Here’s the start of a new birdsofnewengland.com mini series called Singing in the Spring. It will feature, all together now, birds singing in the spring. The posts will appear randomly throughout this spring.
I’ll kick it off with an eastern towhee. Although a member of the sparrow family, which features mostly small brownish birds, the towhee is larger and much more decorated.
Palm warblers have been by far the most visible spring migrants on my walks lately. Along with pine warblers and yellow-rumped warblers, palm warblers are one of the earliest returning warblers to New England. If you see a small yellow bird pumping its tail constantly, it’s probably a palm warbler.
My first warbler (a pine warbler) showed up on March 31. Here are numbers two and three for the year: yellow-rumped warbler and palm warbler, both seen today (Friday, April 11, 2025). More to come in the weeks ahead!
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Pine warblers and palm warblers are typically the earliest warblers to arrive in New England in the spring. This year, the pines showed earlier than usual (at least in my estimation.) I found at least two pine warblers yesterday (March 31, 2025) at Huntington State Park in southern Connecticut. Here’s hoping the rest of the spring migration is as good.
Drop me a line and let me know what you’re seeing out there.
This guy showed up at my feeder a few days ago, marking the first time I’ve seen a red-winged blackbird at my feeder in many years. Today, during a walk, I saw dozens and dozens of male red-winged blackbirds, mostly flying overhead. Males show up a few weeks before females to scout out territories. The familiar sounds of red-winged blackbirds are back. The spring migration is under way.
Here are a few more photos to accompany my latest bird column. Here’s the column in case you missed it.
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It was one of the better spring migrations I’ve had in a long time. I got out there more than in previous years and visited a greater variety of places.
The big week, of course, was the visit to Erie, Pennsylvania, during the peak of the migration season. I was there for my niece’s wedding but arrived several days in advance of the event to stay with my brother and visit Presque Isle State Park, a birding hot spot. We saw over 70 species of birds over the three separate visits.
I also hit my local New England spots several times a week during migration, starting in late March and going into June. It’s always interesting to see how the spring migration starts with a trickle of very few species and peaks with several dozen species all moving through at once.
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When the peak of your favorite hobby lasts only a few weeks each year, you better make the most of that time.
For birdwatchers, that is spring. Specifically, the last week of April and the first two weeks of May. Of course, the spring migration started many weeks ago and will last into June, but the sweet spot is those few weeks.
As luck would have it this year, my niece planned her wedding for mid-May. The wedding was held in my old hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania. I didn’t know it when I was growing up, but Presque Isle State Park in Erie is one of the top birdwatching destinations in the country. Presque Isle is a peninsula jutting into Lake Erie and, in addition to the many birds that nest there, several others use the land as a stopover before crossing over into Canada.
Instead of going home for a long weekend, I took the week off and made a vacation of it. I visited the park for several hours on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Each day I saw something a little different. On Monday’s walk, I saw 51 different species. I did not keep track on Tuesday’s walk as I wanted to focus on photographing some of the warblers.
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Visions of warblers, tanagers, orioles and grosbeaks may dance in the heads of birdwatchers in May, but the woods and fields are filled with a myriad of other types of birds as well.
While birds such as vireos and flycatchers continue to fascinate (and confuse) me, it has been thrushes that have captured a large portion of my attention so far this spring.
Wood thrushes in particular have been plentiful and conspicuous on my walks. By conspicuous, I mean I hear their flute-like songs several times as I wander through the woods. They can be amazingly difficult to find even as the song makes it seem like the bird is right in front of you. My actual find rate on wood thrushes is embarrassingly low — about on par with my batting average from my high school baseball days.
When I do find the bird, I can’t help but stand there and marvel at it. How can that awesomely musical song come from a relatively nondescript bird about seven inches long? Lang Elliot, who is well-known for his bird recordings, wrote: “The song of the wood thrush is undeniably one of the most beautiful of all forest melodies.”
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Here’s a magnolia warbler I encountered during a recent gray morning.
Birds of New England.com 