this wasn’t a fund-raiser for anything, just a Saturday night of playing in a bar. And there was a very good crowd there most of the evening. But what was most noticeable to me was the fact that it was the birders who packed, and rocked, the house. Birders made up only one-third of the band, but probably more than three-quarters of the action in the place.

Where was the stereotypical birder that you might see in a magazine cartoon? Certainly not in this crowd. No, we had the real birders. Three of the sharpest young bird experts in the state, Jen and Phil and Ethan, all twenty-something or barely-twenty, were there to rock all night after birding at Magee Marsh all day. Rebecca and Laura and Michelle were there from the National Wildlife Refuge; we’re accustomed to seeing them as professionals in the conservation field, but here they were lively pretty girls, drawing looks from all the non-birding guys in the bar. Several fun couples from the birding scene were here: Bob and Blake (the Killer Bs), he looking studly, she looking glamorous; likewise Tim and Dana, and Hugh and Judy, still amazingly energetic after all the work they’d been doing at the bird observatory. Another bird observatory mainstay, the amazing Karen, was there, a total live wire as always. Tough guy Henry and his cute daughter Olivia had been out birding all day at Magee Marsh but they came to listen to the music for half the night. Iain, Josh, and Sam, professional tour leaders from Tropical Birding, tanned and rugged and lean, probably danced with every lady in the place, and Michael and Matt may have done the same. But the dance floor was filled with birders practically the whole night.

The month of May has been a high-energy time at Black Swamp Bird Observatory, with crazy numbers of birds and birders in the area. Kim and I are both pretty well fried by now, and it felt good to just get up there on stage and rock out. No one has worked harder than Kim, and she should be absolutely exhausted by now, but she was so wound up and so full of life that no one would have guessed. With her beautiful voice and powerful delivery, she knocked everyone out as always. When we launched into a Joe Walsh tune, instead of "Spent the last year the Rocky Mountain way," Kim sang, "Spent the weekend birding at Magee," and everyone went crazy. At least, all the cool people did -- all the birders.

My beautiful Kim rocking out on stage

That's me on bass, adding to the driving foundation of the songs. Photo courtesy of Kevin Loughlin at Wildside Nature Tours.

Warblers On The Brain

A Black-throated Green Warbler pauses in northwest Ohio, along with a few hundred thousand of his fellow warblers

From Oak Harbler, Ohio, Kenn writes: See that typo? I’ve done that dozens of times recently. We’re actually located in Oak HARBOR. But for the last three weeks, whenever my fingers type the letters A - R - B, autopilot takes over and finishes the word with L - E - R. It’s that time of year. It’s warbler season.

More than 50 species of warblers occur north of the Mexican border, and many of them are abundant, but most people never notice them at all. Because the warblers are tiny, hyperactive, and fond of hiding among dense foliage, they simply escape the attention of the uninitiated. For the average citizen, warblers exist only as the occasional flit of yellow between the treetops, not enough even to register on the conscious mind. But for those who have discovered birds, warblers are magical creatures, a dizzying galaxy of feathered delights.

A male Bay-breasted Warbler, with its tones of burnt chestnut

Because they thrive on insects, almost all the warblers migrate to the tropics for the winter. When they come flooding north in spring, resplendent in the colors of their breeding plumage, birders go flooding outdoors to see them. Most of the warblers are primarily eastern, and east of the Rockies there are many regions where more than 30 species of warblers are possible in the spring. Going out to look for them is like a treasure hunt. We never know which species we’ll find, and we go out again and again, trying to connect with as many warblers as possible during the brief period when they pass through on their way north.

A Canada Warbler lurks in a thicket on its way north through Magee Marsh, Ohio


The finest place for observing spring warblers in the month of May is in northwestern Ohio. When the northbound migrants reach the south shore of Lake Erie, they pause, often for days at a time, resting and feeding as they prepare for their next flight northward. Literally thousands of warblers can be found here on certain days. The most famous spot for observing them is the boardwalk through the swampy woods at Magee Marsh Wildlife Area. Here the warblers gather in droves, often foraging at eye level in the trees along the boardwalk or along the edge of the parking lot. Birders gather in droves also, thousands of birders, from seasoned experts to newcomers seeing their very first warblers. Photographers gather here, too: warblers are famously difficult to photograph in most places, but here they seem almost to pose (briefly!) for the cameras. During the month of May, there are undoubtedly more warbler photos taken at Magee Marsh than in the entire rest of the United States combined.

The Magnolia Warbler is the most abundant migrant through northwestern Ohio for a brief period in mid-May every year

The Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO), where Kim is executive director, is located along the entrance road to Magee Marsh, so we’re in a wonderful position to interact with the thousands of birders and thousands of warblers that come here in spring. The month of May -- we call it "May-hem" -- is a whirlwind of activity and lack of sleep for us, and it can be exhausting, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else at this season.

A Cape May Warbler shows off its tiger stripes

All of the warblers are wonderful, of course, but some cause more excitement than others. Sheer beauty is one cause for excitement -- we always hear "ooh" and "aah" whenever a bright male Blackburnian Warbler pops into view, stunning in its Halloween hues -- but with birders, of course, rarity is an even bigger draw. The striking little Golden-winged Warbler has become very uncommon in recent years, so one obliging male along the Magee Marsh boardwalk a week ago caused quite a stir. Josh Engel, who was guiding bird walks for BSBO that morning, told me that he estimated more than 200 people looking at this bird at one point in the morning. I was there later in the day and calculated there were over 100 people watching it then. Josh said he was sure that more than 1000 birders saw this same individual Golden-winged Warbler during the course of the day.

A male Blackburnian Warbler, always a crowd-pleaser

When we talk of rare warblers, the true prize is Kirtland’s Warbler, one of the rarest birds in North America. Its total population as of 2008 was over 1,700 pairs, but at a couple of points in the 1970s and 1980s its population dipped below 170 pairs, a terrifyingly low number for a songbird; it was seriously close to extinction. Kirtland’s Warblers nest only in a few counties in Michigan (and at a couple of sites in Wisconsin and Ontario), they winter only in the Bahamas, and extremely few are ever seen in migration between these locations. But northwestern Ohio is one of the few areas where migrants are seen several times per decade.

One of those rare sightings was made on Sunday, May 17th, in a plot of woods along the entrance road to Magee Marsh. This Kirtland’s Warbler was found and identified by a sharp teenaged birder, Andy Johnson. He came to the Black Swamp Bird Observatory to tell us about it, and soon there were a score of eager birders scouring the woods where Andy had seen the Kirtland’s. The bird proved elusive, foraging quietly in a few pines and spruces within the dense woods, but during Sunday afternoon and Monday the bird eventually was seen by dozens of observers. It wasn't a brightly colored individual, and our photos of it didn't turn out particularly well, but we didn't care; it was the rarity that counted.

A super-rare Kirtland's Warbler perches and flutters in conifers at Magee Marsh, Ohio, much to the delight of scores of visiting birders

We still have a couple of weeks of fine warbler-watching ahead of us, because the last migrants will be moving through in the first days of June, but by that time May-hem will be over and the level of visitation by birders will go back to normal. Then we’ll just look forward to September, and seeing the warblers coming back south in their confusing fall plumages!

For more information about warbler-watching in northwest Ohio, see the Black Swamp Bird Observatory's birding pages.

Fabulous IMBD Weekend at Magee

Cape May Warbler: named for Cape May, NJ, but in spring it's far more numerous at Magee Marsh

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: For a few weeks every year, northwest Ohio -- and specifically the Magee Marsh Wildlife Area, which is practically our back yard -- becomes one of the most popular birding sites in the world. Literally thousands of birders come here to witness the warblers and other migrants that concentrate in the woods along the Lake Erie shoreline at Magee and nearby sites. The action peaks on International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD), the second Saturday in May. This year the timing worked out perfectly, with a huge arrival of birds obvious on the morning of Friday, May 8th. The variety of birds in the area was even better on Saturday, and continued to be outstanding through Sunday and Monday. I seriously doubt that any of the thousands of visiting birders went away disappointed.

The Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO) -- where Kim is Executive Director, and I’m a volunteer birding guru -- is involved, up to its ears, in this birding spectacle. That’s most of the reason why we haven’t been posting anything on this blog recently! The observatory’s office is located on the entrance road to Magee Marsh, and the observatory sponsors a series of web pages on which I and others provide detailed information on birding the area. When it’s May and the mobs of birds and birders are arriving, our days are packed from dawn to late at night.

Looking back on the IMBD weekend just past, it was about as full and as satisfying as one could imagine. I had predicted on the website that Friday would have a big arrival of migrants. Some people follow my predictions and actually take days off of work or school when I make such a forecast, so it was a relief to head out at dawn on Friday and find that, indeed, there were swarms of warblers darting through the trees at Magee. That morning I met up for a brief round of birding with Dave Rintoul from Kansas State, one of the listowners of BirdChat, the granddaddy of all birding listserves. Then I raced back to a phone for an hour-long radio show about bird migration with Fred Andrle from WOSU in Columbus. Then I put the final touches on a program about migration, drove over to Port Clinton, and gave my migration talk at 6 p.m., and then our band played from 8 to midnight, in a benefit concert for the Ohio Young Birders Club.

A male Blackpoll Warbler. The long-distance champion migrant of the warbler world. Every individual that we see in spring has already survived at least one round-trip flight to South America.


Of course we didn’t sleep much that night, because we had to be up at dawn for International Migratory Bird Day. The day was insanely busy. I would have estimated somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 visitors in the general area, but the Division of Wildlife reportedly estimated closer to 15,000. Who knows? But there were more than enough birds to go around. With strong southwest winds, the warblers and other migrants were concentrated along the north edge of the woods at Magee, many of them feeding low for wonderful views. The photographers were having a field day, blasting away at birds that are usually elusive denizens of the treetops. Scores of beginning birders were being taken on birdwalks led by experts. (This year, through an arrangement with the tour company Tropical Birding, we have several world-class birders on the site, leading free birdwalks for BSBO every day until May 25.) Julie Shieldcastle and others from BSBO were putting on banding demonstrations, showing hundreds of people birds up close. It was an amazing and heart-warming extravaganza of warbler-watching.

A male Prothonotary Warbler, glowing like molten gold in the swampy woods

Back at the observatory itself, it was a whirlwind of activity all day. Kim was in her element, inspiring everyone with the magic of birds. Vic and Lois were serving up lunch to hordes of hungry birders, Robert from Time & Optics was demonstrating binoculars and scopes, Kevin from Wildside Tours and Iain from Tropical Birding were telling people about other birding destinations to consider, and Karen and Hugh and Judy kept things bouncing in the gift shop / book store.

The real hosts of the weekend, however, the warblers - - the wonderful, varied, active, colorful, beautiful warblers - - continued to show off all day Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, as the crowds of birders continued to arrive to admire these little feathered gems. The great thing for me is that the birds are so unconcerned about the presence of all these people. They continue to forage actively within a few feet of the birders, oblivious to the oohs and aaahs and the camera flashes. If they were bothered, of course, they could flit back into the thickets and be safely away from us, because birders don’t go off the boardwalk and into the woods. So the warblers are able to feed and rest and refuel for the next leg of their migration, and the watchers are able to appreciate these little wonders at close range.

And by the time the weekend is over, Kim and Kenn are also in need of rest and refueling! Late Saturday night, I found myself trying to remember whether IMBD stood for International Migratory Bird Day, or Insane Madness Bird Daze, or Insomnia Makes Birders Dumb, or Incrementally Maniacal Bed Deprivation, or just, I May Be Dead!

For more background on this entire phenomenon, see the website of the Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO): http://www.bsbobird.org/

and the observatory’s birding pages: http://www.bsbobird.org/Birding/

And for another fine perspective, see the account by Kevin Loughlin of Wildside Tours: http://blog.wildsidenaturetours.com/ (hint: if you're on bird overload by now, Kevin also has photos from Friday night's rock concert)

Or this account by top Ohio naturalist Jim McCormac (go back to May 9): http://jimmccormac.blogspot.com/

Or the always-entertaining posts from Dave Lewis and his "Birds From Behind":
http://burdzbuttz.blogspot.com/