May is the Holy Month of Migration

May is Migration

 May, for birders on the East Coast, is the holy month. Migration is in full swing and while I am excited about the expected migrants, I’m also on the lookout for unexpected birds. And to see them or find them I have to get up, early. I always get up at 2:30 in the morning on May 10 for the dawn chorus at Thompson Pond, as FDR did on May 10 in 1942. This year, I was joined by my sister, who is not a birder but was willing to rise in the dark and greet the damp overcast morning. It was a quieter dawn chorus, and even she recognized it: “I thought it would be louder,” she said. And it should have been. Was it the rain? Or was it the cold that kept the birds a bit muted? Perhaps. But overall, my sense was this migration was both quieter and odder than any I had experienced. There were fewer of the “regulars” like the Black-throated Green or Black-throated Blue Warblers, and there were no surprises, no rare birds mixed into this migration for me.

But! I refuse to tilt toward disaster because there is enough of that in the world. I paddled out regularly to visit the Least Bittern that are tip-toing around the Bays, as well as Spotted Sandpipers bouncing about the flats. It was maybe the most social May I’ve had in a long time, joined in the field by new (enthusiastic!) birders, young birders, sharp-eared birders. That young energy gives me hope.

Dawn in Pine Plains during May Census

Least Bittern in the North Tivoli Bay

Listening for birds on Cruger Island (Hudson River)

Zade Pacetti, Chip Blake, Christina Baal, Ryan MacLean (youth, experience, and hope)