A repost from March 31, 2018. Hope you enjoy!
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| A vestige of autumn--a sweetgum ball--hanging on a limb with new spring leaf buds. Note the spring foliage in the background, as well. |
If you’ve been a birder for a while, then data that you collected in previous years can serve as a guide to what birds you might expect to see on any given day in the spring. That said, there is also an element of unpredictability, which helps to keep things exciting. After my walk, I started thinking about my early days as a birder: what sorts of observations had I made on this date, several years ago? I looked through some of my old field notebooks to find out!
Revisiting these old notes turned out to be more interesting than I anticipated. Since I started birdwatching in May 2000, the first spring in which I really paid attention to birds was 2001. As it turns out, I did bird on March 31, 2001. I was with other Okatibbee Creek Audubon Society birders at Tallahala Wildlife Management Area, in Bienville National Forest. This was a noteworthy day for me because I not only saw Wild Turkeys during the car trip to Tallahala, but I spotted my first-ever Belted Kingfisher—a male bird (lacking rust-red belly strap of the female) perched on a power line over a pool of water, just north of Meridian. It’s a common species, yes, but it was a “life bird” for me back then, and I remember how cool it was that I could see the white dot in front of the kingfisher’s eye and the bristly crest on the somewhat comically oversized, slate blue head.
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| This kingfisher was photographed on December 31, 2015 at Choctaw Lake, MS. Similar position on the wire, but viewed from the back, unlike my "lifer" Belted Kingfisher. |
I wasn’t able to see very much on the actual field trip, unfortunately—I suppose that I had yet to develop the birder’s skill of tracking down tiny, fast-moving songbirds moving through tall trees and tangled branches. My birding mentor pointed out the thin, high-pitched songs of a few newly-arrived migratory species, including Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Northern Parula, and Black-and-white Warbler, but since I wasn’t very good with birdsong identification, either, I didn’t end up adding those species to my life list until quite a while later. It was still a pleasant trip, though, in part because the woods were so beautiful with all of the trees either in blossom or just leafing out, and wildflowers filling in the sunny gaps on the forest floor. On the drive back from Tallahala, I saw a Wood Duck (another lifer, technically, although I had definitely observed this species a number of times before I became a birder), Great Egrets, and Barn Swallows. Not bad for a beginner, I guess!
March 31 wound up being significant again during the next year, 2002. By that point, I had studied bird sounds from both the old Thayer birding software and a CD of 50 common species recorded by Lang Elliott, so I was much better at auditory identification of birds. I was eager to put my new abilities to use, so I got up early in the morning and spent some time waiting for migratory songbirds at the edge of the woods on my family’s property in Collinsville. Although I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, I had a feeling that the mixed, shrubby woods on our land might be good for Black-and-white Warblers at this time of year. Sure enough, after five minutes or so, I heard the squeaky wee-see-wee-see-wee-see song of a male Black-and-white. I spished loudy, and the warbler came closer to investigate. Another life bird!
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| It looked just like this Black-and-white Warbler that I photographed in Arkansas on March 25, 2014. The northwestern Arkansas woods were nowhere near as green at that time as springtime Mississippi woods, though. |
Interestingly, I also saw a pair of Wood Ducks flying through the backyard on this day, exactly a year after my “life bird” sighting in 2001. We didn’t have ponds on the property, but a few of the neighbors did. Even so, Wood Ducks coming through the yard were definitely not a daily occurrence.
Although I birded even more during 2003 than I had in previous years, I don’t have any field notes from the specific date of March 31, 2003. March 31, 2004, however, has an entry. By this time, I was living in Macon, Mississippi, so the progression of spring migrants may have been a day or two behind that of the more southerly Collinsville. The habitat was different too—much more open and orchard-like. And, of course, every year brings slightly different weather, which can affect bird migration. On March 31, 2004, the weather was cool and windy. I saw the usual resident Brown Thrashers, Northern Mockingbirds, and Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers—very similar to my March 31 list for this year, actually!
Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets flew overhead during the day, though, and there were also two Yellow-crowned Night-Herons early in the evening. Night-herons—and Yellow-crowned Night-Herons in particular—usually are not found in northeastern Mississippi throughout the year, but instead arrive there in the spring and depart in the fall.
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| Brown Thrasher -- March 30, 2018 |
Other migrants on this day in 2004 were Cedar Waxwings, in a flock of about 10, and Blue-gray Gnatcatchers—one species about to check out and head northward to nest, the other just arriving to nest in Mississippi. Going and coming. As you may remember, those species made my 2018 list, as well. Is it a surprising coincidence? Not really. Both of these birds are typicallly quite common this time of year. Still, it’s both fascinating and rewarding to see these patterns and connections in birdlife over the years. If you have older field notes of your own, or access to someone else’s old records, I strongly recommend taking the time to look at them anew.
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| Blue-gray Gnatcatcher April 12, 2014, in Arkansas. The species is very common in the breeding season. |
