From the Spring 2024 issue of Dwelling Chicken journal. Subscribe now.
Birding throughout migration means ample opportunities to rack up lifers; add to county, state, and patch lists; rating the earliest or newest arrivals of species; and clock in document excessive counts.
There are limitless strategies for locating birds that include years of expertise and experimentation. I’ve used a couple of favourite strategies to assist me discover 185 species, together with rarities like Painted Bunting and Connecticut Warbler, in Brooklyn Bridge Park—a slim, 1.3-mile stretch of city waterfront in New York Metropolis that draws practically 5 million human guests every year.
By various the best way you scan for birds and strategize for birding, you’ll rating lifers and rarities and achieve a front-row seat to the spectacle of migration. Add in a bit of tech help from eBird and the Merlin Chicken ID app, and also you’ll take your birding enjoyment to a brand new degree.
1. Systematically scan open areas and edges
Birds are nice at hiding in plain sight. Anytime you stumble upon an open house like a subject, garden, seashore, water physique, or muddy space, do a scientific test. First, examine all perches across the perimeter together with treetops, snags, posts, and cables. Subsequent, scan the place the open house meets dense habitats reminiscent of reeds, shrubs, woodland, rocks, and so on. It is a nice method to discover birds like bitterns and rails alongside marsh edges or sparrows and wrens edging out from meadow shrubs and scrubby seashore dunes.
Now that you just’ve lined the perimeter, fastidiously test the open space itself. Scan in an “S” sample, shifting left to proper in a row, then proper to left within the subsequent row, and so forth. As you do that, a subject may come alive with a flock of Horned Larks, or your eyes may land on a Snowy Plover on the seashore. I recall scanning the mudflats of a big Arizona wetland for not less than 10 minutes earlier than scoring a lifer; not one however three American Pipits have been foraging in plain sight.
2. Eke birds out of the sky
Spring and autumn are nice occasions to look excessive within the sky for migrating birds, whether or not they be hawks, kites, and eagles hovering at higher elevations, or giant clouds of blackbirds within the distance. And the perfect half is that your binoculars will can help you choose a few of these migrants out of skinny air.
Begin by selecting a distant reference level, like a tree line, row of buildings, snag, or mild submit—even a shifting object like a aircraft. Focus your binoculars on the thing, then look past it for birds in flight. Through the use of this distant-object focus-and-scan method, raptors and flocks come out and in of view rapidly. It’s a bit of bit like taking a look at stars within the night time by means of binoculars; when you give attention to one star, entire different constellations seem that weren’t seen to the bare eye. However on this case, you’ll uncover birds that have been flying unseen at excessive altitudes.
You may discover a teetering V-shape within the distance (Turkey Vulture), a hovering Broad-winged Hawk or Golden Eagle, or Sandhill Cranes flying in formation. Birds flying within the distance additionally make nice reference objects themselves; I as soon as noticed a Mississippi Kite hovering far behind a pair of Black Vultures I used to be observing from a Florida parking zone.
Sure occasions and climate situations are higher for locating high-flyers. When it’s windy, raptors are doable by means ofout the day; on heat windless days, the afternoon is extra productive as raptors experience the rising thermal currents. Use the springtime’s southerly winds as a cue to search for migrating waterfowl that experience the air currents northward (and the identical with northerly winds in autumn). Raptor and waterfowl migration begins in March and can be at its greatest by means of mid-April.
3. Sit
To migrating songbirds, we people are ominous giants. No surprise they run and conceal after we method.
We seem a lot much less threatening when seated, which may typically end in birds—particularly skulking, ground-dwelling species—that edge out from dense cowl and into view. Subsequent time you see a hen abscond into low and dense vegetation, sit close by on a stone, bench, and even higher, proper on the bottom. The hen will doubtless reappear inside a couple of minutes to forage out within the open, together with others not seen earlier than.
Floor-level birding is an effective way to relocate unidentified birds alongside a path or garden edge, reminiscent of sparrows, wrens, and sure warblers that run into the comb or flit additional into dense vegetation. Sit to attend for a bit, and species like Lincoln’s Sparrow, Marsh Wren, or your most sought-after skulker could reappear and provide you with nice views.
Some birds could even begin to method you should you occur to be seated alongside the trail of their foraging; I as soon as had a Golden-crowned Kinglet hop onto my knee because it was feasting on gnats buzzing up from a park garden in New York Metropolis.
4. Apply monitoring birds in flight with frequent birds
A number of the most sought-after migratory birds are species which can be continuously on the transfer, flitting and zipping out and in of view, like Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and Blackburnian Warblers. You’ll be able to enhance your probabilities of species ID at a glimpse by enhancing your expertise at figuring out birds in flight.
Nice-tune this talent by working towards on the frequent birds round you that you just see on a regular basis. I typically use Home Sparrows as my topics; the smaller the higher because the final aim is to trace warblers. Begin by dialing within the focus in your binoculars to roughly the vary the place your birds can be, so you possibly can rapidly modify focus when a hen comes into view. Then have interaction your peripheral imaginative and prescient to detect birds flying round you. Once you see one, lock your eyes on it as you elevate your binoculars, and hold your eyes on the hen till it lands or disappears out of sight.
With a bit of observe, you’ll be rapidly and comfortably locking give attention to birds in flight, and in a position to pinpoint the place a hen lands to attempt to get a greater look. Birds may even appear to decelerate for you, making it simpler to detect extra of their figuring out options. I discover specializing in a hen’s head to be most useful for IDing species on the wing. Observe issues like invoice form, the presence of an eyering or eye stripe, and contrasting throat colour. As soon as the face turns into simple to determine in flight, search for different figuring out traits like tail size and flight type.
5. Scan eBird bar charts to see who is perhaps within the neighborhood
The most effective methods to seek out extra birds is to know what to anticipate and the place. eBird’s weekly bar charts are my favourite useful resource throughout migration to see which species are prone to be on the town and which of them is perhaps coming subsequent.
Go to eBird Explore and enter your county, then choose Bar Charts (or “Area navigation” in your cellphone display screen to develop the menu choices). At a look, you’ll see which species are anticipated to reach first throughout migration, reminiscent of blackbirds, and the way lengthy they are often anticipated to remain. You’ll discover peaks in lots of birds’ frequency throughout migration months, and which weeks supply the perfect possibilities so as to add them to your listing.
For individuals who need to break a document of their native birding scene, eBird bar charts are an effective way to strive for the earliest or newest document of a species in an space. Observe the week earlier than or after the related information block and spend extra effort and time in a hen’s habitat throughout these weeks. Bar charts additionally illuminate alternatives for species excessive counts; search for chart peaks of flocking species reminiscent of blackbirds to know the perfect occasions to scan the sky.
6. Goal the birds you want
For those who’re trying so as to add extra birds to your life, state, or county listing, focus your efforts on the species you’re lacking with eBird Targets. Simply go to the positioning, enter your space of curiosity, modify the “Time of yr,” and click on “Present goal species.” A listing of species you want for a specific area seems together with their frequency percentages; you possibly can search targets to your county, state, nation, or world life listing.
7. Let Merlin hear for you
The Merlin Bird ID app’s Sound ID function listens for birds and exhibits species identification strategies for the sounds it detects. It typically picks up sounds that folks don’t discover, reminiscent of distant birdsong or calls obscured by ambient noise. It additionally simply detects the high-pitched sounds of birds like Blackballot Warblers and Cedar Waxwings that is perhaps too excessive for some individuals to listen to. I typically let Merlin hearken to canvass the sounds of an space, particularly in spring and summer season. If it suggests a rarity or hen I’m hoping so as to add to a listing, I do know to focus my efforts on that species’ most well-liked habitat.
8. At all times be birding
One tried-and-true technique of seeing extra birds is to develop your definition of birding. Heading to the grocery retailer? Take a fast minute to analyze that tiny hen atop a tree within the retailer’s exterior landscaping. Taking the children to the playground? Steal a couple of seconds to scan shrubs past the swing set for sparrows and warblers. Going to a baseball recreation at night time? In between innings, scan the realm in entrance of the floodlights to see if any nightjars are out hawking bugs.
Deal with each outing as a bird-finding alternative. Pack your binoculars or hold a spare set in your automobile, purse, or backpack so that you don’t miss a hen. At all times be tuned in to motion and sounds, in addition to potential perches and different surrounding habitats.
Even the smallest patches of appropriate habitat can appeal to birds everybody needs to seek out. One spring, I went to my brother’s place in Brooklyn to have dinner on the terrace and packed my binoculars simply in case. Because the solar began to set, I seen motion on a close-by rooftop in a planter holding a 2-foot pine. Once I regarded by means of the lenses, I couldn’t imagine what I had discovered: a migrating Pine Warbler in a tiny pine tree!
There are doubtless pockets of hen habitat all over the place in your day-to-day comings and goings—retailer and workplace parking heaps, for instance, are sometimes bordered by mini marshes, wetlands, or woodlands. Take it from me, if there’s one factor I’ve realized as I method the 200-species mark in my birding patch beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, it’s that extra species await in essentially the most unlikely locations. There may be all the time one other hen to seek out.
Concerning the Writer
Heather Wolf is the creator of Find More Birds and Birding at the Bridge. A Brooklyn-based birder, photographer, and educator, she works with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as an online developer, teaches birding lessons at Brooklyn Botanic Backyard, and provides walks and talks for varied organizations in New York Metropolis and past.
In her new e book, Discover Extra Birds: 111 Stunning Methods to Spot Birds Wherever You Are (The Experiment, 2023), Heather Wolf shares her best possible techniques for sharpening a birder’s senses and changing into extra conscious of the birds which can be out and about day by day. Learn more and buy the book.
