The 2013 Midwest Birding Symposium!

From September 19 to 22, many hundreds of bird watchers converged on Lakeside, Ohio for the 2013 Midwest Birding Symposium, hosted by Bird Watcher's Digest, The Ohio Ornithological Society, and The Lakeside Chautauqua. 

The speakers were incredible, the Birder's Marketplace was brimming with vendors, the birding was excellent, and the weather was mostly cooperative.

  

 The MBS started off on Thursday evening with a Lake Erie Sunset Boat Cruise around the region's many beautiful islands. The sunset also made an appearance.

MBS attendees embark on the Goodtime II for the Sunset Boat Cruise.

We had an army of volunteers helping us with MBS, including more than a dozen members of the Ohio Ornithological Society and more than 100 members of the Lakeside Chautauqua community.

The MBS was held just following the summer programming season at Lakeside Chautauqua. If you haven't experienced Lakeside during their summer season, it's quite a wonderful thing. You can learn more here.

 Attendees picked up their goodie bags and name tags at MBS registration in Hoover Auditorium.

 

 

 

During the event, attendees strolled the charming Lakeside Chautuaqua campus from venue to venue.

 Friday and Saturday mornings were reserved for birding at one of our five birding spots staffed with guides. Two species of phalaropes, red knot, golden plover, and golden-winged warbler were among the species of note spotted during the two mornings of birding.

 The MBS is called "the world's friendliest birding event," and judging from the smiling faces of attendees, it lived up to its reputation.

 

Many of our speakers are also authors of important books on birds and nature. On Saturday we held an authors' book signing in South Auditorium. Here, British author Mark Cocker sings a copy of his epic new book Birds and People. 

It's hard to put into words (or electrons in the case of this blog post) just how wonderfully enriching and engaging it is to be a part of The Midwest Birding Symposium. Those of us at BWD have hosted it five (!) times here in Ohio—each time at Lakeside. But this every-other-year event needs to visit other parts of the Midwest, so in 2015 we'll be taking it to Bay City, Michigan. I'll share more details about that in a future post.

The next post here on Bill of the Birds is going to be part two of my MBS 2013 recap.

Top Ten Reasons to Attend the 2013 Midwest Birding Symposium

OK, bird people! Listen up!

Please look at your calendar right now and check the third weekend in September, 2013. Specifically, look at September 19 through 22. How's it look? Clear? Then grab a pen (not a pencil) and write the following in LARGE BLOCK LETTERS over those dates: MIDWEST BIRDING SYMPOSIUM.

Here are 10 reasons why you really need to attend this year's MBS.

10. The MBS only happens every other year, so it's always minty fresh, never stale.

9. We work really hard to make sure that it's The World's Friendliest Birding Event—everyone is welcome, even non-birders! Beginners, especially, are encouraged to come.

We've declared Saturday, September 21, 2013 to be Young Birder's Day—all young birders get in free! Details and registration form are here:

8. We love making connections between bird watchers. Since the 2009 MBS more than 375 marriages have happened as a result of the event. [Not really, but that sounds impressive doesn't it?] Seriously though, everyone makes new friends at the MBS. We guarantee it! If you attend and leave without making at least one new friend, we'll refund your money (please see Reason #1 below).


7. We've arranged for another appearance in 2013 by a Kirtland's warbler. You can see a photo of the Kirtland's that joined us in 2009 here. If the Kirtland's does not make the scene, we've got an passenger pigeon flock on speed dial.

6. Our list of speakers is incredible! We have lots of speakers who will be able to teach you things. And we have even more speakers who will tickle your funny bone and make you laugh, including Al Batt, John Acorn, Alvaro Jaramillo, Julie Zickefoose, John and Cathy Sill, Sharon Stiteler, and George Armistead.


5. Three words: Sunset Boat Cruise! Plus other exciting extra activities.

4. Our Birder's Marketplace features more than 60 vendors, selling everything a bird watcher could possibly want. And then some.

3. Our Conservation Raffle will raise funds for bird habitat acquisition and other worthy conservation causes. The Ohio Ornithological Society has promised to match this funding, up to $5,000! Wow! Items in the raffle include high-end optics, birding festival passes, discounted trips to amazing places like The Canopy Tower in Panama!


2. Being on Lake Erie, on the charming grounds of Lakeside in September is incredibly beautiful —just like being in Tuscany, but with better birding and no language barrier.

1. It only costs $125 to attend the Midwest Birding Symposium. Your last speeding ticket or dinner out was more expensive and less enjoyable. Don't fight the urge. Come join us!

A Spring of Young Birders' Field Trips

I've enjoyed a whirlwind spring and early summer of travel to festivals in various parts of the United States. It's always fun to see old friends, make a few new ones, and experience birding in new and wonderful places. Lots of great birds have passed across my field of view. However, my favorite part of all these spring travels has been the opportunities I've had to get out in the field with lots of young birders.

Back in May I was up at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge in northwest Ohio for International Migratory Bird Day where I've done family bird walks for the past few years. Though the weather was "iffy" we had a nice group of bird watchers show up and we were treated to a mini-fallout of warblers along the trail as well as a great horned owl nest with fledglings in it.

A birding mom shows her daughter the great horned owl nest along the Ottawa NWR walking trail.

 

 

 

Later in May I was a speaker and guide for the Acadia Birding Festival in Maine. We did a family bird walk on Saturday, taking nice long hike along the sea cliffs in Acadia National Park. The birding was just OK but the scenery along the trail was breathtaking! I can highly recommend this festival, by the way, as being the best place in the world to see tons of warblers and tons of seabirds in the same day!

Our family bird walk group in Acadia NP.

Scanning for black guillemots and common eiders in the surf.

In mid-June my family and I were back at the Potholes & Prairie Birding Festival in Carrington, North Dakota. One of the other families attending included Abby and her mom who were from Indiana. While birding along the Sheyenne River valley, I got to show Abby a few life birds, including her first-ever common yellowthroat.

That's me pointing Abby's eyes to the common yellowthroat.

We got the bird and celebrated with a high-five!

At the end of June, I was back in Maine with my family for the Hog Island Audubon Camp, guiding, speaking, and contributing to a new week-long session there called "The Arts of Birding." My "art" contribution was teaching three songwriting workshops during the session. These were super fun and I'll plan to blog about them later. There was a teen birders' camp going on that week, too and we got to spend some time in the field with these fine young people. I even coaxed a couple of them to join me in the songwriting sessions! Our final day of birding was spent on the Maine mainland, birding some wet grasslands and pond habitat owned by the Damariscotta River Association. It was a drizzly, foggy morning, but the birding there was excellent! Nearly everyone got great looks at bobolink, American bittern, pine warbler, and Virginia rail.

Birding the DRA lands in Maine, just before the Virginia rail appeared!

All of us probably had a birding mentor at one point or another—someone who helped us get started as a new bird watcher, taught us bird identification tricks, shared the best birding spots, and—most importantly of all—took us out birding! My birding mentor, Pat Murphy, is long gone from this mortal coil, but I try to honor her memory by being a mentor to young/new birders whenever I can. The world needs more bird watchers! Consider "paying it forward" by getting involved in mentoring young birders. 

There are an increasing number of places/event/organizations that are geared to encouraging young bird watchers. Here are just a few:

ABA Young Birders

Leica Young Birders' Site

Cornell Young Birders' Network

Fledgling Birder's Institute

Hog Island Teen Birding Camps

Young Birders' Day at the 2013 Midwest Birding Symposium

Resources & Clubs for Young Birders

There are many statewide organizations for young birders, such as The Ohio Young Birders, Iowa Young Birders, Indiana Young Birders, and Illinois Young Birders. Try searching for a group in your state via the resources link above, or via a search engine.

Finally, if you know a young person who would benefit from a starter field guide specifically designed for young birders, please consider my Young Birder's Guide to Birds of North America.

I've written and edited a lot of books, but this one is closest to my heart and my proudest professional accomplishment. The book is available for sale at most bookstores—both online and off—but if you purchase from Bird Watcher's Digest, I will personalize the book with an inscription of your choice for the recipient.

Happy birding to all!

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!