A week to remember
- Bruce Glick: Gone Birding
- May 11, 2018
- 2242
The hot days and southwest winds brought a huge wave of early migrants to Northern Indiana. From what I’ve heard from Ohio birders, they also were seeing lots of new birds last week.
I spent as much time birding as possible from Tuesday, May 2 through the weekend. Each day there were many, many birds in the woods. I concentrated on a small woodlot at the edge of the Elkhart River and close to the lake that backs up behind the Goshen dam.
Yellow-rumped and Nashville warblers were especially numerous with counts of more than 50 each day. There also were many Tennessee, palm, yellow and black-throated green warblers.
Northern waterthrushes sang from the wooded marshes. I found 15 warbler species on Tuesday and 19 on Wednesday. Meanwhile, there seemed to be rose-breasted grosbeaks and Baltimore orioles everywhere.
Warbling and yellow-throated vireos also were numerous with a few red-eyed and white-eyed vireos singing along the trails. We found all the thrushes with Swainson’s numbers reaching 15-20 a day.
Here at home the birds also were coming in off the lake and dropping by the oaks and maples in the yard and in the neighborhood. We woke up to four or five grosbeaks on the feeders and six to eight singing warbler species.
The string of rarities started when I heard a clay-colored sparrow singing in the low bushes in our backyard. We were eating lunch at the time. Before I could get up to check out the rare sparrow, I saw an unusual oriole land on the oriole feeder.
The male and female Baltimore orioles that had been eating oranges moved aside and let the newcomer have the perch. I immediately saw that the bird had a distinctive black line through the eye and a black throat. Otherwise, the color looked orangish, like a young male Baltimore oriole.
I quickly ran for the camera, but when I returned, all three orioles were gone. Then I went out and was able to see the clay-colored sparrow, but it soon flew north past the neighbor’s house. At the time there was a brisk southwest wind, and birds seemed to be on the move. Back at the house, I looked at my Sibley field guide to confirm that the oriole was indeed a first-year male Bullock’s oriole.
A day later a prairie warbler sang in the yard for most of the afternoon. I have never seen a prairie warbler in this part of Indiana before. Several other birders stopped by to see the bird, and one of them then found a golden-winged warbler in the woodlot across from our house. We all went over to see that bird and several Cape May warblers in a flowering tree along the street.
The best was yet to come. On Saturday I was photographing a cooperative red-throated loon at Fidler Pond here in Goshen. There were four of us there at the time. One person was checking warblers in the trees by the lake when they noticed a large bird soaring high overhead. We immediately agreed that it looked like an anhinga. Unfortunately the bird kept soaring higher and off to the east. I snapped some photos but appeared to miss the bird. Back at home I found a tiny black speck on one photo. Enlarged many times, it showed the distinctive shape of an anhinga, now confirmed by a number of expert birders.
I doubt I’ll ever have another week like that. I hope you also are enjoying this wonderful time of year.
Good birding!
Reach Bruce Glick at birderbruce@yahoo.com or 330-317-7798.