V.

Beyond the Backyard

Although it is possible to see and enjoy many species of birds in the backyard or in neighboring landscapes, many birds have not adapted well to urban conditions and prefer more natural habitats. Birding excursions to rural areas, forests, and shorelines open up many new bird-viewing possibilities. Some of the common, widespread species that birders look for in farmlands, grasslands, and other open country include vultures, kites, northern harriers, ring-necked pheasants, burrowing owls, bobolinks, meadowlarks, and goldfinches. Forests are home to broad-winged hawks, ruffed grouse, winter wrens, many finches, and most species of owls, woodpeckers, flycatchers, thrushes, warblers, and tanagers. Many birds prefer ponds, stream banks, marshes, and wet meadows, among them grebes, herons and egrets, ducks, sedge and marsh wrens, common yellowthroats, several kinds of sparrows, and red-winged and yellow-headed blackbirds. Coastlines, large rivers, bays, and lakes are home to water birds such as loons, pelicans, cormorants, geese, ducks, gulls, terns, auks, and puffins. Birders visit all of these habitats in all seasons to view these birds in the wild and build their bird lists.

As winter approaches, some birds prepare for migration to warmer areas where food is more plentiful. Knowledgeable birders learn the migration routes for the birds they wish to view, and they seek out favored places where birds congregate along that route. These sites may include areas where birds gather in preparation for a long flight, known as staging areas. Other sites are known as resting or refueling stops, landing sites after long voyages over water, and winter-feeding grounds. Bays, estuaries, and wetlands may hold tens of thousands of migrating or wintering waterfowl. Arctic-nesting shorebirds move north across North America in April and May, then south again after breeding, from July to September. At such times they may gather in small flocks at ponds, mud flats, shorelines, and wet fields, and sometimes in huge numbers at rich feeding areas along the coasts.

Many migratory birds follow well-established routes, reappearing year after year at the same localities. Thousands of sandhill cranes regularly visit Nebraska’s Platte River Valley in March and early April. Raptors in fall migration sail past Hawk Mountain in eastern Pennsylvania or Hawk Ridge in northeastern Minnesota. The Delta Marsh Bird Observatory, located at the south end of Lake Manitoba near Ottawa, Canada, is a primary fall stopover site for migrating songbirds, including yellow warblers, song sparrows, and American redstarts. Many migrant birds collect at promontories and coastal islands in the spring and fall, including such well-known birding hotspots as High Island, Texas; the Dry Tortugas, Florida; Cape May, New Jersey; Point Reyes, California; and Point Pelee in Ontario, Canada.

Birders often travel to find birds that live only in certain regions, especially birds whose ranges barely reach the borders of the United States and Canada. Popular sites include southeast Arizona and the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where birders can view bird species native to Mexico; south Florida, which hosts birds from the West Indies; and western Alaska and the Atlantic coast provinces of Canada, where birders can view birds of Eurasian and Arctic distribution.

Certain bird species with very small populations can be found only in restricted areas. Whooping cranes, for example, are best viewed only in their wintering grounds at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas coast, while Kirtland’s warblers are rarely seen except in northern Michigan where they breed in jack-pine stands. Many birders join special tours just to view these two species. Likewise, birders go on organized boat trips to see ocean-going bird species, such as albatrosses, shearwaters, and skuas, which cruise the open seas for most of the year.