Not a Very Warm Welcome
Minnesota's frigid May was hard on birds.
(Listen to the radio version here.)
I love birding in my own backyard, especially during spring migration. Seeing and, sometimes even more thrillingly, hearing new arrivals is magical.
Up here, migration is ever so slow in March, picks up in April, and swells to a magnificent crescendo in May. When I’m home every day, I don’t miss a thing and can keep up with my feeders and birdbaths, keeping everyone healthy and happy.
But tragically, as far as backyard birding goes, May is the month when a lot of birding festivals and other cool events take place. Last year, I was gone the first third of the month because I received an amazing invitation to go on a tour of Guyana. Wonderful as my own backyard is, how could I possibly say no to that?!
Every single day from May 2–May 9, I saw birds not merely new for the year but new for my life—a minimum of 5 lifers each day, 20 or more on a few days, and an amazing 31 on May 7!
I got home on May 9 and spent the rest of the month right here on Peabody Street, seeing plenty of birds migrating through my backyard.
This year, I left on May 5th and spent every day through the 17th away from home, attending the Biggest Week in American Birding festival in Oak Harbor, Ohio, where I connected with beloved birds…
…treasured old friends…
…and brand new friends.
From the Biggest Week, I drove to Madison for the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology’s annual meeting, making stops to visit the Indiana Dunes and to spend an evening with my dear high school English teacher, Jane Lucas.
I got home late on the 17th, and the very next morning Russ and I drove to Rochester. Katie was getting a stem cell harvest at the Mayo, and we helped with Walter while she was getting tests and preliminary stuff; we brought him back to Duluth on the 21st.
So I missed a lot of this year’s spring migration. For the first time in years, I didn’t see a single Harris’s or Clay-colored Sparrow, Veery, or Gray-cheeked Thrush in my yard, and I missed some amazing birds in Duluth while I was gone, like a Painted Bunting who was around for several days, last seen just before we made it home from Rochester.
I missed a lot of exceptionally cold weather, but came home to plenty more. (It was pretty cold in Ohio, Indiana, and Chicago as well.) And even when temperatures started reaching the 80s and 90s in much of the state, it stayed much cooler in my Lakeside neighborhood, making migration late enough that many birds should have been coming through after I was home paying attention. I felt sad about how few birds there were.
Oddly enough, even as local reports included vagrant Summer Tanagers and extremely rare Western Tanagers—I got to see one of those at the end of April!—there were very few reports of the tanager that belongs here—the Scarlet Tanager. The only abundant migrant in my yard the last week of May was the Cape May Warbler—my oriole feeders were inundated with them.
This happens regularly during cold Mays, but usually when I’m getting lots of Cape Mays, I’m also getting Scarlet Tanagers. But the only Scarlet Tanager I’ve seen so far this year was in Madison, Wisconsin.
It wasn’t just being gone so long that made me miss so many birds up here. Based on a lot of other birders’ info, this desperately cold May made migration pretty dismal throughout the area. We did have some cool rarities show up here and there, but there simply were not many of the birds that should have been passing through in big numbers.
Distressingly, my own yard has been thick with starlings, who are having a banner year—bazillions of fledglings are begging everywhere. I also have way too many pigeons. When I’m working at my desk, I wave my arms to shoo starlings and pigeons away, but if I go downstairs for even a short time, they clean out the feeder, so I leave it empty if I’m not there to watch, and don’t put much in there when I am around.
One Red-headed Woodpecker visited for a few days. I was happy to see it but was glad it didn’t stick around. Last summer a pair excavated a nest hole a few blocks away on Peabody Street, produced eggs, and had been incubating them for a few days when starlings took over. If I was devastated, imagine how those poor woodpeckers felt.
At least one pair each of Northern Flickers and both Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers are nesting in or close to my yard, and the unbanded male Pileated Woodpecker and his unbanded mate must also have a nest somewhere not too far away—one or both show up at least once a day.
Oddly enough, on June 1, I still had a couple of Cape May Warblers, and even as I was starting to write this on June 2, a few Tennessee Warblers were still visiting my oriole feeder, though they spent almost all their time in blooming fruit trees where tiny insects abound; that’s where I also spotted an extremely late Yellow-rumped Warbler. One gorgeous male Baltimore Oriole was here through the 2nd, singing persistently. Like the warblers, he didn’t come to the feeders much after natural food was everywhere. I watched for a female but didn’t see one after Memorial Day weekend. Orioles haven’t nested in my neck of the woods since the 80s, so I wasn’t surprised when the male disappeared on the 3rd.
It was 43º outside when I woke up on June 2 and the afternoon temp barely made it to 59º. Most days recently it’s been dry and windy—not at all a warm welcome for insectivorous migrants; insect activity and rates of insect reproduction speed up in warmer temperatures with higher rainfall. This also means that conditions are bad for many of our nesting birds during the narrow window of time each year that neotropical migrants can reproduce.
I’m of course enjoying my catbirds, hummingbirds, chickadees, and Blue Jays, but the lackluster migration left my heart heavy with a sense of foreboding. Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. I’m clinging to that.
Chipmunks may not have feathers, but I can’t feel too sad watching one stuff his cheeks. (This one is Bizzy, my spunky little male Eastern Chipmunk.)
We have had a good migration May in Ann Arbor, seeing a lot of Tennessee Warblers, the occasional Cape May Warbler, and a lot of Baltimore Orioles. The Ruby-throated Hummingbirds showed up a couple of weeks ago.
Clay-colored was in Two Harbors this morning, along the gravel road between the Edna G. and the new water treatment plant.