The Early Birder

When it is hot and steamy, as it has been in my part of New Jersey this week, it is imperative to get out in the cooler early morning if you want to do anything, in my case look for birds.

Baltimore oriole, Old Mine Road, 2020 (RE Berg-Andersson)

It was easier for me to do that in early May when the migrants were passing through, providing me with hope of finding birds I hadn't seen for a while or at all. At that point there were cold mornings and the leaves hadn't come out completely, making it easier for me to see anything moving in the trees.

Now, however, we are in June. The birds are sitting on eggs or raising families and keeping quiet. The leaves are out fully and to find birds I have to listen hard. It is more humid and the bugs are hungry.

There are more people birding now, according to the New York Times, which has published a number of articles recently by some experts telling city people now stuck at home because of the coronavirus about the birds they've been hearing and seeing. I have mixed feelings about all those potential new birders out in the field. On one hand, more noisy people in my way. On the other, maybe they'll keep their dogs leashed in natural areas and their children quiet and respectful. 

That was my hope at 10 a.m. on June 1 when a tired MH and I started our drive down Old Mine Road from its northern end in Sussex County, NJ, our first big road trip since the pandemic began. (It takes an hour to get there from our house and two hours for MH to get himself fully awake and ready to roll.)

Old Mine Road is an Important Birding Area because a large number of different types of birds come into this northern, elevated corner of the state to breed. Some of them are birds that are hard to find, including the threatened cerulean warbler, a sky blue and white bird with a buzzy call. A lot of birds call their territorial songs along this old mining road where there are abandoned structures (perfect nesting sites for wrens and phoebes), remnants of old villages and some private homes not part of the surrounding federal Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. The road was once much longer but now one end is at Route 206 in Sussex County, just before a toll bridge into Pennsylvania. The southern part of the road, in Warren County, goes through Worthington State Forest and ends near the last exit on Interstate 80 in New Jersey.

We come here once a year, the earlier the better to hear the bird chorus. We could not come here in mid-May because when the governor allowed state parks to reopen the crowds of housebound people yearning to get out were intense. So we waited until June 1, when I had taken some time off, the weather was relatively cool and dry and, I hoped, there'd be fewer people out on a weekday.

Redtail hawk over Old Mine Road, 2020
(RE Berg-Andersson)

It is frustrating, thrilling and ultimately tiring for me to be driving this road slowly and listening hard. Many of the birds are loud and easy to hear and identify - American redstart, ovenbird, red-eyed vireo. Some require me to stop and get out of the car to listen - the yellow-throated vireo or the scarlet tanager or the weesy-weesy call of the black and white warbler. We heard hooded warbler and Baltimore oriole, indigo bunting and Carolina wren. Many of the birds I find at home were also here, near the cleared land of former settlements - robins, catbirds, house wrens, chipping and song sparrows. I was amazed we ultimately heard or saw 50 types of birds.

But it could've been more, and that is frustrating. Some areas we were not going to hike into. Some birds are too quiet to hear from a moving car. Some stretches of the road had cars doing the 35 mph speed limit (or higher) while I was doing 20, forcing me to speed up to find a place where I could safely pull over. As time went on the birds went quiet as the car traffic increased. I never did hear a cerulean (although according to various bird reports from that day there could've been as many as five along the road).

This year's house wren, as close as I could get with my phone, 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

We spent five hours on the road. Once we got into the state park section the road condition deteriorated and going the mandatory 15 mph was not hard to do, unless you wanted to break an axle (which many drivers apparently wanted to do). This part of the road is where more birders tend to be, walking the road or in cars pulled off to the side. I was surprised to find the southernmost parking lot, where we'd planned to switch positions for the drive home, was jammed with cars. (It was even worse at the nearby visitor center lot at the Delaware Water Gap.) I was glad we had started from the other end but, as usual, I wished we could've started far earlier in the morning. The early birder gets the birds.

Now that it's hotter, I go out early but generally I am staying closer to home. It took longer than usual for a house wren pair to set up housekeeping in my nest box but one has finally come and the male is singing steadily in the apple tree, which is already filled with developing fruit.