Hello Birders,

In northwest Ohio (where the Midwest Birding Symposium starts in less than a week), the fall warbler migration is in full swing, shorebird migration is still going strong, flycatchers and vireos are numerous, and thrushes are starting to show up in good numbers. It’s a great time of year to be birding here.

The famous boardwalk at Magee Marsh Wildlife Area is not as fabulous in fall as it is in spring, but it still can be very good.Today (Thursday Sept. 8) I made a brief visit at midday to see what I could find in the space of an hour, and I came up with dozens of warblers, of 12 species, plus Least and Yellow-bellied flycatchers, Swainson’s Thrush, Red-eyed, Warbling, and Philadelphia vireos, and Yellow-billed Cuckoo.The warblers included multiples of Bay-breasted, Blackpoll, and Tennessee (allowing good practice on these classic “confusing fall warblers”) as well as numbers of American Redstarts and Magnolia and Black-throated Green warblers, plus Nashville, Chestnut-sided, Cape May, Black-and-white, Canada, and Northern Parula.Again, this was just in the space of an hour, and there were undoubtedly other species present.I talked to Ken Grahl, who birds the boardwalk regularly, and he mentioned having seen at least 18 warbler species there in the last few days.

As is typical of this time of year, the warblers were strongly concentrated in a few scattered flocks.During today’s hour near the west end of the boardwalk, I ran into only three good-sized flocks, and there were essentially no warblers at all in between these flocks.This pattern of occurrence suggests this strategy: keep moving until you catch some hint of a flock, and then stop and stay with the flock until you’ve seen everything in it.

At this season it’s also good to keep an eye out for dogwoods.The Rough-leaved Dogwoods in the Magee area are recognizable now by their clusters of small white fruits, and these fruits are very attractive to vireos and thrushes, among other birds.These dogwoods are mostly less than 12 feet tall, so the birds visiting them are down close to eye level, and it’s often possible to get excellent close views of Swainson’s Thrushes or of Red-eyed, Warbling, or Philadelphia vireos by watching at heavily laden dogwoods.

It’s also important to pay attention to wind direction.Most of these small migrants will gravitate to the sheltered side of the woods, out of the wind, where small insects are easier to find.At the Magee boardwalk, when there’s a strong southerly wind, birds are often along the north side of the woods, adjacent to the parking lot.Today the wind was from the east, and birds were concentrated at the sheltered west end of the boardwalk. For another example: A couple of days ago, on Tuesday the 6th, the wind was strongly out of the north; on that day, relatively few migrants were in the woods near the beach.However, on that day Mark Shieldcastle and Ken Keffer banded eight species of warblers at the Black Swamp Bird Observatory headquarters. On that same day, John Sawvel reported that quite a few warblers and other migrants came to the water feature outside BSBO’s window on wildlife.BSBO is a mile south of the lake and more sheltered from north winds, so the greater concentration of migrants there was about as expected under those conditions.

One final tip for anyone birding the Magee Marsh boardwalk: after windy, rainy days, there are a lot of fallen wet leaves on the boardwalk, and they can be extremely slippery!Another good reason to move slowly and tread with care.But there are a lot of birds around now, and if you’re in the area, this weekend might be a good time to practice your fall warbler skills at Magee.
Kenn Kaufman
Editor, Kaufman Field Guides series
http://www.kaufmanfieldguides.com/
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