Apps

• Merlin (EN) / Merlin (ES) - ID via live audio or photos; download data pack for your region

• eBird Mobile / ebird Móvil / eBird pour appareils mobiles / 이버드 모바일 / eBird para dispositivos móveis - log birds you see/hear in checklists; limited interface with Merlin

Books & Articles

• Noah Strycker - Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World (2017) - shoestring & sustainable global big year

• Jennifer Ackerman - The Genius of Birds (2017), The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think (2021), What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds (2024) - top pop sci writer on all things birds

• Jon Young, What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World (2013) - learning bird communication

• David Sibley - What It’s Like To Be a Bird (2020) - self-explanatory

• Amy Tan, The Backyard Bird Chronicles (2024) - Joy Luck Club author

• Animal Language Processing (ALP) - recent article on AI approach to unraveling non-human speech

• Olivia Gentile, Life List: A Woman’s Quest for the World’s Most Amazing Birds (2010) - Bio of Phoebe Snetsinger; 1-yr-to-live turned into birding obsession

• Kenn Kaufman, Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder (2006) - most iconic US big year tale

• Roger Tory Peterson, A Field Guide to the Birds (1st edition in 1934, many editions since)

Websites

• ABA Code of Birding Ethics - American Birding Association

• eBird (18 languages, 10,983 species, 253 countries+territories, 1.34 million users

• Birds of the World (CornellLab, subscription) - authoritative guide to 11,167 species + 99 million audio/video resources from the Macaulay Library

• All About Birds (CornellLab, free) - online guide to birds and birding

• National Audubon Society - numerous educational & conservation resources

• Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds (CornellLab Bird Academy) - Verified calls/songs of US birds; use to verify Merlin IDs

• BirdCast (CornellLab) - weather radar used to track migratory bird movements (US)

• xeno-canto - ‘sharing wildlife sounds from around the world’

• iNaturalist - naturalist community; upload photos-get IDs-give IDs; via app

Videos

• The Big Year (2011, trailer) - only major studio film on birding, with Jack Black, Steve Martin, & Owen Wilson

• After 20 Years, This Scientist Proved Birds Can Talk and Use Grammar (A Curious Birb)

• Listers : A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching (Owen Reiser, 2025) - hands-down best docu on birding (rated M for Mature)

• How Honeyguide Birds Talk To People - glimpse into co-evolved language between wild birds and people

On Sunday, May 17, it’s already 61 degrees at 5 AM, and night movers continue to number in the millions. Even in town, there’s the sour smell of sewage from the other side of the Gap on an unusual easterly. By 5:07, on the slopes above the tracks, Scarlet Tanagers are starting up. A Killdeer flies low overhead, crying, toward town. Activated like everything else in the new warmth, spiders have closed in the narrow passage up the first part of the knife-edge, covering me in silk.

The woods are still dominated by myriad vocalizations of female and male American Redstarts above all else, though with a larger proportion of breeders and fewer passersby; perhaps the available territories are finally used up. I have to wonder if the sharp rise in redstarts is somehow related to the noticeable dip in Cerulean Warblers this year.

As the canopy fills in with leaves and green bursts out at every level, the towering forest along Grosbeak Trail looks more and more like the tropical rain forests the new arrivals spend most of their year in. A decent number of Eastern Wood-Pewees and Acadian Flycatchers, the last arriving breeders, are about. A Canada Warbler sings insistently in one of the steepest ravines, but it definitely won’t breed here at our low elevations. Farther along, in the usual witch hazel understory, an unseen Yellow-bellied Flycatcher calls, one of a trickle that spend brief periods here before arriving to northern bogs. Meanwhile, White-throated Sparrows and Ruby-crowned Kinglets are noticeably absent, part of the massive decline in overall numbers during the second half of May.

The Kentucky Warbler is singing less now, but he’s still around in the same spot, so I think breeding remains a strong possibility. Last year, one (perhaps the same?) only stuck around a few days before leaving, but this one’s been here since the beginning of the month.

At the spruce grove, I intersect a large wave of late-season warblers on the move toward the taiga; they’re dominated by Bay-breasted Warblers in the dozens, including a female who pops out to sing. Among the locusts, Least Flycatchers, part of a big push this year, are chebec-ing non-stop.

Oddly, though I can also hear the soft staccato of Blackpoll Warblers, not a single one is visible, even while Hooded, Magnolia, Tennessee, Blackburnian, Cape May, Black-throated Blue, and others are obvious and nearly tame. In the background, down where the black locusts meet the thicker deciduous woods on Sapsucker Ridge, a Mourning Warbler sings. I text Connor, a local birder who’s been at this for just a couple years, and he arrives not long after I’m gone, happily adding the species to his life list. Mourning, along with Kentucky and Connecticut warblers, Philadelphia Vireo, and Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, are Plummer’s Hollow specialties of sorts, easier to see, or at least hear, in our hotspot than in most places. Or, at least, that seems to be the reason we’ve been somewhat inundated by local birders this May (dozens, in any case).

Hawking

Prelude to a heatwave, the evening sky off the balcony is clouded with bugs. It doesn’t quite hit me what is going on until I watch a Chimney Swift double back in mid-hurdle to snap at something. I’m not quite sure how the sudden deceleration needed for the tight S-curve works in terms of basic physics, but as I’ve seen swifts fly about in lightning storms, I figure anything’s possible. Less spectacularly, ungainly European Starlings are hawking like swallows, gulping down anything they can grab, bobbing and floating about all over the sky. A resident Eastern Phoebe positions itself on a high twig and launches itself nearly straight up, again and again, typical behavior for a flycatcher. A bit odder is similar behavior from a female House Sparrow, and then from a Blue Jay.

To the north, the sunlit sky is dotted with swifts and local Turkey Vultures; among the swifts, a Common Nighthawk also flops about in the midst of the feast. A Green Heron lifts up silently from the creek behind the row of sheds in front of me, barely clearing the balcony. As dusk approaches, a pair of Common Mergansers, likely nesting close by, heads through the Gap—a rare sighting this time of year.

And then, a Blackpoll again, gentle staccato, ts-ts-ts-ts-ts-ts, invisible, somewhere in the dense growth along the river, not more than a dozen yards from me.

Five million+

When I get a chance to go over the tape, the warm-up turns out to have predictably coincided with a rush of species: Friday night was strange shorebirds like the first Short-billed Dowitchers in a couple years, and the rasp of a Caspian Tern. Saturday night, unsurprisingly considering what I found Sunday morning, was mostly warblers.

Monday morning, 4,857,800 birds have transited Blair County, heading northeast, by 4 AM, as the final descent begins. The BirdCast total reaches just over 5 million individuals before it’s over with. The peak was at 11:30 PM, with a mind-boggling 477,000 in flight at one time over the county. I drive up to save time, reaching the garage by 4:30, a few minutes in advances of the chorus. Some quick calculations based on bird direction and the width of the hotspot: I think we got about 100,000 going over, many low enough to be heard, though of course numerous species do not vocalize in flight. I’ll see the tape later; in the mean time…

By 5 AM, with the temperature at 60 and muggy (heading toward 90), 12 species are already detectable. A local Yellow-billed Cuckoo sets off a Black-billed Cuckoo; Field Sparrows, Common Yellowthroats, and Gray Catbirds grow louder and louder; a Common Raven screams once. Both an Ovenbird and a Scarlet Tanager emit nightsongs from the nearby woods. Eastern Towhee, then Tree Swallows from the new nesting pair hunting in the twilight by 5:05. Wood Thrush. An unfortunate clatter from the forsythia next to the garage signals the emergence of a catbird so loud it starts to drown out the rest of the chorus.

Finally, at the late hour of 5:18 AM, the local Eastern Whip-poor-will lets loose, moving close around the yards, inundating everything else. Species # 18.

I start a limited saunter around the closest field and woods edge, passing through pockets of warmer air and an odd perfume smell from some distant factory or laundromat. New species chime in quickly, and by 6 AM, with the sun already on the treetops, the list stands at 51 with the addition of a Tennessee Warbler. I believe this is the first time I’ve ever been able to detect 50+ this early.

Back at home, I rush through the night’s tape before work, and it’s just as I thought: some 80% or more of the vocalizations are Swainson’s Thrushes. Had I been standing in the spruce grove rather than in the field, I would no doubt have heard several, as they, along with a scattering of Gray-cheeked Thrushes, another late Amazon arrival (the jungle, not the corp), prefer to bed down there during spring passage (along with Veeries and Hermit Thrushes, both much diminished but still on the move, and the ever-present Wood Thrushes). I’ve no time to count, but I estimate some 80,000 Swainson’s passed over, of which upwards of 5,000 are probably on the tape. A few dozen, minimum, will spend a day or two in the hotspot. This was the first really big (probably the biggest) SWTH day of the spring, and they’ll likely be the only migrant to make it past June 10th, the last of all, long after everything else.

The tape shows blessedly few redstarts, more Short-billed Dowitchers, another Least Bittern, that most cryptic of migrants, and even a clear Great-crested Flycatcher song. So far this year, crystal-clear flight songs of all the flycatchers have showed up, except for the apparently mute Olive-sided. Willows have been particularly in evidence.

Swallow hunt

The next day, with the heatwave still on, I start at the powerline in hopes of a chat (no luck). It’s in the 60s and breezy, with patchy fog in the valley, and a couple whip-poor-wills calling. A few more millions went over last night, and it’s not hard to guess what most of them were. At least one Eastern Screech-Owl trills; this species is more in evidence than the Great Horned, which disappears almost entirely in May. Barred Owls, meanwhile, caterwaul from both the spruce grove and the Greenbriar Trail area—we have healthy families in both locations this year, and multiple sightings of owlets.

At 4:30 AM on the 20th, coming back from the gym, I hear but barely see Northern Rough-winged Swallows chirping brokenly as they hunt up and under the street lights. When I look at the tape later, I find that a loud Barn Swallow was hunting in the field near the garage at the same time, along with the first Purple Martins from Sinking Valley up for breakfast, and the local Tree Swallow. These expert bug hunters seem to know exactly where to go and choose the best hours to do so; by daylight, the Barn and the martins are long gone.

After hearing a loud Yellow-throated Warbler recently across from the gate, a ptential breeder (no dice, for the umpteenth year), I do a quick walk along the railroad ROW in what remains of the heatwave. Around 6 AM, I spot a pair of Canada Geese standing nervously in the river, as a flock of 19 coasts loudly overhead, more of those May bachelors. No Yellow-throated Warbler, but the consolation prize is a Northern Waterthrush, another lingering late-May species that almost certainly won’t try to breed here.

And then the heavens open and the heatwave draws to a rapid conclusion. Days of cool and rain await as the southerly flow is choked off entirely, allowing at best a tiny trickle of migrants to move. Most of the unusual species over the next week will likely be local arrivals in search of better territories.

Sometime in the afternoon, Pepe and I watch an adult Bald Eagle spiral down from the storm clouds as the rain becomes too much. It seems to want to land in the parking lot but opts for the confluence beach instead, just out of sight.

Blackpolled

The next day, rainy and cool, I hear that familiar staccato again, as I’ve been hearing it every day from the balcony. This time it comes from a small, avenue-side pear tree just outside my office window, but still I can’t see the bird. Throughout the day, in front and back along the river, it goes on and on as it waits for the next south wind.

A few things make it through, like a late American Bittern at 9:33 PM, not long after an presumably local American Woodcock, unheard since April, finally calls again in the field, signaling, I would guess, that a new stage of its life cycle has begun (second brood?). At 10:18 PM, a Semipalmated Plover flock, forced low due to the rainy weather, goes over. It takes a full minute, with individuals close by and others farther away; I’d guess the flock contains dozens or even hundreds of them:

At 4 AM, an American Robin plants itself square in the middle of an empty Pennsylvania Avenue, singing its heart out.

Bottled up

Saturday the 23rd brings heavy rain, but Sunday clears enough to allow an early hike up top. The first sound, a Song Sparrow, doesn’t register until 4:56 AM due to the heavy cloud cover and spitting rain. A light flight of some 29,000 birds over the county last night dictates a certain late-month desperation to get on territory, and there’s an off chance the handful of missing Plummer’s Hollow species might be on the tape or in the woods somewhere.

Birds are bottled up after days of adverse weather. The spruce grove is alive with Magnolia Warblers and Swainson’s Thrushes, and different Mourning Warblers are singing from two points along the upper edge of First Field. Beyond the field’s northern corner, a Kentucky Warbler is singing in the deep woods, a different one from the presumed breeder. Far off down Roseberry Hollow, a Yellow-breasted Chat calls, first and perhaps only of 2026. Back in town, a Ring-billed Gull flies about incongruously among the multi-story brick buildings. Birders heading toward Plummer’s Hollow to search out another Yellow-bellied Flycatcher are delayed by a Whimbrel in a local flooded field, which gives me hope that one might pop up on the tape.

The next morning, Dave’s Merlin picks up a new-to-him song, three-beers: an Olive-sided Flycatcher, last of the expected spring passerines, pausing for a new second atop a snag, maybe one of the decaying black locusts by the house.

The next wave hits during the night of May 26-27 with renewed southerly flow, but now, after a week’s delay, only around a million go over the county, again, mostly Swainson’s Thrushes. A few Green Herons chirp now and then, in a sparse year for them. More Grasshopper Sparrows whisper over, in a banner migration year for them that commenced almost two months ago. A lone nighthawk calls twice at 12:11 AM, some Spotted Sandpipers, always the commonest shorebird, a Savannah Sparrow, a Canada Warbler, and a very nice Willow Flycatcher at 1:54 AM:

The only real indication I have of all this, from my dawn balcony perch, is a once-heard Black-throated Blue Warbler.

Once again, the missing common shorebirds don’t show, so the year list for Plummer’s Hollow stays at 194, #5 for Pennsylvania. May numbers are also good, with 154 species, #6. With all the extra effort for Blair County on the eve of the Pennsylvania Society for Ornithology conference/festival here in a few weeks, we stand at #13 out of 67, not quite where we wanted to be, but way ahead of where we’ve been at any year in the past.

Preachers

Finally, on Wednesday, May 27th, the soft staccato is no longer there. In all that time, I never saw him (her?), and their absence closes the chapter, as it does most years, on the obvious and visible part of the spring migration. Even with a few respectable May nights left, arriving or transient migrants will be more of the same and it won’t be easy to tell anymore if they are locals or passersby.

At 6:24 AM on Wednesday, two local Cooper’s Hawks circle lazily together over downtown and drift off northward, toward the towers, barely evoking any reaction from circling swifts. A few minutes later, a Wood Thrush, of all things, lands in the nearest sycamore and sings once, very loudly. This is the first time I can remember one doing this; they nest close by, but in the deep woods above the interstate.

On Thursday I head up quickly to the spruce grove to see if any migrants are still around, after another birder, Mike, saw a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher here last evening, as well as a Blackpoll Warbler. The only out-of-place bird is a quiet Hermit Thrush under the spruce boughs, which makes me wonder, as I do every year, whether this species breeds here.

The tape shows a new phenomenon: A local Red-eyed Vireo, singing softly all night long for the last several nights. While we of course have night-singing cuckoos, Field Sparrows, Ovenbirds, and several others, they don’t tend to stray into mimic territory and go on non-stop (chats, catbirds, and mockingbirds also are known to go all night). For whatever reason, this vireo, perhaps unsuccessful at finding a mate in the day, has insomnia.

During the day, from the balcony, two Red-eyed Vireos are an ever-present drone of the breeding season. Far outnumbering all other breeding species in the woods, these “preacher birds” sing so often that they become background noise.

Prelude to June: food-on-demand

On Friday, a full balcony prowl nearly reaches 40 species, with no obvious migrants, though a quick visit by an invisible Orchard Oriole is a bit suspect. Starling and Common Grackle chicks are now rasping, an American Robin is shoveling food down a spotted fledgling’s gullet over by the confluence, and the local Song Sparrow pair seem perpetually agitated by my presence and sing constantly from as close to me as they can get. A few Cedar Waxwing flocks are still about, but even they, at long last appear to be pairing up and getting ready to breed, as I think the American Goldfinches are as well.

The temperature is stuck at 44 and with my sparse garb I’m beginning to freeze as the sun refuses to rise over Bald Eagle Mountain, as far to the north as it’s going to get. Ten Canada Geese go over at 6:25 heading east just as the second and third Great Blue Heron of the day, flying together, flap slowly westward; all are lit up brilliantly frm underneath. Another goose flock comes out of the Gap, going north. By this time, a local Bald Eagle has already come west through the Gap and disappeared overhead, then returned east the way it came, perhaps having made a quick check of the reservoirs.

At long last, the sun bursts forth over the ridge. 7:04 AM, and almost all the birds but the preacher have long ago fallen silent.

Reset

On Saturday, May 2nd the rain has stopped and it’s clear, with the forecast nothing but chill. Time to compensate for April.

I stick to the balcony today and let the three Cup teams have the run of the Hollow. Half a dozen local Common Ravens are gamboling over the Point of Sapsucker Ridge— families, already? A hidden Rose-breasted Grosbeak squeaks from trees at the confluence, and an Ovenbird sings down below, unusual visitors.

On Sunday, I learn that the three teams who visited Plummer’s Hollow all won their respective divisions in the Cup. The continuing Kentucky Warbler seemed to be the main draw, easily found by all.

The tracks are first, and of all things, a Prairie Warbler sings somewhere back in the privet jungle. I hear it at first light, and later around 7. A Peregrine Falcon, first I’ve seen this year, flies up into the wind and courses along the crest of Bald Eagle Mountain, half blocked from my sight by a huge train, then disappears northward.

A little later, I’m up at the narrow neck, scrunching patchy frost on the grass in First Field tractor ruts. Brilliant sunlight has activated the warblers along the Sapsucker Ridge canopy, including the first Tennessee Warbler, finally. The spruce tips are humming with Red-breasted Nuthatches (quite the year for them), Cape May Warblers, and more Yellow-rumped Warblers than I’ve seen in half a decade. Golden-crowned Kinglets are also still here; I wonder if they’ll breed this year, after skipping 2025. The Blue-winged Warbler is still singing in the field—another scarcity that seems common all across the county this season.

Back down at the bottom, I pause and back up off the bridge, then approach on foot to be surrounded by whizzing swallows, sometimes within inches of my face, upriver and down, high and low. All the local species but Cliffs are here, even a handful of large, dark Purple Martins in the downstream bend area.

On a cold Monday, a Swainson’s Thrush calls along the tracks at dawn, while Dave spots the first Ruby-throated Hummingbird of the year off his porch, ten days later than its arrival last year. Later in the day, scanning the tape, I see that several Canada Warblers went over in the night.

At night the breeze finally pivots around to the south, bringing the first and probably only Wilson’s Snipe of the year, while the parade of Grasshopper Sparrows continues, beginning at 9:20 PM. There is still just a trickle of Swainson’s Thrushes among the continuing waves of Veeries and ever-growing Rose-breasted Grosbeak swarm. Another Sora for the season gives its mournful flight cry, and American Bittern season continues. A confusing mixture of Ovenbird and Vesper Sparrow flight calls includes at least one harmonized Mourning Warbler NFC, first for the year in the state.

The next day, people are still coming to get their FOY Kentucky Warbler for the county, testament to a growing cohort of hard-core local birders engaging in friendly competition. Along the edge of First Field just down from the spruce grove, Mike K., today’s visitor, and I, also have the unusual experience of listening to a Golden-winged Warbler sing from one bush while the continuing Blue-winged Warbler sings from another. I can’t imagine this combo has played Plummer’s Hollow in several decades.

On Wednesday night, despite the intermittent showers, the southerly breeze brings more firsts over: Solitary Sandpiper at 12:33 AM, and a Bobolink, loud and clear, at 4:48 AM, just before the dawn rush. I wish there were a way we could entice this species to stop over. And again, more Grasshopper Sparrows.

At dawn, I trek up the knife-edge to Grosbeak Trail; in the half-light, an Eastern Wood-Pewee sings mournfully from the steepest reaches of Railroad hollow. A tree close at hand bursts with activity—tanagers, grosbeaks, a Baltimore Oriole, and a female Orchard Oriole clamber about, probing whatever today’s delicacy is. Farther along, the first Least Flycatcher chebecs from the canopy.

On the 7th, the first Wood Thrush of the morning flutes at 5:20 AM, followed by a Louisiana Waterthrush, an Ovenbird, and a buzzy Northern Parula, still in the twilight zone. Up top, the list grows to 46 species by 6 AM, 50 by 6:10, 60 by 6:23, and 70 by 7:09, topping out at 88 before work. This signals that 100+ should be attainable on the weekend—not on predicted-to-be-gloomy Global Big Day on Saturday, but the hopefully more amenable Sunday.

Today, the high ceiling of glowing red cirrus is ideal for spotting large birds far away. One, at first shaped like an approaching jet, resolves itself into an unhasty Great Blue Heron that lifted off a roost five or mile away and eventually flies over Brush Mountain toward some feeding spot in Bald Eagle Valley. Minutes later, two more, silhouetted against the crimson, head east, two to three miles to the north of me.

Among the migrant madness, I discern a White-eyed Vireo and a White-crowned Sparrow, though never glimpse either of them. A second Kentucky Warbler sings on and on below the spruce grove at the same time birders are recording the O.G. over on Greenbriar. Nashville Warblers are here in modest numbers—nothing like their typical fall showing but still respectable for the fast-moving spring migration. Ten or eleven Cedar Waxwings whir about in tight formation, keening in the treetops in their favorite spots along both sides of First Field, and even at one point in the yard walnuts. While the other spring flocking species—robins, blackbirds, cowbirds, grackles—have all paired up and gotten down to nesting, waxwings, one of the last species to start breeding, are still in winter flock mode.

Most of the warblers today are high up among the black cherry flowers, grabbing insects. One rather tame and curious individual is just generic looking enough to be confusing, and turns out to be a rarely seen (at least by me) first-year female Pine Warbler. She comes all the way over to the black locusts to check me out, calling insistently.

The best news of the day is from some returning post-Cup birders, who, while searching for the KEWA, find a pair of Philadelphia Vireos. The scarce species attracts more birders over the next couple days, with middling success. Speaking of attracting birders, May 2026 has already seen 25 of them in Plummer’s Hollow, more than we’ve ever had before. Maybe I can finally start looking toward retirement, or at least from these mad migrant sprints…

On Friday I hike back up to First Field at dawn, and turn up a Golden-winged Warbler in the spruce grove. Two Wild Turkeys strut out in front of me and then amble casually away. Most excitingly, the pair of Tree Swallows that took up residence in the field’s new swale Eric constructed (becoming a pond during only the rainiest of weather) are carrying nesting materials into the nearest “bluebird” box. It’s been decades since this species nested here, and because Eric has put up several new boxes all about the field, there shouldn’t be competition for space. Eastern Bluebirds are already in another one; hopefully, they’ll weather the ever-growing cowbird invasion, snakes, and the rest. I’m more sanguine about the swallows, as they have quite the reputation for aggressive box-protection.

Walking back down through the deep hollow, I hear pips and pizzas from least two Acadian Flycatchers, another late species that only returned yesterday. A Canada Warbler sings loudly in the bushes near the gate, and a Solitary Sandpiper peeps along the river somewhere.

The biggest weekend

Saturday morning, rainy and cold, isn’t great for a Big Day, so I stick to the balcony, where I watch a female hummer—finally!—avoid me and take the stealth route to the back feeders, around the other side of the fire-escape stairs. Young ravens scream in the background.

The weather gets nicer in the afternoon so I head up the field to see what’s around. A Broad-winged Hawk circles up out of the canopy where it’s nesting over by Greenbriar, while a Cooper’s Hawk courses off toward the Gap. No Sharp-shinned this year that I can tell, thouh. After the rain, a few rarities have put down in the field: a Vesper Sparrow near the garage and a Savannah Sparrow up by the spruce. A Swamp Sparrow moves nervously about the old apple tree.

The tape reveals that last night’s sky was filled with Least Sandpipers; some put down at a local flooded field. Yet another Sora went over, and at least two Virginia Rails. Among the (finally) many Swainson’s Thrushes, there are a handful of the first Gray-cheeked Thrushes and even some Hermit Thrushes still passing through. Several Bobolinks headed north, and the first Least Bittern screeched once in flight.

In the evening, I’m on the balcony when a Red-bellied Woodpecker undulates from the tallest poplar to my right over to the tallest on my left. Not an uncommon species by any means, but it’s the first time in four years I’ve seen one from the balcony! A few minutes later, what might be a breeding Osprey coast in from the north, slightly in front of Bald Eagle Mountain, and then disappears through the Gap.

Unbeknownst to me, among the late-night showers, Sunday, my private big day, begins with some common sandpipers, a couple American Bitterns, and yet another Bobolink.

I head out into the clammy street and hear what might be a zeep warbler and a distant yellowlegs. It’s mostly clear, and a perfect day to get everything, provided the route and timing are just right. At 5:37 AM, an Eastern Screech-Owl, rarely heard in May, toots softly from terra nullius.

My route is timed to intercept the deep woods dawn chorus up the knife-edge and along Grosbeak Trail, to Greenbriar and Bird Count, getting to the upper edge of First Field while birds are still active, as far as the Spruce Grove, then back around the powerline view of Sinking Valley (mockingbird overlook) and back down the road through the Hollow.

Least Flycatchers are common today, and up in the highest reaches of Big Tree Ravine, a Mourning Warbler sings among a surprising amount of redstart noise. At the Greenbriar/Bird Count confluence, a confused-looking, drenched Lincoln’s Sparrow tumbles about in the witch hazels while the Kentucky Warbler begins another day’s hard work of singing its rollicking tune non-stop. Least Flycatchers chebec here and there, more than I’ve heard in recent years.

The list hits 90 species before 9 AM, so 100 are guaranteed, as the common valley species are still missing. The spruce grove is teeming with budworm warblers—gorgeous Cape May Warblers in small groups, and a couple Bay-breasted Warblers at close hand. I don’t have time to do a proper census, but it seems like Red-breasted Nuthatches are still numerous (I stop at 5).

The species count reaches 100 at 10:15, the earliest I’ve been able to hit this number in any of my annual century counts. With a Fish Crow back in town close to noon, it tops out at 108, the highest ever for a morning in the hotspot, while the weekend count, including NFCs, is 126, the usual number for my annual biggest weekend of the year. By far the most impressive part of this diversity is the 29 warbler species, with all the realistically possible species accounted for except Palm and Yellow-throated, which aren’t really around much by this point in May. Even the first Blackpoll Warbler dutifully appears, in the spruce, not surprisingly.

An all-time high count of 85 American Redstarts, including many singing females, leaves my head spinning. White-throated Sparrows (44) and Eastern Towhees (58) are still here in respectable numbers, while Gray Catbirds (19) are peaking, along with Wood Thrushes (49), Scarlet Tanagers (37), and Yellow-rumped Warblers (17). Most other warblers hit their seasonal highs, with 22 Black-throated Greens and ten Magnolias, among many others. A lone female Purple Finch sings from the edge of the deciduous woods behind the spruce grove, I would think the last of the season.

I’m exhausted and birded out, but I do a quick list at 8:30 PM just in case a nighthawk happens by (it doesn’t). The crystal-clear evening is in the 50s, and the local catbird goes on until 8:44. Robin Point is 8:45, and after that it’s all and only them for a few more minutes, though the chorus still doesn’t go past 9 PM.

The next day, in recovery, I bundle up for 37 degrees on the balcony. A Least Flycatcher chebecs non-stop for half an hour, an unusual duration for a species I almost never hear at this location. If it’s a big year for them, I’d love for a pair to take up residence somewhere in the hotspot; it’s been decades.

Like yesterday at the bridge, I hear the welcome sound of a Northern Waterthrush, another species I wish would breed here.

Of sparrows and cheese balls

Monday afternoon I tap at my work laptop on the porch for several hours, accompanied by a lazy cat who loves to follow the sounds and actions of the spring birds and bugs. At one point Pepe is riveted by the surprised visage of a Song Sparrow poking through the railing, one of a pair nesting across the parking lot who have formed an addiction to the rice grains embedded in the fake grass on our porch and, most likely, the disintegrating Cheetos scattered to the winds by the child from upstairs? The hungry sparrows are visibly annoyed by our feline, and their scolding brings a pair of House Sparrows and then House Finches as well to perch on the railings. Pepe doesn’t really react; he’s been yelled at too many times for bird-jumping (never successfully, needless to say), so he just crouches and seethes.

By the next day, a balcony morning, it’s down to freezing again, with nothing new. In the evening, the wind shifts to the south, and I wake up during the night to check the Birdcast. 1 million. 2 million. 3 million. By the time I head out to the garage for the recording, the number has surpassed 4 million transiting over Blair County, with up to 160,000 at a time in our airspace.

KIRA-CLRA

There’s not much evidence of the massive numbers that passed over the woods and fields of May 12-13; these were transients, locals moving out, and maybe some quiet arrivals, but no storms arrived in time to force them into a fallout. A couple hints that the last spring arrivals are within grasp, however: a Willow Flycatcher calling at dawn, while a Common Nighthawk flaps silently over the amphitheatre. I suppose it’s doing some hunting after a long, northerly push; I often see this species still moving north at this hour (like raptors, nighthawks seem to follow ridgetops rather than cut across them perpendicularly like most other species).

A slow day at work gives me time to go through the recordings, and they’re not a disappointment. An Eastern Kingbird and an Alder Flycatcher are both new, and among the flocks of Spotted Sandpipers and others, a Semipalmated Plover calls. Both bittern species go over, but the best of the night is a new bird for the hotspot:

The clattering screech is a large rail, unassignable to species, but definitely either a King Rail or a Clapper Rail. One of the former has been a local draw at a lake in Centre County this season, and much more likely to be our flyover, but the latter, a denizen of Atlantic coastal salt marshes, is occasionally found dead this far inland (including on the Penn State campus in State College in Sept 2023). It’s an exciting addition for the hotspot either way, even though we it doesn’t count as a new species.

What’s up, what’s down, what’s left

2026 seems to be back to normal species numbers after last year’s spike, when we hit 200 by mid-May. With these most recent spring arrivals, the hotspot tally stands at 189, so absent any extraordinary shorebird NFCs, it’s gonna be a long slog to the second century mark sometime in the fall. Only missing for the spring are a handful of common shorebirds via NFC, plus Olive-sided and Yellow-bellied flycatchers, the latter showing up live and on recordings, and also pretty common in the fall; the former never appears on tape, and though it was common last year, it will be hit or miss in 2026. Ah yes, and the Yellow-bellied Chat—none came back to the field this year, but last year we had a pair in June up on the powerline, so there’s still time. The others to come include a guaranteed Connecticut Warbler in September and enough missed and scarce species to very likely make it past the threshold: interesting southbound or dispersing waterbirds among the July NFCs, an errant Double-crested Cormorant, a Snow Bunting and even a Lapland Longspur in November,a Dickcissel pretty much any time, and a few waterfowl in the late fall to round it out, ideally ending with some non-Canadian geese. That’s the plan, anyway.

Despite the lower cumulative species number this year, quantities of individuals seems to be up or at least level for many more than I expected. Factoring in time spent, warblers were magnificent, with the first year of multiple Prairies, Golden-wingeds, and Blue-wingeds that I can remember being the standouts in a season that didn’t even miss Orange-crowned, which we usually have to wait until the fall for. The only warbler that seems to be a bit down is Worm-eating, as we don’t appear to have had a 20+ day in the Hollow, though numbers are still in the low teens, which is respectable.

Speaking about waiting for fall, after a couple year drought, Lincoln’s Sparrows made a spring appearance again, with multiple records. Philadelphia Vireo, another fall regular (which was missed in 2025 due to the Balkans trip) have also been detected on several occasions, though last year’s paucity most likely had to do more with lack of effort and birders than an actual dip in numbers.

Swallows are mostly down again, with Cliffs virtually gone, Banks as rare as ever, and Purple Martin mostly absent, though they’ll no doubt show up later when Sinking Valley breeding is wrapping up. Barns have held steady, while Northern Rough-wings have been abundant.

Herons have been way down this year, at least by day—no Green Heron, at least yet, is a morning flyover and Great Blues have been scarcer than usual. Among the other common water birds, a most surprising near-disappearance is the Belted Kingfisher, which has had the slimmest migration in the years I’ve been monitoring the river.

And finally, the failed geese

May 15th: a long, rapid, pre-work hike for Yellow-bellied Flycatchers (not yet) where I see my own first Philly of the year up close, hear another Mourning Warbler, and chase but don’t catch a singing Yellow-throated Warbler while the KEWA goes on in the background. Blackpolls are also around, and Tennessees in numbers, but the real highlight of the morning for me is multiple small flocks of Canada Geese going over. They’re low and coming from the Sinking Valley direction, but not necessarily locals. Instead, they’re likely roving gangs of young males who didn’t manage to find mates and have joined up to plunder the land instead. I wouldn’t be surprised if other anomalous appearances of supposedly sedentary, nesting species I detect via NFC from now into June also fit this failure-to-breed category; geese are just the most obvious. Otherwise, the northward migration is still in full force, with several million-bird nights to come, and the last Swainson’s Thrushes, I would guess, a month away.

Postscript: Robin vs. Apple Core

On April 22 at dawn, between rain showers, three bulky duck silhouettes skim Bald Eagle ridge and then veer east out of sight. They’re almost certainly scoters of some type, but it’s too far and dark to tell. Later in the day it warms, and a newly arrived Eastern Warbling Vireo starts up in the trees along the river. A Nashville Warbler and a furiously reep-ing Great-crested Flycatcher both show up at Eric’s place where the PUC grabs them. Around dinner, a text from Dave—the year’s first Rose-breasted Grosbeak has appeared, of all places, at Mom’s feeder!

I’m now in the habit of checking Birdcast during the night to see if a big enough migrant pulse warrants an early up-mountain hike. On the 23rd, 750k pass over the county, enough to get me at the gate by 5:40 AM. After two Louisiana Waterthrushes, a Blue Jay, some Eastern Towhees, and a Northern Cardinal, I start up the knife-edge to intercept the next phase of the chorus. I scrape through a patch of invasives, flushing White-throated and Song sparrows, then a Black-capped Chickadee and a Tufted Titmouse sing, one from the main hollow side to my left and the other from the Railroad Hollow to my right.

Smaller chasing larger

A Worm-eating Warbler is buzzing by the time I reach the left-hand turn-off to Grosbeak Trail, with an American Redstart toward the top of the ridge and then a Yellow-throated Vireo farther in, with the sunrise. A Blue-gray Gnatcatcher does a reedy imitation of a Blackburnian Warbler, interspersed with the song of the real thing. A few grosbeaks are about, and later, the first Ovenbird and Black-throated Blue Warbler. I make it all the way to the garage to get the tape (Sora last night!), and catch a few more FOYs—Indigo Bunting somewhere in the field, and Prairie Warbler along the edge. Back in town, some shy notes along the river resolve themselves into the first Baltimore Oriole.

Later in the day, I watch a Common Raven spiral up to chase a cruising Red-tailed Hawk over the Gap, grappling with it. The hawk, in conflict-avoidance mode, quickly makes off down Sapsucker Ridge. Not much after that, a raven, perhaps the same one, is besieged by an American Crow that dives at it again and again. I can imagine the crow then getting attacked by grackles and the grackles by swifts or a hummer, or this might need to wait a couple more weeks until additional tasty fledglings are available.

Quickening

The next day is Friday, 48, breezy, and clear on the balcony after 5 AM, but clouding up fast. Things start slow, with an Osprey and then a Bald Eagle cruising north over town with single purpose, perhaps toward a fish hatchery or sportsman’s club for early and easy snacks. Then, mixed in with the regulars, a few oriole notes that evolve into the full song. The first Northern Yellow Warbler progresses the same way, so that it’s several minutes until I’m sure what’s behind the notes. Out of sight along the river or creek, a Spotted Sandpiper peeps. The list blows by 30 and then reaches 40 with a Green Heron high up, east to west at 7:19 AM, well after the time when most of my April dawn counts wind down. A Red-eyed Vireo sings in the background as the new warbling vireo goes on and on and on in the foreground, intermittently scolding who knows what. A Song Sparrow plucks at wispy old twigs by our car, then flies directly into a small but thick hedge patch flush up against the red apartment building across the alley. American Goldfinches rule the canopy, more this year than I can ever remember.

The 44 species I can see or hear this dawn are one of the biggest ever balcony totals, and I don’t throw in the towel until close to 8 when 11 Blue Jays straggle-stream over town, high up, migrants off Brush Mountain heading north. But it’s not just the exaggerated species count; activity and interaction today are somehow heightened as well. American Robins and European Starlings are both rushing about everywhere, grabbing then carrying nesting materials. A pair of Northern Rough-winged Swallows lingers for close to half an hour around a mysterious metal hole in a nearby wall, but I know better than to get my hopes up. Swallows are very particular about where they nest, and it’s hard to imagine they would pick a spot right next to two motorcycles in a busy parking lot.

Meanwhile, the tallest sycamore top just in front of the interstate attracts a Red-winged Blackbird who feeds and sings as he clambers around, behavior I’ve never seen before. A Baltimore Oriole does the same, closer to hand, grabbing territory.

The least of the mimics

During the day, a scan of Eric’s PUC microphone reveals a “Least Flycatcher” (way too early) that is actually a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. Later, a gnatcatcher, perhaps the same one, does the Blackburnian-ish song I heard live yesterday. The PUC is helplessly confused—its A.I. regularly inserts one false positive Tennessee Warbler into every 100-straight Blackburnian songs (they nest in the spruce above Eric’s house), then confuses the Gnatcatcher’s Blackburnian attempt for a Tennessee as well.

(I’m also growing increasingly convinced that goldfinches are mimics as well, and they do it even worse than gnatcatchers. They seem to sound most like what is right around them singing at the same time—yellow and other warblers, sparrows, flycatchers, etc. ad nauseum. I’m not knocking goldfinches, mind you, but spring arrival season would go a lot more smoothly without this constant confusion.)

Late April nights

Back to back nights on the NFC start to pull in an array of interesting species. After 9:30 PM on the 23rd, an Indigo Bunting buzzes by along with the Sora and then, not long after midnight, both Greater and Lesser yellowlegs cry, the latter emitting one of its flight songs. A Savannah Sparrow also reveals itself with its classic harmonized downward call, always far commoner in the sky then in the field. The next night, the first Black-billed Cuckoo calls in flight at 10:36 PM, with many more to follow. An American Bittern grunts once. Most intriguing is a lengthy series of flight calls from a Grasshopper Sparrow, most likely emitted by a stationary bird off in the field somewhere (I hear one singing nearby the following morning). This is part of the biggest Grasshopper year since NFC recordings began here five years ago.

In the wee hours of Saturday the 25th, a Spotted Sandpiper and several Virginia Rails doing their trills as well as their kek-kek-keks, and then the first Veery of 2026, at 3:14 AM. The biggest thrushes are still Hermits, with hundreds of detections throughout the night, but Wood Thrushes are picking up as well, along with White-throated Sparrows and the occasional Red-breasted Nuthatch.

Saturday’s morning count starts at the narrow neck of First Field, with a minimal sunrise, rain to come. The list breaks 50 before 7 AM, signaling the next phase of migrant madness. In addition to the Grasshopper Sparrow, this includes a singing Blackburnian Warbler along the powerline cut, and a fast-moving Cape May Warbler in the spruce tops. Down beyond Eric’s on the flat and open bench before Bird Count Trail, a Cooper’s Hawk crouches 30 feet above me in inspection mode. On Greenbriar, a crowd of Ruby-crowned Kinglets harass me, bringing in a silent, early Chestnut-sided Warbler. Later, the first Cerulean Warblers trill from high in the towering tulip poplars along Grosbeak, and a Broad-winged Hawk swoops down past me and then up. It perches 50 feet away, watching, through the first shower.

As I reach the knife-edge a steady rain sets in, not deterring a gorgeous trio of Scarlet Tanager, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and Baltimore Oriole. The list tops out at 78 by the time I make it back to town.

River of swallows

Sunday’s quiet lures me from the balcony to the tracks, where I get a close-up of a female American Redstart singing. The Juniata just upstream of the Pennsylvania Avenue bridge is thick with swallows that I can almost touch from the stone retaining wall next to my gym. I can find a single Cliff Swallow, a species that has nearly vanished from the northern fringe of the hotspot. The cloud of hundreds is mostly Barn and Rough-wings, with a half-dozen Trees. The chittering Barns take frequent breaks to perch on overhanging limbs and converse.

Back on the balcony, I glimpse a Chimney Swift settling rump-first into a nearby chimney, behavior I usually see in the evening. The Red-winged Blackbird dives in from the north at 6:42 and settles in to feed and sing in the sycamore top again.

Mad rush

Monday begins a week that will end with the Shaver’s Creek Birding Cup, a competitive conservation fundraiser that usually sees teams in the Hollow. Strange but welcome names start to pop up in the hotspot “Recent Checklists” section as our collection of scarce spring arrivals starts to garner attention. Someone gets an early Eastern Wood-Pewee, while I stick in town, watching a thick fog layer form. Today, I can clearly see the source—steam from the paper mill squashed by an inversion layer, proceeding directly up the avenue and then sending fingers out into the Gap and up along the ridges. I wonder how many of the seemingly natural fogs up top also result from this point source?

Spring bird season kicks into high gear on Tuesday with a rapid, song-saturated, pre-work hike where I have to be all the way up at the narrow neck before 6 AM and back to town by 8:30. My eBird can’t quite handle the sheer volume of early Worm-eating Warblers, Wood Thrushes, and RB Grosbeaks (11 each), but nevertheless, the weather is no longer bringing much new stuff, and May looks like it’s going to be cold, a recipe for migration stagnation. The best thing about this morning other than the extraordinary sunrise with rainbow is the Blue-winged Warbler tumbling about the field, singing its heart out and not shy at all. It’s close enough for some middling phone captures.

Wednesday is a tracks day in hopes of an itinerary night-heron returning to roost, but no such luck. The consolation prize is an Eastern Whip-poor-will calling below the tracks off Plummer’s Hollow Road, the first time I’ve ever heard one down here. Around 5:37 AM, a Killdeer cries close overheard, again and again as it flies west, perhaps to alight in one of the broad fields that wrap around the I-99 access areas. Otherwise, it’s quite out here beyond the light-triggered chaos of Tyrone, where robins, Song Sparrows, catbirds, rough-winged swallows, and titmice have been vying for attention since 5 AM.

After a respectable 54 species, I run into a trio of 20-something birders who arrive at 7 AM. Unsurprisingly, they’re a scouting contingent of Saturday’s Cup contestants. They’ve already been into the Hollow this week, but haven’t had access to the good parts up on the ridges, key to getting a respectable list.

That night, not long before 12, the first Yellow-billed Cuckoo pops up on the tape, four days behind its close cousin. Otherwise, the cold weather has kept any new real migrant wave from getting north.

The last day of April sends me up the Hollow and to Dogwood Knoll by first light. At 5:29 AM an Ovenbird nightsong, that rollicking imitation, explodes from next to me and makes me jump; then cardinals and towhees by 5:38. Nothing really new in here until the happiest song of all, the annual Kentucky Warbler, loud and fearless from the same bushes as every year, in the three-way concourse between Ten Springs, Greenbriar, and Bird Count, a new attempt to find a mate. Later, the Cup birders text me—a choice species, where exactly was it?…hope it sticks around… Other FOYs today are a Bank Swallow in among another river of swallows, and a Magnolia Warbler.

And that’s a wrap! At 163 species for the year, Plummer’s Hollow is around number 3 or 4 for the state; 48 of these have arrived since April 22nd.

After a cursory April Fool’s Day balcony count, it’s off to the Happy Valley Intergalactic Airport for long flights to a 12-day working vacation in Mexico. Meanwhile, with some coaxing by Eric, the NFC set-up grinds on through the warmish nights and days.

Shrieks, squawks, tocks and tews: The passing of the Americans

On the first at 9:46 PM, an American Coot flies over, the first in two years. A few hours later, around 3:30 AM, a Long-tailed Duck flock. The 2026 100-species mark is reached the night of the 3rd and 4th—first up is an American Barn Owl at 9:42 PM, and then after 2 AM, the first American Bittern and American Pipit.

The next night, after 10 PM, the year’s second Green Heron screeches past, and the final Long-tailed Duck flock of the spring as well, ending a quite disappointing season.

The warm weather collapses into rain and fog, or so I’m told, by the 5th. After 1 AM, a Virginia Rail, and the nocturnal song of a Swamp Sparrow in flight. The next morning, Eric describes a couple dozen Northern Flickers in the fields and locust trees, an all-time high for the hotspot and county. Both Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and Ruby-crowned Kinglets are back, and I detect a Pine Warbler masquerading as a Palm Warbler in the recordings made by his PUC microphone.

The next afternoon, the PUC picks up an Orange-crowned Warbler’s 2-toned buzz at 2:40 PM, only the second spring record of this species, and the first from up on the mountain. At 4:08 PM, four ghostly, screech-owl like calls are actually the first recording we’ve gotten here of a Common Loon in flight. In Mom’s old journals, she noted hearing this sound overhead on a few occasions but never seeing the birds; she recognized it perfectly from the years we lived next to a loon-haunted lake in Maine. I regularly see loons from the balcony, but they’re too far away to hear; up on the mountain, they’re close to the ear but moving too fast to see from most vantage points.

(Speaking of loons, I missed a good Common Loon flight this year, but I’m eventually able to see a single Red-throated Loon speeding north around noon on the 17th, after I get back. The positive ID, separating it from the Common, is testimony to the wisdom of tightening my belt and picking up the new, high-power Leicas.)

Down, and then up

The following week sees a return to cooler temperatures, and the nights go blank except for the incessant trilling of philandering Field Sparrows. The migrant hordes mass to the south of us, awaiting the next warm winds.

The wave comes on the night of the 11th to 12th, when over a million birds cross the county, the biggest single night so far this year. Numbers peak around midnight, and the flocks are never more than 3,000 feet up, meaning many of the birds are within the range of detection for the NFC recorder.

Another barn owl migrates over at 5:23 AM on the 12th (you won’t see the checklist on eBird, as all records of this species are hidden to protect nests). Then, as promised, the night’s wave reveals hundreds of Hermit Thrushes and myriad sparrows forming the bulk of the vocalizing portion—endless Chippings, many Fields, building numbers of White-throateds, a major flight of Dark-eyed Juncos, at least half a dozen Grasshoppers, and a handful of Swamps and Savannahs. Gulls are also still moving in numbers, with flocks of Ring-billeds as early as 8:40 PM, a Bonaparte’s close to midnight, and an early morning American Herring Gull. American Bitterns, Green Herons, Great Blue Herons, Virginia Rails, all are in evidence.

During the first few days back, after the night of a million, temperatures heat up rapidly into the 80s with high humidity, meaning leaf-out, bugs, warm night temperatures, and a chance at some early passerine migrants in the woods. I also try to get out to the balcony as often as possible to catch up on the common returnees better seen from down here than from up on top. A pair of Northern Rough-winged Swallows is back, paired, and vocal, but it looks like I’ve missed the bulk of the Broad-winged Hawks, as even in the best conditions I only glimpse one or two up in the clouds. A few species are already slipping away—Peregrine Falcon will have to wait for the fall (as it turns out, they weren’t anywhere to be seen in local hawk watches, either), and the best spring days for a float of cormorants are past as well.

Night movements are still consistent as long as the heat wave lasts. The outstanding event is the first spring passage of an Upland Sandpiper on the way from southern South America to the Arctic, its 4-note quiddyquit sounding overhead at 9:07 PM on the 13th. Virginia Rails are still going over, and, as isn’t unusual on warm spring night, an American Crow or two make a ruckus about something at 11:30 PM. The first Eastern Whip-poor-will sounds at 5:44 AM from the nearby ridgetop.

The early morning of the 15th reveals NFCs of a few Vesper Sparrows and a Black-and-white Warbler, both first records for 2026. That night, around 11:30 PM, a record third barn owl of the season shrieks as it hunts the field for ten to fifteen minutes, longer than I’ve ever recorded one here before. Still, it is just a migrant, not a resident, and I don’t know if it follows the ridgetop like some diurnal species do (doubtful) or, more likely, is stopping by for a quick hunt as it heads straight north across the ridges and valleys.

Later that same night, the Red-breasted Nuthatch migration proceeds apace, marked by nasal, 5-note yank sequences, while American Bitterns and Green Herons show up now and again. At 5:15 AM, the distinctive, downward-sloping NFC of a Palm Warbler, first of the year for a species we rarely see in spring.

In the daytime, the challenge is to intercept as many early migrants as possible before the inevitable cold stoppage occurs—predicted by Sunday the 19th.

On Wednesday, I’m at the sweet spot in First Field before 6 AM to catch the chorus, a madness of whistling White-throated Sparrows and 30 other species, with a bonus pair of Wood Ducks fast and low overhead, presumably the ones that are either already nesting or hoping to up by the rapidly shrinking vernal ponds (what a year for this species - I’m also seeing flocks of up to five by the river!). Merlin picks up a Black-and-white Warbler, which seems very doubtful, but I soon hear it clearly; this is hours after the one that I later discover on the NFC recording. A Blackburnian Warbler is the next surprising newbie. A bit later, with dawn well under way, a Grasshopper Sparrow, well hidden, sings from somewhere near the powerline. If any year were going to yield the first visual record on the property of this common nocturnal flyover migrant it would be this one, but no luck today.

Cool and hot winds are mixing together and it becomes clear that Ruby-crowned Kinglets are at their peak. I head quickly back down along Greenbriar Trail, besieged by kinglets—at one point, six emerge from a nearby witch hazel and dart about my head like bugs.

They’re at all levels; the canopy is full of them, calling, singing, and in the short time I have I estimate at least 60, but I’m sure there are hundreds across the hotspot. Mindful not to blow out my knees, I move quickly across the upper ravines to intercept Grosbeak Trail, though it’s still at least a week before any expected warbler fallouts here. Nevertheless, early Black-throated Green Warblers and a Northern Parula are singing. Eventually, the cool winds win out and it starts to try to pour, then eases off, then blue sky and clouds, then more showers.

The next morning, the 16th, is a balcony pace after the gym. Already at 5 AM, while the woods are silent, the trees in town resound with Tufted Titmouse, Northern Cardinal, American Robin, and Song Sparrow noise, along with the gurgling of rough-winged swallows. But nothing is in the air until 6:18, when the first European Starlings arrive. At 6:20 AM, I’m concentrating hard on the potential arrival of Chimney Swifts—they definitely weren’t here yesterday, so they should have come back overnight. Not two seconds after that thought, the first chittering over the rooftops!

And then comes Saturday and the very first knife-edge scramble of the season. It’s already cooling down, but records from about the county yesterday suggested we’re still missing a few early arrivals in Plummer’s Hollow. At the gate, by 5:40 AM, a Wood Thrush calls and then sings, seemingly another premature species staking out one of the best territories. By the time I get up to Warbler Knoll, the Brown-headed Cowbirds are all about, and Eastern Towhees, of which I will eventually record over 100, are in full swing. No warblers, however—it’s still a week too early for the masses. Nevertheless, I continue through a somewhat subdued but brilliantly sunny woods in the mid-40s, but other than a flock of Purple Finches, an unusually common migrant this year, the species are only as expected. The Northern House Wren that was here at the beginning of the heat wave is gone, replaced by Winter Wrens.

This changes when I hit First Field, where deep in the Field Sparrow chorus welling up from all sides is one loud, insistent Common Yellowthroat. Farther on, I can no longer ignore Merlin’s false-positive Red-eyed Vireo when a bona fide member of this species sings by the powerline, in tandem with a Blue-headed Vireo farther away. A Yellow-throated Warbler sings, invisibly far away in a group of excited Yellow-rumped Warblers, which are having a banner spring and are by far the most common early warbler this year. Black-throated-greens and Black-and-whites are building in numbers, but the biggest surprise is an early Hooded Warbler singing from deep in the spruce grove.

Meanwhile, Blue Jay migration northward along the ridge is in full swing, and flickers haven’t abated since Eric’s peak. Dozens are still about, including one tree with five: one, seemingly a male, displaying to four females. It’s that time of year already where the amount of bird noise is almost headache-inducing, and my brain rings with it all for the rest of the day. Flickers are probably the biggest culprit, along with White-breasted Nuthatches, not to mention woodpecker drummings on dozens of registers.

As expected, the later hour and sparser habitat bring a lull as I leave the spruce grove and head to Far Field. A final surprise is the hesitant song of the first Scarlet Tanager.

By the end of the heat wave, Blair County’s 2026 numbers have put it at fifth place statewide, doubtlessly the most rarified air for our somewhat obscure 1/67th corner of the state. An NFC Ovenbird flight on the night of the 17th (not seen or heard in the woods the next day, but still valid) pulls Plummer’s Hollow into third place among Pennsylvania hotspots, wit over 130 speciew for the year.

My impression of many all-time early records was on the mark. April’s unusual second heat wave lured victims too far north a week ahead of schedule. Ovenbirds are nine days ahead of the previous early date of the 26th, from last year. Scarlet Tanagers are six days ahead of last year’s all-time early record. The Red-eyed Vireo is also six days earlier than previous records set in 2022 and 2025, and Northern Parula is four days ahead of 2025, though the one I got on the 15th did not apparently stick around. Black-throated Green Warblers returned to territories one day earlier than the previous all-time early date, while Black-and-white tied for the earliest date with 2002, and Wood Thrush also tied, with 2024.

Both Hooded and Blackburnian warblers were first-in-state this year, with the Hooded the earliest ever by three days, and the Blackburnian by two days. Of all the returnees during Fool’s Summer, only the Common Yellowthroat on the 18th did not set a record; its all-time earliest arrival was the 15th of April 2023.

All in all, the combined arrival of those ten species averaged 3.4 days earlier than the previous all-time early arrival dates.

The Killer

Unwitting fools we are, like the birds, placing our hopes in false summers with death close behind and all around. As I write this, the temperature sits at 24 degrees and clear, and the windshields are heavily frosted. Oaks, already in flower, will pay the price, though we won’t know the precise cost for months to come, I would guess. In the next day or two I’ll head back up the knife-edge to intercept the next warbler wave which will bring orioles, buntings, and new vireos along as well, with new thrushes, cuckoos, and flycatchers by the end of the month. More unseasonable warmth, we’re told, is on tap, but it’s hard to know these days what’s seasonable.

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As March winds down, the balcony and other backside elements on our block of old, downtown buildings are invaded by curious, probing European Starlings, House Sparrows, House Finches, and American Robins. The nooks and cracks and crannies make perfectly protected spots to cram in their junk for messy nests, in competition with bats large and small, and soon, Chimney Swifts. I’m no doubt much fonder of this coming-alive of decrepit old walls and eaves and roofs than your average urban dweller; anyway, I’d be happy if birds took over our cities altogether. Hearing people complain about the mess and the noise is music to my ears—I’d rather that than the howls and screams and vomiting of desperate addicts, now a regular feature of the block’s front side along Pennsylvania Avenue, day and night, as they come and go from the laundromat, bus stops, and shelters, occasionally taking a wrong turn up the front stairs.

The balcony is a respite from all that—for reasons I can’t discern, none of the front-side insanity reaches the random jumble of tanks, rubbish bins, and cars below me; the peskiest folks I see back here are foul-mouthed junior fishermen on their way to the confluence, one of Tyrone’s primo holes.

On the morning of the 24th, a Rock Pigeon suddenly dives down from nowhere and alights on the flaky roof next door—an oddity, as they rarely set foot here, preferring their haunts in the old brick junkyard buildings and downtown. I get to enjoy the 365-day aerial ballet of life-mated pairs and swirling flocks from afar, uplifting enough, but one has never spent enough time right here for Merlin to know of its presence.

This particular pigeon struts decisively to the edge of the eave and drops down underneath, where several ceiling strips of an abandoned third-floor apartment are missing. It flaps and flutters up into them and disappears, and then I can hear it clattering as it eases its way back underneath, closer to me. Silence, and then the sound of deep cooing that Merlin easily understands.

This soothing sound signals surely one of the oldest and most fundamental connections between humanity and the worlds of birds. Appropriately cruel for me, as the planet spirals deeper into a seemingly unstoppable war I’ve spent my adult life anticipating, I’m blessed by the most ancient symbol of peace. I looked this up—Rock Doves, who have aggressively colonized urban spaces across the planet, are more closely associated with peace than any other creature. They are also the ultimate symbols of good luck and blessing upon the household. In rural Honduras, where I did my Master’s thesis on the relationship between people and birds back in the nineties, I noted how some families still hang long, curved bark strips from their eaves in hopes of attracting Rock Pigeons to nest and bring good Catholic fortune to their abodes. This pattern repeats across cultures and religions worldwide.

Early Ospreys

The rest of the last week sees hurried preparations for our annual trip to Mexico (I’ll miss the first third of diurnal April, though critical NFC data will continue to accrue). When last we spoke, I was telling you about the anticipated heat of March 22nd. Indeed, by the afternoon, it was 80 in the shade, warm enough to bring three Ospreys floating above Sapsucker Ridge, the earliest record ever for the hotspot. Eric alerted me from a ridgetop spot almost two miles south, and by the time I reached the balcony I saw one, presumable of this trio, heading southwest over the Hollow. I didn’t see the other two, but I think they might all have been new arrivals to the area rather than passage migrants. The ridgeline migrant Ospreys I see in early April are usually heading straight northeast without stopping, whereas these had been circling, and the one I saw came from the east. One had already been reported at Canoe Lake a few days prior, where they tend to nest, so I wonder if the early birds grab the best lacustrine territories first, and then exploring the surrounding terrain.

Eventually, the mercury that day hit 90 in the back porch shade.

Why do mergansers circle?

Unwilling to let the weekend die, I go for a Monday morning hike in the cooling, 40-degree air before work to grab the NFC recordings. As I walk back down the Hollow not long after seven, and I can hear the wispy calls and songs of Golden-crowned Kinglets waking up in all directions: peak kinglet is nigh!

The temperature drops throughout the day into the thirties, and a few flakes fall. This is surely one of the greatest one-day temperature swings we’ve ever had.

By the 24th, it’s all the way down to 23 and clear. Killdeer call from Interstate fields to the north and parking lots to the south, presumably setting up territories. American Crows are strangely missing; usually, their eastward commute over to Brush Mountain is a sure thing.

On the 25th, dawn is a bit warmer, but still just below freezing. For the first time in a week, no Tufted Titmouse calls, but at least a single crow flies over (no Fish Crows, though—they seem to have abandoned Tyrone this year). The first-of-year (FOY) Eastern Meadowlark sings from over by the train station, and then a flight of Common Raven outsiders powers over high, in pairs, from the west to Plummer’s Hollow. A Belted Kingfisher rattlsd from somewhere down the muddy, flooded spring river, and suddenly, five rowdy Blue Jays peregrinate across my field of view, jumping and flapping through the trees down Bald Eagle Creek and then departing raucously for Thomastown.

The next day it’s even warmer, 42, and mostly clear—supposedly, it’s going to hit the 70s today again. No crows once again, and no extra ravens, just the increasingly agitated pair nesting under I-99. I see one come and go with large hunks of bread scavenged from the streets and wonder what type of malnutrition this particularly family is suffering from. Today, I find a prime source: an overflowing dumpster outside my gym, aftermath of some big feed, uneaten pizza husks and other delicacies scattered across the street in a messy, human way.

Despite some warmer nights this week, NFCs are still pretty unimpressive. Even the heavy-flow dates across the county (according to Birdcast) bring little, probably because the hundreds of thousands crossing over are too high up for the antenna to hear. We need a lower cloud ceiling. Nevertheless, on the night of the 25th-26th, two 2026 FOYs register—a peeping Green-winged Teal and a rasping Great Egret, at the start of the night, during lift-off. Later, we get only unidentifiable wing-whistles and scattered sparrows, Field and Chipping mostly now; no White-throateds yet, while Songs are scarce and American Trees are already gone from the spectrum. A single Golden-crowned Kinglet makes its way across the sky a couple of hours before dawn.

The antenna registers dusk as a steadily decreasing chorus of Field Sparrows (not yet signing through the night), Song Sparrows, and Northern Cardinals, with American Woodcocks starting up by 7:50 PM, and all falling silent by 8. Woodcocks begin again by not long after 6 AM, as do the first cardinals and Song Sparrows.

A violent round of storms seeps through from the northwest on the night of the 26th, into the 27th, but by dawn the rain has stopped even though the low clouds are still roiling in the breeze. Around 6:15, sirens seem to converge on town from all directions, then fade. The temperature is 46, and the first Turkey Vultures are flapping over town toward Bald Eagle Mountain already in the 6:52 AM gloom—things could get interesting! I gradually realize that semis are backing up on the interstate to get off the highway, and a line of vehicles is stopped as far as the eye can see in the northbound lane, while the streets are clogged with desperate commuters from the Tyrone exit. The sirens from earlier are explained by late-breaking news of a major collision.

The detached world of local commuting and long-distance-migrant departing birds proceeds oblivious to all this. The bigger concern among birds is the raging river, pushing waterfowl out and making it difficult for them to set back down again. As the sky grows lighter, I pick out a Ring-billed Gull circling thousands of feet overhead, among a crowd of vultures. While fixated on that, I see a diminutive duck streaking at a slight angle across my field of vision; following it, I can make out the field marks of a Hooded Merganser, the first I’ve seen this year, and a sign that my new high-power binoculars were a worthy purchase. To my amazement, instead of heading off in one direction, the duck circles, or better put, spirals, five times in broad loops, seemingly searching for a direction to head. It finally decides on east and disappears, nearly into the clouds.

I remember seeing this same type of movement after storms last April from a Red-breasted Merganser. The spiraling behavior isn’t widely reported, but seems to be a tactic mergansers use to gain altitude above mountainous terrain, an extension of the broad circles ducks may make after leaving a lake surface to get above the tree line. I wonder if the multiple circles are simply the most aerodynamic strategy to get to a height where they can survey their route, or if they are also slipping into an airflow. Certainly, my online sources remind me, waterfowl are never looking for thermals.

After that, the parade continues. A Great Blue Heron flaps slowly over the point, also very high, and then a Cooper’s Hawk goes across in breakfast mode, followed by a Red-tailed Hawk hovering to hunt. Once again, a windy dawn is the best type of dawn for balcony birding.

The race to one hundred

The last Saturday of March, the 28th, starts out in the mid-20s, too cold to have brought new migrants to the area. The hotspot list for 2026 is still in the mid nineties, so it’ll be a tough stretch to make the century mark before Mexico. Today’s hike is the first one of the year that starts the day along Greenbriar Trail, in the heart of Fox Sparrow country. And, indeed, their glorious songs are among the modest 7 AM chorus, along with three Winter Wrens at the same time, from all around me. Just as it’s light enough to see, a Barred Owl flies away from me upslope, and then a Red-tailed Hawk arrives from somewhere else and lands in a tree about 30 feet away. The rest of the hike is unsurprising, except for the passage of a Horned Lark, first this year, at the powerline, where a stiff breeze is buffeting valley birds over the top of the ridge. Odd that we have never once seen this species land in our own field.

Sunday morning is sunny and still just below freezing, with a mid-level ceiling and that certain bird-friendly look associated with a promised warm-up in the afternoon. First off, an American Kestrel flies over the balcony heading north to hunt—it is, surprisingly, the first I’ve seen this year. At the same time as Friday, 7 AM, a single Great Blue Heron soars high over the point and veers south, just as it did two days again. Today, however, no vultures are out early, while the starlings keep me on my toes (and Merlin deeply confused) as they bleat out a dozen species. One insists on doing a mix of Tree Swallow and woodcock, while others stick to the more familiar meadowlarks, killdeer, and Ruby-crowned Kinglets. I’m interrupted from this by a familiar chip: the year’s first Yellow-rumped Warbler flits down the line of Bald Eagle Creek and lands on a budding twig at the confluence. Little does it know it marks the very beginning of our annual Warbler Season.

Finally, at the late hour of 7:48 AM, the day’s first Turkey Vulture flaps lazily over town.

In the afternoon, a strange sight. In the promised sixties warmth and sunlight after 3:30, the typical small flock of circling vultures in the Gap suddenly pivots, and one by one in rapid succession each flies as quickly as a vulture can northwestward, right over the rooftops. As the last one is obscured by my building, a young Bald Eagle appears from nowhere, diving and either frolicking with or attacking the vultures, then zooms off in the same direction. Next, two ravens appear and do the same thing—not their slow, survey-the-terrain-for-scraps flight, but a headlong rush toward, what? A feeding frenzy at some dumpster? I can’t thing of what else other than food would create this odd spectacle. Far above, another raven circles as high as some archaic conception of heaven, many thousands of feet up and just below the ceiling.

Tuesday, the last day of the grimmest month in modern history, sees glimmers of hope. I interrupt the doom-scrolling to do a quick hike before work to grab the last of the NFCs. At 5 AM it’s in the upper sixties and humid, like a summer night. El Niño, we are told, is back.

At the field, I wait for the long download-to-USB as the bird world wakes up. First one woodcock, then another, whizzes silently by me at about 20 feet above the dead goldenrod; both disappear into the brush at the edge of the dark field. I think they’re already, perhaps, a mated pair. A little later, a pair of Wood Ducks goes over, also silently, in the near-oppressive stillness. Then, a breeze springs up over Sapsucker, and as it turns light (alas, even though a few hesitant notes of a Brown Thrasher register, no squeaky arguments yet from a Ruby-crowned Kinglet) the breeze turns briefly to a gale. It’s just in time for the arrival of dozens of Brown-headed Cowbirds and robins. The cowbirds, which are still roosting in the valleys somewhere, alight in singles, pairs, and trios across the treetops, while the robins all spiral down to a single tree. Both are raucous, the cowbirds already gurgling into a day of amorous endeavor, and the robins, up here at least, still flocking for food. Starlings stream over, ignoring our woods, intent on Tyrone.

On the way back down I hit Greenbriar again, but nothing new. As the bottom of the mountain approaches, the insistent calls and song of an Eastern Phoebe are all that is left of the dawn chorus. I get this funny feeling that a waterthrush is about to sound off—it’s a really warm morning, this is the best territory we have, and they almost always arrive on a hot day at this time. Seconds later, loud chips and then a single burst of Louisiana Waterthrush song! A great sign, number 95, and an almost sure thing that a vireo is next, though it won’t sound off until much later in the day. And so it happens. Reports come in of the first vireos popping up around the area, so I check Eric’s PUC recordings online, and at 2 PM, there’s that first Blue-headed Vireo song in the first place one usually turns up, not far from his house on a knoll that could be the best territory in the hotspot.

I keep going out to the balcony to scan for Broad-winged Hawks, swallows, and other potential arrivals, but nothing turns up. The 2026 list makes it to 98 with a few nice arrivals via NFCs from the last couple of nights: the kiddicks of a Virginia Rail, and two seets from a Grasshopper Sparrow. With that I’m off to a saner place.

—If you keep a green branch in your heart, a singing bird will come. (Hafez Shirazi, 1325-1390)

As the nameless war drags on, the local birds and new arrivals, in their oblivion, begin to enter courtship mode. Males fighting, trailed by females; the great flocks of late winter dissipating into intimate squabbles. Canada Geese peak and fade, as Tundra Swans rise, while the songs of Long-tailed Ducks are still absent.

Urban turkeys?

At dawn on March 9th it’s 31 degrees and mostly clear. An Eastern Phoebe is back at the confluence, though not yet singing. It flits about, calling, tail-flicking, and searching for bugs. Glorious sunlight, a rare thing these days, is a signal for me to retreat to the kitchen, but when I go back out to grab some gear, 17 massive shapes appear as if from nowhere, or at least from beyond Burger King. They coast over 10th Street, barely clear the balcony, and land not at all awkwardly in a tree by the bank. I’ve seen Wild Turkeys from the balcony once before, flying from the thick forests of Cemetery Hill, over downtown, and landing on Brush Mountain above the interstate, but this is getting ridiculous. After snapping a few close-ups before they head off up the river, I do some searching online, only to find out that turkeys do become urban dwellers, not least in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of all places!

The next day it’s a balmy 37 and finally crystal clear. While glued inextricably to my work computer in the late morning, I get a text from Eric, who’s working up on the ridgetop, that raptors are everywhere. He sees three Golden Eagles overhead, and six Black Vultures.

With a few days of warmer weather and some southerly winds prior to the oncoming last gasp of winter, we get another nice push of nocturnal fowl, which crescendos in the early hours of the 11th. Sparrows are in heavy flight: American Trees head north, and the first White-crowneds, Savannahs, and Chippings of the year show up. Song Sparrows are the dominant night mover, though, as they get set to saturate the fields and brushy areas in a week or two. Ring-billed Gulls are still on the move, as well as American Woodcocks, while Killdeer are at their height, their lonely cries echoing every so often throughout the night. Long-tailed Ducks are, surprisingly, completely absent, but Tundra Swans go over high and low, sometimes so close their grunts and whispers can be heard, and every heavy beat of their wings. Thousands transit in countless flocks over the course of ten dark hours, though I still haven’t seen a single one during the day.

Night-flying ducks, or at least the ones that can be ID’ed by sound, are also impressive this year. Several incidences of American Wigeon make this the biggest year yet for them, on top of Northern Pintail in abundance, and the first American Black Ducks, identifiable by the males’ unique quack sequence. Even a Common Goldeneye’s diagnostic wing whistle can be picked out of endless series of more generic wing sounds that could be any of a dozen species.

Balcony counts by mid-March register decreasing numbers of flock birds, as Brown-headed Cowbirds head to the deep woods and Red-winged Blackbirds take up residence in the wetlands. Robins, Song Sparrows, Common Grackles, European Starlings, House Sparrows, and House Finches are the main attractions these days, singing and courting and sorting out territories, though I haven’t seen active nest building yet. Eastern Phoebes now sing every dawn and every dusk and sometimes all day.

The local Common Raven pair has a prominent stick nest up under I-99, and they’re out and about constantly. One morning the noises change and the excitement grows, and they start forage for scraps about town—hatchlings, no doubt!

Notable also are the absences. Herring Gulls and indeed any daytime gulls are missing. Fish Crows haven’t returned to town yet. American Kestrels and Peregrine Falcons have still not popped up on any breezes. Rock Pigeons are around, but their commuter numbers have dropped very low, as is typical during the late winter/early spring height of breeding season.

The weekend of the 14th and 15th sees only a few swans and woodcocks at night, very few ducks, and no sparrows. I take a circuit hike on Saturday morning and log a respectable 41 species, but everything other than robins are in low numbers and not vocalizing much in the still-chilly air. Sunday morning balcony numbers are respectable at 28, and at least there are more Wood Ducks than last year. Black Vultures are also regulars—four today, and on other days up to six; perhaps we’ll have more than one local nesting pair this year.

A northern blizzard side-sweeps us in the lead-up to the equinox, burying my brother Steve in Wisconsin and bashing my colleagues in the Carolinas. Here, we get brutal winds and a dip into the teens with a day of blinding lake effect snow showers, with the only benefit for the birds (or at least the birders) an inevitable upcoming weekend of northward flight when the temperatures climb again.

The empire doesn’t care

The 19th, Thursday, puts us back on track for spring. There’s still not much about, but finally, from my home office work station, I hear the nasal complaint of the year’s first Fish Crow at 3:37 PM outside somewhere. This is the first they’ve been in Tyrone, that I’ve heard, since September 1 of last year. Last spring, they arrived at the regular time, with six showing on March 6th, and before that, the last ones were three that appeared on October 7, 2024.

Just at dusk—cloudy, as usual—a Great Blue Heron hefts its ungainly bulk off the river and circles around town, then puts down somewhere else, the first I’ve actually seen one this year.

Later at night, Long-tailed Ducks finally come through, starting up by 9 PM and tapering off, as they typically do, by midnight, with a few flocks straggling into the wee hours. They’re weeks behind schedule. Mixed in are just a few Tundra Swans, while Canada Geese aren’t heard at all. More Gadwall go over as well; they’re easy to ID by the weak quacks of the males. Barred Owls howl and holler throughout the night, and woodcocks peent in full courtship mode at both dawn and dusk.

At 10:48 AM on the 20th, spring arrives with the equinox. Under heavy bombardment, Iranians are in the streets to celebrate the ancient Persian observance of Nowruz (New Day), which this year happens to coincide with Eid al-Fitr, the “breakfast” of Ramadan when folks can finally go back to a regular eating schedule after the sighting of the crescent moon. Catholics continue with Lent, and no doubt equinoctial traditions are celebrated among myriad other temperate- and boreal-zone peoples. Nowruz, in that typically dualistic Zoroastrian conception, represents the triumph of the forces of Light over the forces of Darkness, though burned and blackened skies half a world away make that as yet a bit of an abstract construct. I can only imagine the effect our latest Armageddon is having on the millions rushing north along the Central Asian Flyway. A bomb was even dropped (killing a family of three) on Ramsar itself, a tourist town on the Caspian Sea where the eponymous global wetlands protection convention was signed in 1971. The imperial war machine, of course, could give a shit about the environment.

Biggest March day ever

Meanwhile, calendar spring here brings heavy downpours Friday night, tapering off by evening, which means a lot of stuff out and about on Saturday. I don a heavy pack with gear as robins yell at each other well before 5 AM, and as I pass the bank I hear not only the wispy calls of Song Sparrows but also the chips of the first Chipping Sparrows. After the town lights fade it’s back to darkness, until the last hoots of a Great Horned Owl wafting up to the top of the powerline.

Everything sounds off from the wet woods and fields below me, including a Belted Kingfisher, rattling in an unlikely location and the first one I’ve heard this year. Odd flocks rush overhead, a frequent event in the mornings after unsettled weather; at least one Rusty in a flock of blackbirds; small groups of Pine Siskins. By 7:30, I’ve already heard and seen 40 species, which makes me wonder whether it might be possible to log 50 species this morning, a week earlier than this milestone is usually reachable.

After the chorus dies down I head on up Laurel Ridge, accompanied by the ethereal notes of a Hermit Thrush, an early song date for this species. But the stand-outs today are Song Sparrows, seemingly in every bush and goldenrod cluster, counting 60 before it’s done. They might not even be at their height, yet; past years have brought concentrations of close to 200. Fox Sparrows don’t seem as numerous as in previous years; they’re here and there, always singing, but a total of 11 is far less than in past springs. Golden-crowned Kinglet numbers are also up (23 in all), and there’s a lot of other activity in the taller woods on Sapsucker Ridge. Intriguingly, White-throated Sparrows are quite scarce, and they’ve not been active in night flight, either. I wonder if everything is delayed this year due to the blizzards and bitter cold of deep winter—this would explain why numbers are low and movements are late, if populations wintered deeper in the South and are thus taking longer to get here.

I scramble across the steepest parts of the ridge and my body doesn’t thank me later, all to stay well above the rush of the swollen stream so I can catch any hint of an early Pine Warbler. No luck there. And despite the rain, the very last patch of January snow survives in its hollowed space across from the signboard.

By the time I stumble back toward town and log a few Black Vulture overhead and a pair of Common Mergansers swimming fast down Bald Eagle Creek and then turning into the main river and downstream, the list is over 50, a new March record.

The first warm evening sees temperatures in the high 50s, so I sit out to witness the return to roost. Past seven, Turkey Vultures are still returning from the east to their roost on the west side of town; the last go by in the growing dusk of 7:15. Grackles mostly come back west in small flocks through the Gap between 7:05 and 7:15, over 80 in all. Once clear of the Gap, some turn north, others go overhead, and some turn west toward various roosting spots.

Robin duels start by 7:14 and last well past other species’ noise; it’s robins alone after 7:40, and who knows how long they go on under the street lights. All I know is that when I get up at 4 AM these days, they’re already yelling.

By 7:15 PM, the last starlings depart the tops of the aspens and sycamores and head south, while waterfowl come and go—Canada Geese, Mallards, Wood Ducks, and the usual unidentifiables. Perhaps aroused by sirens, a small brown bat oozes out of a gap in the kitchen crawl space and flutters toward the river; minutes later, a Big Brown Bat comes in overhead and takes up a looping flight pattern over Bald Eagle Creek in front of me, about 25 feet up. By 7:30, while robins and a few Song Sparrows are still active, a trio of small bats shows up, and a little black Capnia stonefly lands on my phone. I would guess that that’s what the bats are about.

Sunday morning, at 40 degrees, is cooler than yesterday, but it’s clearer as well, though there’s no breeze, yet (supposed to get to 80 today with violent storms and south winds!). Most of the birds that are supposed to sound off and fly over do so, leaving a balcony count of 32. The stars are a V of ten American Herring Gulls flying straight north and not far above the balcony. I scramble for my camera and snap photos in vain, as the shutter refuses to click. Only when they disappear serenely over the rooftops do I realize I have it on the wrong setting. This is the largest flock of the species (the largest and scarcest of our three expected gulls) ever; the previous record was a flock of six on March 14 two years ago.

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Last days and first signs

Spring kicks off for me on Monday the 16th when a lone Black Vulture and accompanying Turkey Vulture circle together with a Common Raven briefly on an afternoon thermal over the Gap. I suppose the buzzards aren’t visiting from far away, but they’re welcome arrivals nevertheless.

The next day, a Song Sparrow calls and then sings under the bright bank lights at 5:45 AM. This sets off another along the riverbank, shrouded by thick fog from melt and thaw. After today, the sparrows never stop, and soon they’re joined by a Carolina Wren, and then the House Finches start to carol from the perches and the air as they fly about looking for places for their first broods, making those familiar querulous sounds.

Foggy nights aren’t a deterrent for the first major movement of Ring-billed Gulls. The NFC microphone, performing superbly with a new and fast computer, picks up multiple cries throughout the night of the 18th, and onward through the month. On the 19th at dawn, the microphone picks up the first Pine Siskin of the year, together with some Cedar Waxwings that appear to have landed in the yard.

By Friday the 20th, American Robins are finally filtering back into town, though they’ve been gradually increasing up on the mountain throughout the week, to judge by their early-morning yells the NFC has recorded. Vultures are also showing up regularly, moving relentlessly north now.

Saturday is a perfect windy balcony dawn, the first non-foggy morning in ages and a relatively balmy 38. Days of rain have already melted away most of the snow, and the river’s high; a snowstorm of unknown proportions is expected for tomorrow. By 6:34, Common Mergansers are already streaming north, and a Red-tailed Hawk is circling over the point of Sapsucker by seven. Starlings rush back in from over the mountain a few minutes later, and then a robin flutters across town. It ends up landing close to the balcony on a wire, calling vociferously, the first move on local territory of 2026.

All we get today is a dull red in the east, enough to backlight a trio of Bald Eagles circling around the comms towers as the wind grows wilder. Two Northern Harriers, a Cooper’s Hawk, and a Red-shouldered Hawk are soon up in the air as well, and the Bald Eagle number grows to at least six. It seems as if the snowmelt and wind are finally making the raptors restless, striking out to search for new and better patches of bare ground after weeks of desperation; who knows? Even a rare winter Merlin courses through town over my head, lost to sight off toward the train station. And then a bigger robin flock, some 19 in all, heading south. The starlings begin to gather in the nearby sycamores by 8 AM, one making that catbird meow.

In the late morning we hike up the mountain. Three Common Grackles fly past at a Sinking Valley overlook—soon, very soon, now, they’ll be on the west side, over by Tyrone. In the night, a pulse of American Tree Sparrows shows up on the antenna around 4 AM, already on the move. Loud crows are also calling in the middle of the dark.

The promised snowstorm fizzles to wet inches that melt quickly away. The turn back to winter is too late to stop the Song Sparrows, who sing through the thickest flakes. House Finches and starlings also can’t be stopped, and the first American Robin song of the season rings out as well.

On Monday the 23rd, the first grackle appears in the skies over Tyrone at 7:13 AM, coming from the south. Ten minutes later, two Black Vultures are circling over the balcony. More days of murk and muck, and by Thursday, it’s finally calm and clear again, and slightly below freezing. Robins and song sparrows are up long before 6 every day now, trying to outcompete each other from multiple points about town. By a quarter to seven, ravens, grackles and starlings are all flying, and a Red-winged Blackbird flock arrives from the east. Robins now land in nearby trees and on the wires, letting out loud peeks and whispery tremolos.

At 7:15 AM, a male grackle alights at the top of the tall sycamore at my 1 PM over by the interstate. Another unstoppable force of 2026.

A warm-up is promised before the end of the month, so it’s highly likely that conditions will be right for the first major northward move of waterfowl, some of which I can snag on the antenna. Sure enough, Friday night sees a major lift-off, with the first Ring-billed Gulls before dusk, and the first-of-year Tundra Swan flock at 9:27 PM. Canada Geese stream over in untold hundreds, some so close that the antenna picks up their grunts and all the other little sounds one rarely hears from the ground. Northern Pintail hees are picked up twice before midnight, along with the wing whistles of many and mostly unidentifiable waterfowl. The first Long-tailed Ducks go over around 10:30 PM, the first Wood Duck screeches, and the first Killdeer all within minutes. And it’s not over yet!

Peents at 12:26 AM are the first definite signs of American Woodcock, right on schedule. These come from migrating birds, but they’ll soon be settling into Sinking Valley fields , and our own fields not long after. A Gadwall is picked up not lnog before 4 AM, and another flock of tree sparrows, while Ring-billed Gulls never cease.

Before dawn on Saturday the 28th, the first day of the third world war, I drive up for the first time in ages on a complete frost-free driveway. Ravens are nesting in the spruce grove, and their eerie moans are now among the first sounds of the day. I catch the tail end of the waterfowl pulse with a quacking Mallard close overhead that I never see. Tree sparrows are singing as half a hundred robins alight in the trees beyond the garage. That night, the waterfowl have another go of it, with more pintails and the unique whi-whee-whew signature of an American Wigeon rounding out the month. March begins with the rapid wings of a Hooded Merganser in the dark somewhere, as the swans go on and on.

Who’ll stop the rain?

Imperial bombs rain down on an uncomprehending world all through the first week of March, while here, fittingly, a steady rain engulfs us and the migrants are stopped dead in their tracks once again. I manage to snag a pair of high-power binoculars for the next fast movers, just as a rogue bit of Covid lays me out.

The forecast keeps pushing clearing later, which suits me fine as I doomscroll through the dawns. On Friday, a Killdeer cries in the fog above the balcony, and large flocks of grackles and robins settle into the trees all around. Finally, on Saturday the 6th, I head out on foot, hoping that I can top the the thick fog in town. Light-triggered robins and Song Sparrows are everywhere now, and Killdeer are singing incessantly over in the fields by the interstate. The Hollow is dead silent, with ghostly patches of drift the last stubborn remnants of the blizzard.

The fog doesn’t abate with the ascent, but instead grows thicker. The powerline at 6 AM is as foggy as I’ve ever seen here, the temperature a not-so-balmy 44. The valley below is free of human noise but alive with the sound of Killdeer and the peents of woodcocks, one of which buzzes up the cut and over my head, going to First Field, I suppose (and as the antenna later proves). A Great Horned Owl hoots on an on, and by 6:10 it’s joined by an Eastern Screech-Owl from another direction. Northern Mockingbirds, robins, and Northern Cardinals wake up in quick succession, and at 6:17 the swelling chorus magnified and distorted by the fog includes the year’s first singing Field Sparrow.

Merlin keeps picking up Fox Sparrow flight calls, but it seems too early for that; they’re probably just Songs. Their wispy calls, oddly enough, are also coming from thick laurel along the trail up the ridge. A bulky shape pops out, and too my amazement, a Fox Sparrow poses in the fog a few feet away. Something interesting is afoot; it’s a bit too far away from the field to hear much other than a distant cacophony of song, and I’ve got to get by the shrieks and moans of the ravens first. At the top of the field, the ravens are all about me, diving through the locusts. I head down the field and am immediately engulfed by a dizzying fallout of Song Sparrows, singing from every goldenrod, just above the tinkling, buzzing pitch of the equally abundant juncos. The bird patch has swallowed up the neck of the field and the adjoining woods, and accounts for that Fox Sparrow outlier in the unlikeliest of places. I suppose that the stagnation is responsible, as the northward migrant flow seems to have been bottled up here for days.

After a respite, I hear new noises coming from above the amphitheater. Robins everywhere, hundreds, flying up from open grass patches into locusts all around me. The lone, tall black walnut also has a group of starlings—a species that rarely flocks into trees up here—as well as an unusually large number of Red-winged Blackbirds. I listen for other sounds—a Hermit Thrush, a Northern Flicker—from what’s mixed into the throng, and something just a bit different squeaks and squeals from the old apple tree. Three Rusty Blackbirds! These are the first I’ve seen up close and perched in many years here; I typically get them only in flight.

The robins are all over the yard, then the trees, then the field, back and forth, one or multiple flocks. At the height of it a lone Golden-crowned Kinglet flits about the goldenrod among dozens of juncos and stays still long for me to get a decent photo. The spell is broken.

The weather finally breaks in the afternoon and strong storms build up; tomorrow is looking to be a doozy.

Duck sp.

Though still not a crystal-clear dawn, the clouds are high and there’s a nice breeze. The temperature is 58, somehow, warmer than it’s been since November, at least. The key is the direction the breeze—southwesterly, perfect for another northward push. And right off the bat, a Winter Wren is singing at 7:15 AM by the confluence, oblivious to daylight savings time.

Storm clouds roll in from the west, competing with the light, but the waterfowl still give their best dawn performance ever. I can’t ID half of them, phalanxes of fast-moving ducks in the gloom, but I do spot a group of Northern Shovelers above, and a pair of Wood Ducks against the mountainside, as well as a pair of Red-breasted Mergansers. Canada Geese, mostly by the dozen or less, never stop until 9 AM when I have to quit. Turkey Vultures start even when it’s still almost dark, and Golden Eagles soar past on that straight-and-narrow flight path, one after the other (numbers at the nearby Tussey Mt watch are in the dozens for the day). Overall, an improbable 35 species make an appearance; at one point a somewhat raggedy Pileated Woodpecker bounces low over town, coming from the Gap and heading toward Cemetery Hill, something I see only a handful of times all year.

The next days and nights promise to be even wilder, as temperatures are forecast to scrape 80 degrees before we plunged headlong back into winter.

Groundhog Day sees a brilliant 4:30 AM lunar halo and bright afternoon sun, bright enough to melt the salty parking lot gravel. Shade temperatures stay in the teens, too cold for any early reappearance of vultures over the top of the ridge. The open gravel, however, brings a pair of Song Sparrows pecking for grit or lost seeds. They’re the consolation prize.

precocious phoebe

The river remains mostly frozen. On Tuesday the 3rd, it’s in the 20s at dawn, warm enough to expect some movement. Sure enough, in between the incessant chirping of House Sparrows and the cheering of European Starlings gathering about the taller trees, I hear the unmistakable chipping of an Eastern Phoebe along Bald Eagle Creek. It takes a while to sort out the call from the cacophony of Eastern Meadowlark-Eastern Towhee-Cedar Waxwing-Gray Catbird-Killdeer giving false positives to Merlin and all generated by the starlings. I suspect the phoebe is one of the local individuals that winters, on the move from some other patch of open water and perhaps thinking that spring is nigh, which it definitely isn’t (we’re in for at least another week of deep freeze).

For their part, the sparrows and starlings are more active than they’ve been in months, creating the impression of a sky filled with birds. There’s not much else happening, though it’s nice to see Common Mergansers on the regular again, if only in rapid flight overhead. As for the Mallards, they’ve all but disappeared; today, just two pairs show up at the confluence.

feeder folks

The following Sunday, I take a quick walk in the only place I can, up the plowed road. The woods are still a foot deep in snow and off-limits to no-snowshoes me, and from what I can tell, they’re largely drained of birds anyway, save the same mixed flocks of regulars hanging about in the canopy. Most of the action is at Mom’s feeders, where a large crowd gathers and flushes, gathers and flushes. Most notable so far are up to seven American Tree Sparrows feeding on the ground among the scores of Dark-eyed Juncos and White-throated Sparrows, and a couple Song Sparrows. Other species come and go at the feeders, following the pecking order that seems to start with House Finches. Even the lone Blue Jay keeps a safe distance out in the snow.

The tree sparrows are in slightly higher numbers than usual, and their gorgeous songs can occasionally be heard, but otherwise, the winter hasn’t brought any far northern specialties south, at least not to our patch of the cosmos. There’s still time, though.

Back along the river, stepping out of the way of a train, I spot two female Common Mergansers in the water, diving along the ice jam that’s built up around the confluence.

just the right winds

Real winter final gives way around the 10th, with the last of the sub-zero mornings and promise of a progressive warm-up. I’ve barely been out on the balcony this month, but the 11th looks quite promising. It’s 37 and cloudy at dawn, a full 40 degrees warmer than a couple days ago! A brisk west-southwestern wind could be enough to spur some movement from the local or even regional bird population that has seemingly been frozen in place for the month.

At first, nothing. If any brushy bird, any cardinal or Song Sparrow called early, I missed it. Seven passes, and the most that appear are starlings, the usual Rock Pigeon commuters spiraling up and then speeding east over the mountain, and some House Sparrows. A Common Raven flies in under the interstate to its nest, but it is uncharacteristically silent. Maybe the winds are too strong.

Then, at 7:22 AM, the spell is broken. As American Crows caw overhead, an adult Golden Eagle flies directly over my head from west of town, circling a couple of times over the Gap and heading on. I would not be surprised if it’s the same individual that’s been spotted out in Sinking Valley in recent days. I can’t imagine it’s on the move north yet; probably just a stray from the south that’s found a good roost and some worthy feed.

A couple minutes later, a House Finch goes over, singing in flight, always a joyful sign no matter how horrible the world becomes. At 7:26, a Song Sparrow flies in under a car and then emerges to peck at the gravel. I’ll be interested to see if it takes a liking to a slice of pizza laying incongruously on the snow (it doesn’t).

Just past the half hour, five strange waterfowl come out of the east from downstream somewhere, whitish but wrong-looking for the expected mergansers. They’re Common Goldeneyes, on the way from who knows where to where, and they seem to settle on some pond toward the north of town, but I lose them to the rooftops. Seconds later, six Common Mergansers also emerge from the east, but they turn south to follow the Little Juniata upstream.

Minute after, about 120 starlings settle into the nearby treetops along the confluence, drowning out everything else. They’re the tail end of a large flock that’s been gorging on the street-side dried fruit buffet these last few days.

The surprises aren’t over yet. At 7:37, under a sky that looks perfect for fast-flying gulls, a longish-winged raptor with mostly whitish underwings appears from the south, heading north along the ridge. Not a harrier and definitely not one of our resident red-tails; too small for eagle. It’s a Rough-legged Hawk, for all I know the first and last of the year, and a species I missed entirely in 2025. This one may very well be starting to move northward after spending time in some valley to the south or east. If I were a rough-leg, I’d definitely be on the move on a day like today.

The raptor parade continues. As the rough-leg disappears from sight, a Cooper’s Hawk in full-on hunt mode dives in to the nearest sycamore tree just the other side of the river from me, scattering all the starlings. I look up to see a pair of Bald Eagles, one full adult and one juvenile coming from the west, wings touching as they appear to play or communicate in some way. They head north, and when I look back to the earth, the Cooper’s is already gone.

The first interesting show of 2025 isn’t over yet. At 7:51, four more Common Mergansers go over from then east, and then a third Bald Eagle comes in over town and heads up and along Sapsucker Ridge, disappearing south. Finally, as the winds die down, what I would guess are the same two mergansers from Sunday float into the confluence and commence diving along the ice edge.

an influx of ravens

All winter, a pair of ravens has been hanging about, and in January they began building or repairing a nest under the interstate. Another pair is up on the mountain somewhere, and another one or two also show up, but that’s about it. They’re out in the harshest weather, like the pigeons, seemingly oblivious to cold, wind, and snow, and getting more vocal by the day.

On the early morning of the 13th, a whole new group shows up. I count at least 15, with seven at a time, mostly paired up, tossing and turning in the high air above the ridges; they also skim and chase a few feet above the tree line down the 30-degree angles out of sight, and then tumble about the towers.

House Finch song is constant now. Only one merganser shows up at the confluence today, in addition to seven overhead, and I realize I haven’t actually seen a Mallard this whole month.

proto-spring dawn

In these colder winters, late winter seems to arrive by mid-February, and is most easily detectable by an increase in breeding-season songs. Today, I trek in the darkness to the Plummer’s Hollow crossing on a rare, crystal-clear day that promises to hit 50. There’s a south-southwest breeze at 6mph, probably not enough for a repeat of Wednesday’s show, but enough to keep me out in the open and not under the trees until the show’s over.

Out here, Northern Cardinals are the first up. On Eric’s microphone, I see that they’re starting to make noise not long after 6:30 AM, and are holding on until slightly after 6 PM, almost a 12-hour shift already. Today, the tracks population—multiple pairs—starts softly chew-chew-chewing at 6:43, and a couple males eventually launch into full-fledged songs, the first I’ve heard in many, many months. Proto-Spring indeed!

As I guessed, nothing new or spectacular shows up, though nine ravens from a poorer vantage point than my balcony suggests that the influx is still about. Right at 7:01, a Brown Creeper and a Golden-crowned Kinglet greet the dawn from the woods right behind the gate, and not long thereafter, both Tufted Titmice and Black-capped Chickadees sing from across the tracks. A Winter Wren and a Hermit Thrush sound off, a loud Hairy Woodpecker and a softer Downy call, and at 7:27 a slow-flying pair of Red-tailed Hawks drift across from Bald Eagle Mountain to Laurel Ridge, off to scope out a nest site, maybe.

The walk up the road is uneventful, and with enough snowshoe tracks available, I can access Dogwood Knoll and the other trails to the heart of bird country while mostly staying on the barely-frozen surface. There’s not much up here now; the main mass of remaining birds is around the powerline, and I think it comprises some of the same birds that visit the feeders. The thick brush has definitely thinned out, with eight inches of pack still making feeding difficult.

Back in town, I finally see Mallards, but only a pair below the bridge. The local crowd has definitely moved off somewhere, at least temporarily

In the afternoon, the temperature reaches into the low fifties in the shade. The vultures aren’t around yet, though, but I think they’ll appear sometime next week, as it’s projected to get in to the 50s most days. Maybe a grackle will return as well. Hell, at this point I’ll set for a few robins—I’ve seen a total of one this whole year so far.

a suffering of crows

Not far below the forks, I come upon two crows up in the trees, flying about in an agitated fashion, and appearing to scold me. This is unusual they usually pay humans no heed. I quickly find out the reason, following the sound of a third crow to its source on the snowy bank below the road. It’s seriously wounded, apparently with a broken wing from who knows what attack of accident. Despite that, and with the constant criticism of the two others, it waddles and hops away from me down the bank, across the stream, and rapidly up the other side through the laurel in less than a minute. I can’t imagine it will survive, and I imagine I can even feel the anguish of the other two. It’s not a sign, but it might as well be.

the song sparrow sings again and again

The erstwhile Great Backyard Bird Count continues on Sunday, and it’s just below freezing, a boring, cloudy balcony morning, with incoming rain. Nevertheless, it’s finally time for the Song Sparrow to sing, not once or twice but over and over, already started when I go out at 6:45, and not wrapping up until a few minutes after 7, with intermittent snatches later in the hour.

It’s on!

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Cold plunge

Following a fairly brutal December, January came in like a lamb and stayed that way for several weeks. At a few points, temperatures climbed close to 50. All that ends on the 22nd, following a slushy snowfall. As a blizzard forms out on the Plains, northern air settles in, and it doesn’t reached as high as the 20s after that. The foot that comes down on the 25th submerges us all in Real Winter, and the only melting is the icicles and ice columns flowing down the sides of old, steam-heated apartment buildings like the one we inhabit.

The crystal Saturday morning of the 30th may end up being the coldest of the year, at ‘teen degrees below zero Fahrenheit in the lowest-lying spots by the tracks just as the sun is rising.

Stirrings

By the 22nd, it seems as if European Starlings and American Crows might be spending less time in flocks and more time in pairs, but it’s really hard to tell. Starlings, sometimes by the hundreds, are finally feasting on the fruit trees downtown. Rock Pigeons, as usual, seem oblivious to the bitter cold and deep snow—if anything, they’re more active the colder it gets

There seems to a slight increase in House Finch song. Mom believes that they breed on their native Western time schedule and as a result will soon abandon her feeders and stay in town, where they belong, to begin the nesting season. I can hardly blame her for wanting them gone.

On the 30th, a Common Raven, one of this winter’s junkyard pair, hops about in the birch trees above the tracks at 14 below zero, largely oblivious to me. It’s carefully snapping off and gathering slender limbs for its nest. The pair’s home is in an inaccessible niche way up under the interstate overpass somewhere, well out of sight of any predators, including humans. Day by day, these two get louder and more obvious, playing up in the heavens in the coldest and harshest air, croaking about the highway roadkill, perched in the sycamore.

Getting by

I’ve not been out enough to see much evidence of the desperation that weeks of cold and deep snow bring as food sources and stores run low or empty. A photo of a Long-eared Owl in someone’s backyard in a town not far from here was rather striking—what must conditions be like in the woods for as cryptic a species as this to show up for urban feeder food (or so I would guess)?

Even the Carolina Wrens have it tough. They are barely vocalizing, no longer among the early risers, at least not audibly (only the Northern Cardinals, Dark-eyed Juncos, Song Sparrows, and White-throated Sparrows greet the dawn these days). At the end of the month, I spot one hopping about the bare Juniata Formation cliffs at the bridge, having been displaced for its usual haunts in the now-submerged brush piles.

Plowed and windswept areas are the place to go for the surface feeders. At dawn, juncos and cardinals alight on the tracks, and on the 31st, I continually flush a fivesome of ‘snowbirds’ up the Hollow across the bare-dirt patches.

Mostly, though, the woods birds that haven’t chickened out and gone to feeders are on the trunks (woodpeckers and Brown Creepers, all as vocal as ever) and in the canopy. Tulip-poplars, birches, and plenty of other trees still have tons of edibles for Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmice, Golden-crowned Kinglets, American Goldfinches, and juncos. I’m guessing White-breasted Nuthatches are rapidly burning through their caches.

The river is still open, thanks to some meltwater and rains earlier in the month that raised it from drought levels. The black pools and narrow, straight stretches through rapids haven’t attracted any waterfowl, however, and even the wintering Mallards prefer to stay mostly in town, close by the banks in the long, open stretch around the Pennsylvania Avenue bridge. Meanwhile, mergansers and geese have gone missing.

Dave reported a Sharp-shinned Hawk in town at one point, and the day after the blizzard, around 9 AM, I watch a Cooper’s Hawk circling above the confluence not far from a swirling mass of starlings and House Sparrows. A Red-tailed Hawk comes and goes through the Gap on the Brush side most mornings, but otherwise, raptors seem to have withdrawn to more hospitable climes.

Imbolc update

On the first of February, with the temperature in the low single digits, I’m finally able to fully access the balcony for the first time since the blizzard. Yesterday, I was able to remove an icepack up to four inches thick that consisted of snow melted off the higher roofs. Once again, though no new birds. I have a hard time believing that the vultures who first show up around Groundhog Day will make an appearance tomorrow—I’ll give them a couple weeks until we get some genuinely warm thermals. But who knows—they never leave Nittany Valley in the winter, so maybe they’re operating on some clock independent of the weather.

Despite the dearth of waterfowl, the hotspot count stands at 51 species for the year, exactly the same as last year. I would suppose that February will bring in another 15 or so new species, and then the flood will beginning in March. By the end of March, we typically reach 100 species for the year.

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First birds first

A breezy thirteen degrees on the balcony at dawn, cloudy-clearing with fresh snow. The first bird of the new year is a Northern Cardinal, starting up its brief sequence of ticks at 7:12 AM in the underbrush along the river. A Dark-eyed Junco plummets from the gloom into the edges of Bald Eagle Creek in front of me, twittering. At 7:17 AM, fifteen Mallards lift up from beyond the Burger King somewhere and rush overhead, swirling a bit as they drop down into the Little Juniata out of sight. Carolina Wrens begin a calling duet, and then one sings. Appropriate, and completely unsurprising, that the first song of 2026 belongs to the most versatile of birds.

At 7:28, 25 European Starlings complete their transit of Brush Mountain and swoosh down into town; three minutes later, the first three Rock Pigeons are up and out. A Song Sparrow calls from over by the bank, where a few winter in the thick, protective shrubbery. A pair of American Goldfinches fly over in chaotic fashion.

At 7:37, some sort of raptor with light-colored underwings flaps low over the northeast end of town and over the interstate, but instead of finding a perch in the open or up in a tree, it flies resolutely into the open, snowy woods and disappears at ground level. The year did not waste any time in proving that I need to purchase higher power binoculars. This isn’t the first time I’ve had a mystery raptor do this. There’s just the faintest possibility this was a Short-eared Owl returning to roost, instead of a waking Red-tailed Hawk, but not for the first time, I couldn’t get a good enough look to tell.

The first House Finch is out by 7:38, and five go over, singing, at 8:05. Judging by the growing numbers at Mom’s and Eric’s feeders, it’s possible these are Hollow-bound. As for corvids, the first American Crow calls at 7:39, while a local Common Raven doesn’t yell until 7:44, 30 minutes or more later than in previous Januaries.

Common Mergansers are finally back for the winter— a male coming from the east goes over at 7:56, and a dozen more speed by from the same direction at 8 AM. The second of two Red-tailed Hawks crosses the Gap, and by the time the sun peeks out through the trees on Laurel Ridge, 16 species are on the books, a decent start for the year, considering I’ve barely moved an inch.

Later that day, the last good migration conditions for Golden Eagles occur, but I’m too busy to get out and look. The official count up-mountain, some 15 miles to the northeast, revealed an all-time-high number of late-season eagles, still trickling southward until the very end of 2025 when the count period concluded. Today, even though I don’t go out to look, I think it’s safe to assume that migration has finally ended.

The next day is a cloudy 19 degrees, and I hit the tracks to add a few more species to the year list. Winter Wrens are particularly active and loud, but most other birds are quiet, barely calling or flying. Nevertheless, with some help from Eric’s PUC antenna, the Plummer’s Hollow year list rises to 29. A respectable hotspot count for all of January is 50 species, but I’ll need to cover the main parts of Plummer’s Hollow, which will take several weeks.

Holdovers

The next step is a dawn field count. These are particularly valuable in the winter, as several species tend to lurk about without ever coming to the feeders. In general, winter species don’t reveal themselves very easily, so they may successfully escape detection down in the depths of the barberry and goldenrod. Indeed, the only time they can be detected with any regularity is right at dawn, when, despite the season, they can’t seem to resist calling a few times.

Today, the prizes are a Fox Sparrow, a Swamp Sparrow, and three Field Sparrows. All three, fall holdovers, are likely to disappear within the month; none ever show at the feeders, though the Fields are visible enough out in the field (unsurprisingly) and edges.

In the spruce grove, I finally see the reclusive Red-breasted Nuthatch that has been a resident since last year, after a few minutes of sitting at Dad’s memorial. Mom comes here every day and feeds the birds, so the Black-capped Chickadees and others are relatively tame.

Mixed multitude

Another lingerer, the Northern Flicker, is still around, but I suspect it will soon withdraw to Sinking Valley. Crows are about in numbers—50 go over the field at dawn in several raucous flocks, emanating from a roost somewhere to the west. The normally productive Greenbriar/Bird Count trail area is curiously devoid of birds, despite the fresh inch or so of snow. The reason soon becomes apparent—a huge crowd has converged on the tulip-tree tops, mid-layer, and freshly plowed earth of the road just above the Long Stretch. Cardinals are streaming down from Sapsucker Ridge in flocks, high up in the trees, White-breasted Nuthatches and various woodpeckers are everywhere, yanking and hammering, and juncos and cardinals are pecking furiously about on the road, flushing ahead of me. Golden-crowned Kinglets are also about, in the dozens. Farther down the road, the woods are empty again, similar to the voids beyond the range of bird feeders. Birds are like this in the winter, flocking to available food sources but cryptic or absent otherwise, presumably due to scant cover and the need to have a good early warning system (tons of other birds) for predators.

On the 8th, a work day, I get to the next January outpost, the powerline cut facing Sinking Valley. I hear a Hermit Thrush, a Barred Owl, and a pair of Eastern Screech-Owls, reaching 38 species for the year. Nothing out of the ordinary, though; in past Januaries, I’ve seen or heard Horned Larks, American Kestrels, and Northern Mockingbirds far below, but the fields and fencerows today are empty.

Thaw

The next part of the month brings a warm-up with highs scraping 50. When I can, I duck outside in the afternoons to see if it’s warm enough for thermals, hence raptors, but no luck. Also, American Robins seem to have disappeared completely—there’s more food elsewhere, I guess, so no need to come back here. What a change from two years ago, when thousands were streaming through the hotspot at this time!

The ninth is again a balcony dawn. At 7:33, seven Common Mergansers in a line fly over E-W, somehow maintaining a perfect 45-degree angle, half a V, for their entire transect across my field of vision. Minutes later, I spot six Canada Geese disappearing to the north; geese are tough to see from the hotspot in January, as they seem to like to stay put. And then at 7:48 another mild surprise, some 30 Icterids, split between Red-winged Blackbirds and Brown-headed Cowbirds in a characteristic oval flock flying from a night roost in some forested wetland up the valley, passing in front of Bald Eagle Mountain, through the Gap, and out toward Sinking Valley. I’m guessing this is a final remnant of the flocks that appeared in late December, some of which I saw passing over at dawn along the same route. Just after this, to top it off, a single, silent American Robin departs a starling-laden tree along Bald Eagle Creek and flutters north, the first (and so far, only) robin of 2026.

The eleven is a Sunday, and though it’s cold, the puffy cumulus invite a brief afternoon balcony glance. The local Red-tailed Hawk pair is having a ball up there, and the year’s first Cooper’s Hawk also partakes of the gale.

The 13th, a work day, is another rapid foray into the Hollow, mostly for exercise but also to eliminate the possibility that some cryptic sapsucker remains, undetected, on Sapsucker Ridge (possibility eliminated!). I had thought no Hermit Thrushes were left, either, but two are clucking today in separate locations along Greenbriar; I missed them last week because I wasn’t in the right habitat early enough, and like most of the rest, they seem to call only around dawn in winter. At one point, a Cedar Waxwing goes over, equaling the robin count for the year, and the riot of crow noise finally abates enough that I can make out something different, the yelping of a Wild Turkey.

By the middle of the month, the warmth is gone but it’s not cold enough for standing water to freeze up completely and entice local waterfowl to the Little Juniata (yet). The fruit trees that line the streets of Tyrone are still untouched, the first year I’ve seen this happen. The starling hordes have not arrived, and the lone robin seems to have left. We’ll see what happens when the deep freeze arrives next week.

A mix of clear skies and clouds in the upper teens, but with a southerly wind, brings a dawn balcony surprise on the 16th, the first real mystery of 2026. Not long before 8 AM, a single Common Loon speeds on a familiar flight path north over Bald Eagle Mountain. Familiar, but for the spring, not the winter; this is the first I’ve ever seen one this time of year, and I can hardly guess what open water surface it took off from or where it’s going.

Later in the day, Dave texts to say that he’s just flushed a Ruffed Grouse, not only the first of the year, but te first since late last summer.

Bluebird Mania

On Sunday the 18th, I take advantage of the no-Sunday-hunting rule (deer season is otherwise still on) to do my annual winter skirt of the southeastern side of the hotspot. I trek from Tyrone to the first spot, deep in a hollow below the Far Field, arriving just after seven, just as the first cardinals call. I’m here for a particular species that recedes in a very noticeable way from higher up the mountain, and it isn’t long into the hour before it flies in front of me: a Red-headed Woodpecker, highly agitated, calling incessantly. A few feet away, a large mixed flock is about, including a chattering group of Eastern Bluebirds, also absent from the winter mountaintop. They are flitting about a large hole in a tree in the company of White-breasted Nuthatches and Tufted Titmice, all calling boisterously. The light’s still too poor for a decent shot of the birds, but the hole, which obligingly doesn’t move, poses nicely. I have to wonder whether there’s a screech-owl or two inside.

At another thicket, I hear the screeches and squeals of at least one Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, #50 for the year.

Back in First Field, the sun finally appears as the temperature continues to drop through the 20s. After months of ticks, I finally hear the complete song of a Northern Cardinal, another one of those deep-winter harbingers of spring. Back at mom’s house, I spend a while watching the feeders, still besieged by greedy House Finches.

On the 19th, the best thing to watch are the Rock Pigeon flocks. Winter is their time to shine; they, along with the ravens, seem to truly revel in challenging weather. They swirl, dive, and careen about the skies over town regardless of the temperature, wind speed, type, or amount of precipitation. Given the state of the world, I would highly recommend to anyone feeling down or hopeless to spend some time watching pigeons in winter. They’ll survive us, no doubt.

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The Year in Birds

Plummer’s Hollow in 2025 once again attained the fourth-highest total among Pennsylvania hotspots, after Presque Isle, Middle Creek, and John Heinz. Our visible total was 212 species, but including two hidden species (Barn Owl and American Goshawk), we reached 214, 10 higher than the previous record. This suggests that with more consistent monitoring (e.g., more eyes, better optics, more functional NFC nights, more feeding stations, more specialized habitat, etc.), we might eventually attain 225 species or more in a calendar year.

Though the fall high season was missed due to Balkans travel, Plummer’s Hollow still managed to log Pennsylvania 2025 high counts of 12 species: Rose-breasted Grosbeak (40 on 9/20), Swainson’s Thrush (800 on 9/16), House Finch (191 on 8/26), Acadian Flycatcher (21 on 7/16), Wood Thrush (56 on 7/16), Eastern Wood-Pewee (26 on 6/7), Tennessee Warbler (40 on 5/8), Scarlet Tanager (34 on 5/8), Black-and-white Warbler (24 on 5/5), Worm-eating Warbler (26 on 4/29), Eastern Towhee (78 on 4/18), Winter Wren (12 on 3/30).

At the county level, the sole Blair County first in the hotspot was Yellow-crowned Night Heron (5/5). For species with two or more individuals reported, 2025 saw 18 county high count for Plummer’s Hollow.

The hotspot itself had 34 all-time species high counts in 2025. This is largely reflective of refined methods by which I am increasingly able, as more data are generated, to target certain weather conditions, locations, dates, NFC and early-morning audio clues, and times of day to maximize diurnal counts. This was the reason, for example, that Wood Thrushes were counted in extremely high numbers in the Hollow during molt-migration in mid-July.

Thirty-two eBirders accessed Plummer’s Hollow in 2025, including folks on field trips, birders passing through, and a small number of local birders who tramp the hotspot for chances at rare warblers and the like. In general, the public are limited to the walkable road up the Hollow, but members of the Friends of Plummer’s Hollow are also able to request access to the best birding spots up in the far reaches of Sapsucker Ridge and beyond.

We are still adding species to the all-time Plummer’s Hollow list: last year, the nine new ones were Common Goldeneye (wing whistles at night, beginning Jan 1), Greater Scaup (one in the river Feb 22), Lesser Scaup (two in the river Mar 7), Red-throated Loon (one in flight Apr 9, and one in the river Apr 13), Forster’s Tern (one via NFC May 1), Yellow-crowned Night Heron (one via NFC May 4), Sandhill Crane (two at edge of Sinking Valley Jun 20), Marsh Wren (one in field wetland Oct 16), and Lapland Longspur (one via NFC Nov 9).

These additions put the all-time hotspot species ranking in a four-way tie for 36th place in Pennsylvania. Suffice it to say that we still have years to go to crack the Top 20!

Notable Misses

It’s worthwhile to talk a little about the 14 species we missed from among the 228 that have been recorded at some point in the last five years (last year recorded in parentheses):

Waterfowl. Ring-necked Duck (2023, sole record), Bufflehead (2024). Ducks are always hit and miss due to insufficient habitat; we were lucky to get as many others as we did.

Shorebirds and other water birds. American Golden-Plover (2023, sole record), Whimbrel (2023, sole records), Short-billed Dowitcher (2023, sole record), Willet (2024, sole record), Ruddy Turnstone (2023, sole record), Red Knot (2024, sole record), American Coot (2024), Common Tern (2022). Most of these would likely have been picked up via NFC, but several weeks of prime recording time were missed.

Raptors. Rough-legged Hawk (2024), Swallow-tailed Kite (2022). RLHA moved into the area at the very end of 2025, but insufficient time was available to see if it hunted anywhere within in the hotspot. STKI was not expected.

Passerines. Evening Grosbeak (2022), Red Crossbill (2024), Henslow’s Sparrow (2023, sole record). A few fall EVGRs were reported at feeders in the area; RECR numbers across the state were lower than the previous year; HESP is not a reliable yearly NFC species.

The following were also missed (last recorded year in parentheses): Redpoll (2020), Pied-billed Grebe (2020, only record[!]), Northern Shrike (2020), White-winged Crossbill (2013), Long-eared Owl (2000), Pine Grosbeak (1989, 1 record), Summer Tanager (1987, 1 record), Ruddy Duck (1979, 1 record).

New Species to Expect

Based on recent trends, local reports, and improvements in monitoring techniques, the following species are those most likely to be detected in the near future: Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, Greater White-fronted Goose, Brant, Cackling Goose, Canvasback, Redhead, Surf Scoter, Black Scoter, American Avocet, Stilt Sandpiper, Sanderling, Black Tern, Red-necked Grebe, Little Blue Heron, Snowy Egret, American White Pelican, Short-eared Owl, Nelson’s Sparrow, Prothonotary Warbler, Swainson’s Warbler, Blue Grosbeak. All but the latter five are expected solely as flyovers, several only via NFC and others only via sighting.

The Most Notable Hits

• Snow Goose. Flock of 200 hung around northern part of the county Nov 30/Dec 1 - first winter date, and by far highest number ever (here and in county).

• White-winged Scoter. One seen in AM flight mid-Apr; second ever and first since 1979.

• Common Gallinule. Mid-Apr NFCs; becoming an annual species.

• Black-bellied Plover. First spring record (late May, NFC).

• Upland Sandpiper. Now predictably regular via NFC (late Jul-late Aug).

• Caspian Tern. First sight record (late Apr), plus NFC then and first NFC for fall (late Aug).

• Least Bittern. Multiple NFCs from late Apr to early Jun, and even in late Aug.

• American Goshawk. First sighting, of a passage migrant (Apr), since 1991.

• Northern Saw-whet Owl. First-ever deep winter record (Jan, heard). Is it a winter resident?

• Olive-sided Flycatcher. Three records, including first-ever in fall (late Aug). First in several years.

• Snow Bunting. Becoming regular early-morning NFC and flyover in early Nov; no definitive evidence of habitat use yet, often found in nearby Sinking Valley.

• Clay-colored Sparrow. Second-ever report (first was 2024); early May.

• Yellow-breasted Chat. Multiple reports from early May to mid-July, following first report since 1996, of lone individual, in May 2024. In 2025, two were heard in breeding habitat well into the summer.

• Golden-winged Warbler. One seen late Aug in mixed flock; now the rarest semi-regular warbler (missed 2024).

Other Notable Notes

Periods missed. I need to get a computer with more memory. This year’s machine crashed multiple times, which resulted in data loss for several critical weeks in both spring and fall. In addition, multi-day data gathering gaps occurred due to trips to Mexico (Mar), Honduras (early Aug, not so critical), and the Balkans (Sep 26-Oct 12, resulting in lack of adequate high numbers and late date counts for species such as Lincoln’s Sparrow.

Waterfowl from boom to bust. Decent in winter, high in the spring, and low in the fall. The deep freeze in Jan pushed some hotspot rarities to the Little Juniata in Jan and Feb (Hooded Merganser, Horned Grebe, Greater Scaup). In Apr, harsh weather forced down waterfowl for several days across the region, resulting in a few visible flyovers of hotspot rarities, and a close view of a Red-throated Loon at the bridge. The protracted fall drought left us without any reports of most non-Mallard ducks save a lone Gadwall NFC and a trickle of Common Mergansers.

Late summer/early fall cold spells. Two distinct periods of cold weather revealed fall migrants whose NFCs are otherwise not detectable due to katydid noise. With that impediment removed for several nights, Sora, Least Bittern, Caspian Tern, Bobolink, Upland Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs, and several others were recorded, contributing to improved understanding of their fall migratory patterns.

Scarce shorebirds. Summer drought might have been the main culprit for the overall lack of rarities during the Jul-Aug period and perhaps into the fall as well. Least Sandpiper was the exception, with the latest-ever report consisting of NFCs of one or more individuals on Oct 13. For the first year since NFCs began, no new shorebird species was added to the all-time list, another indicator of a mediocre year; of the species that were recorded, even the most common ones, such as Spotted Sandpiper, were nowhere near as frequent on the NFC tape as they have been in previous years.

Breeding grouse. Ruffed Grouse decisively returned to the mountain in 2025, and young were seen into the summer. However, no grouse at all were seen after early Aug, which may be due to natural predation.

Red-headed Woodpeckers take up residence. Like grouse, this species seemed to be making a spectacular comeback in 2025, or even more than a comeback. A pair wintered at the Far Field, and others were seen regularly all along Sapsucker Ridge. These were all presumably overflow from the now-numerous breeding pairs along the base of Brush Mt in Sinking Valley (most are on private lands and go unreported, but public locations such as Fort Roberdeau turn up multiple individuals throughout the year). However, the Far Field pair never did breed, and the last report of the species in the hotspot was the end of Oct.

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher becomes a regular migrant. The hotspot seems to have perfect habitat for this transient, though individuals don’t seem to stick around for more than a day. Despite its rather cryptic behavior (lush understory, calls rarely), it is more or less regular via NFC in the late spring. In addition, it seems to be regular in the early fall—in 2025, I heard and saw one giving the chelec vocalization on Sep 6 at dawn; I was glad to learn that this species vocalizes in the autumn, as the more common Alder and Willow seem not to, and thus we have no records for either during that period.

Rare but regular warblers and vireos. Kentucky and Mourning warblers are now easily detectable in spring, and the latter in early fall as well. Kentucky Warbler once again did not breed this year, but one did sing during fall migration in late Aug, the first fall record in many years. Orange-crowned and Prairie warblers were found once each, and only in the early fall. Blue-winged Warbler was found only in early May, and not in the fall. Connecticut Warbler was regular in the goldenrod field edges throughout Sept. Philadelphia Vireo was detectable, barely, in the spring; in the fall it was found at least once a week over a month starting in late Aug. In spring, White-eyed Vireo was detected only in its narrow early May window, but I saw a pair at close range in late Oct, the latest ever date and only second fall report.

Bittern and heron bonanza. Not only are American Bitterns now regulars during spring migration (via NFC) over a month starting in mid-Apr, they are also showing up in fall migration, from late Aug well into Sep. In 2025, I had the first visual of the species in the hotspot, when four took off on the evening of Apr 30 from a wetland around Tyrone. As for Least Bittern, in addition to the late Aug report, the species showed up via NFCs over five weeks from late Apr to early Jun! The biggest find of the year was doubtless our first Yellow-crowned Night Heron on the night of May 4 (NFC); that same night, my NFC microphone and Eric Oliver’s PUC (a quarter-mile distant) picked up the same loud Black-crowned Night Heron as well.

All-time high numbers.

Low raptor counts. This was due solely to lack of effort. The nature of my work in 2025 didn’t allow extended observation periods after 9 AM during spring or fall, so adequate hawk and eagle counts were essentially non-existent.

Dedicated birders. A shout-out to Dave and Marcia Bonta as well as Eric Oliver. All three reside up on the mountain and contribute many valuable reports to the hotspot; I usually log them under the PHNR Historical Data account. Eric’s PUC can be viewed live at https://app.birdweather.com/data > Stations > Eric PUC #3 (and is online most of the time). Its most notable 2025 catch was the first Common Goldeneye on New Year’s. Another valuable contributor to Plummer’s Hollow data in 2025 (and PA breeding bird data) was Connor Schmidt, who hiked up multiple times for the warblers. We were also happy to host a State College Bird Club visit in May.

For a deep dive into 2025, you can of course consult the Plummer’s Hollow eBird hotspot homepage, now graced with a photo by Jeff Kenney.

What’s Next

• As soon as funds allow, I plan to order a new NFC microphone and a laptop with more RAM for more consistent and higher quality recording, still from the same spot on the garage roof. The season will hopefully run uninterrupted from the end of February to the beginning of December (if I can get some better heating).

• The annual Birding Festival of the Pennsylvania Society for Ornithology will happen in Altoona over Juneteenth weekend. I’ll be leading Saturday and Sunday morning field trips in the hotspot, focused on this festival’s symbol, the Worm-eating Warbler, and whatever other breeding species we can turn up.

• I’m hoping for another deep freeze and more spring fallouts to improve our waterfall numbers, but I’m also set on acquiring higher-power binoculars to better monitor the northward-moving early morning waterfowl migration in March and April.

• We are in the slow process of flattening and mudding a part of the field in hopes of attracting a few of the many shorebird and waterfowl flyovers to stop by, if only for a few minutes.

• As I did in 2025, I will provide updates as I am able—ambitiously, once a week, but more realistically, a couple times a month.

June Breeders

Throughout the year, some 75 species bred in the hotspot, out of a potential 90+. Species that almost definitely failed to nest (unlike recent years) were Golden-crowned Kinglet, Cliff Swallow, and Fish Crow.

Yellow-breasted Chat (potentially)

Bonus Audio

The following is a small selection of clips. Given the time-intensive nature of uploading audio checklist to eBird, I am currently only uploading the most notable calls. I keep the entire reference collection on my own devices, available upon request. I continue to comb through all one-hour recordings visually, but only snip the most promising calls.

Mourning Warbler, 6/1/25, and an oncoming train

Northern Waterthrush, 5/20/25

Ring-billed Gull (3/10/25)

Virginia Rail kek-kek (4/24/25)

Long-tailed Ducks singing (4/1/25)

Dickcissel churt (6/3/25)

Northern Rough-winged Swallow(s) hunting over the field at 4:50 AM, 6/9/25, having travelled at least half a mile.

Willow Flycatcher NFC, 6/3/25

Upland Sandpiper, quiddyquit (7/22/25 at 5 AM)

Caspian Tern, 145 AM on 8/30/25

Least Sandpiper at 404 AM on 10/13/25

American Pipit, 519 AM on 11/17/25

Lapland Longspur, 3 AM on 11/9/25

In late 2025, the Pennsyltucky Geographer crawled out his Appalachian hollow for a whirlwind quest to extend his (country) lifelist to 50 before he got any older. His wife Paola and their friends Graciela and Jeff, somehow having agreed to submit themselves to this geographic mania, packed into an SUV that the PG drove, with Paola’s help in the tight spots, from Albania to North Macedonia and thence in a big, squishy circle to Kosovo, Montenegro, Republika Srpska, Bosnia & Hercegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Croatia again, Slovenia, Italy (country #50!), back to Slovenia, back to Croatia, back to Montenegro, and finally back to Albania. (Bonus: Cleveland, Frankfurt, and Munich.)

Below are the links to a travelogue that makes sense of this madness.*

*A.I. was never used in the writing of any of this. You can tell because the sentences are frequently unnecessarily lengthy and contorted, reflecting the author’s many years of academic training and his realization that it is of paramount importance to write as many words as possible where few will do, particularly when the subject is not greatly familiar to him, given that the author’s academic specialties are a circle with a radius of about a mile in Plummer’s Hollow, certain sections of Honduras, anywhere that people give a fig about cycads, and anything that occurred to Gilles Deleuze as it relates to space, place, landscape, etc. The Balkans is definitely not in his academic wheelhouse, despite all the fancy talk about chokepoints and shatterbelts.

Also, dear reader, if you find typos and erors of substance anywere in this travelogue, please bring them to the author’s attention at markabonta@yahoo.com. He would be eternally grateful. If he got something wrong that directly contradicts your particular area of expertise, please feel free to gently shame him directly in the comments: he didn’t spent decades in academe for nuttin’!

WE BEGIN:

The relative calm of Croatia gave way after the Montenegrin border station (with barely a glance at our papers) to the well-ordered, already familiar chaos of Montenegro. Cattaro, as it was once called, is at the head of Kotor Bay, the ria of a long-disappeared river that cut deep into the Dinaric Alps.

The bay separates the Orjen and Lovćen mountains, which are sufficiently precipitous to keep traffic to a sinuous crawl around multiple arms of the bay. At the very farthest point inland is Kotor, a smallish modern town separated by a moat from the medieval, walled Old Town. When we arrived, quite early in the day, a giant cruise ship loomed over the town, larger in bulk than the entire ancient community, and probably with a larger, if temporary population.

Cats everywhere

As we suspected, the ailurophilia in Kotor exceeded even what we had witnessed during several weeks in the western Balkans. Not far inside the gates, a small park is dedicated to feeding the many grungy, public cats, a volunteer undertaking; they are seen as good luck symbols, and have long been appreciated for their skills n rodent control. Somewhat farther inside the labryinth, the Kotor Cat Museum charged us a nominal fee to tour several rooms filled with cat memorabilia from around the globe, and pet their mascot.

I would say that Kotor won hands down the most charming medieval town on our trip, more so after the cruise ship passengers embarked and their pleasure boat sailed away. Our apartment was also essentially a boutique hotel, which didn’t hurt.

Overlooking the omnipresent clouds of cigarette smoke (which had somehow even been a thing in more elegant Dubrovnik), there really wasn’t much to complain about.

The Old Town was quite small, so were were able to explore most of it before settling down for dinner in the outdoor part of the Ombra restaurant next to the Old Black Popular, an iconic tree planted after the great 1667 earthquake.

The artsy location served delicious food, and we were serenaded by a live classical soloist who also projected a black-and-white film. We had noticed that a fair number of servers and other employees in restaurants along the Adriatic didn’t appear to be local; some seemed to be from as far away as Southeast Asia. At the Ombra, we asked our waiter where he was from; “Turkey,” he replied. I wondered whether Istanbul, and he said no, farther east. Ankara? No, farther east: I am a Kurd.

As I was feeling a bit under the weather, I retired early to our restored attic bedroom, noise-cancelling headphones installed to keep out the sound of loud partying from the nearby (as in a few feet away) clubs. The others hung out at the nearest outdoor bar, and once again I missed Jeff’s virtuoso trumpet performance for an adoring crowd and at least one rather rotund street cat.

The next morning, Paola and I set out to conquer the Ladder of Kotor, a series of steep, cobbled switchbacks ascending to the sky, past Venetian military installments and the ruins of churches.

We trailed hungry cats, much to Paola’s delight, until they finally dropped off and went back to town. At the top, or as close to the top as we could get, we stopped for breath and views, then decided to go back the way we came rather than try to scramble over some unmaintained areas to the other ladder.

I think I saw but neglected to take a photo of a sign listing the 30-plus polities that have ruled Kotor over the last couple of thousand years since it was the stomping ground of the Illyrians. Without belaboring the point, I think it’s safe to say that close to every empire, kingdom, nation, and tribe we heard tell of in our grand tour occupied or attempted to occupy the town at some point or another. The town outlasted them all, of course, as it will no doubt outlast its current country of Montenegro, last of the Yugoslavian statelets to break away from Mother Serbia—peacefully, via referendum in 2006.

On the trail of the Messiah

And so it basically ended for us, though we still had a country and a half to get through before our return to the airport hotel in Tirana by that evening (our flight was scheduled for the early morning of the 11th). We pushed on through the Budva Riviera without stopping, as I was intent on at least bearing witness to history’s most popular messiah, the antinomian Sabbatai Zevi, who is buried somewhere in Ulcinj, a seaside town in Montenegro’s extreme southeast, well within the Albanian zone.

Sabbatai Zevi was proclaimed as the messiah in 1665 with the help and under the influence of Nathan of Gaza, a mystic influenced by Lurianic Kabbalah of the Safed school. The Safed Kabbalists had long been on the outlook for the Messiah, as all the signs were already known. Isaac Luria himself, and his disciples, had transplanted these ideas from the exiled Sephardim in Spain, who had developed this strain of Jewish mysticism way back in the 1200s, most well known in the form of the Zohar, but including many other texts. There was even a common thread with the Bogomils, as those Orthodox heretics helped transplant their beliefs to Provence, where the Cathars and the Kabbalah developed at the same time.

In any case, Sabbatai was not shy about his messiah status, and many rabbis followed him. His base was Salonika, which had become (and remained, until the Holocaust) the foremost center of Sephardic culture, learning, and Kabbala, at least outside of Jerusalem and Safed.

It’s hard to understate the power and influence of Sabbatai Zevi at his height—millions of Jews, up to two-thirds of the world population, followed him, not just in the Middle East and the Mediterranean but all across northern Europe. And then the Sultan had had enough; he offered Sabbatai death or conversion. Sabbatai chose the latter, to the chagrin of millions, and he was cast aside by most Jews thereafter as a false messiah. Nevertheless, his followers continued as secret Jews, still supposedly engaging in their heretical, antinomian practices, which involved morally questionable rites antithetical to the Law and all tradition (one of the aspects of Sabbateanism that had most shocked and horrified the authorities). He lived out his days in obscurity in Ulcinj, while his followers quietly maintained their identities in Salonika, Istanbul, and elsewhere as the Donmeh, openly Muslim but secretly Jewish. Though much diminished in numbers, and probably without any real Jewish faith traditions, Donmeh still exist in Turkey, and are the subject of a multitude of conspiracy theories.

Sabbateanism itself also travelled north and west, directly influencing Jacob Frank in central Europe in the 1700s, whose movement, Frankism, also involved his claims to messiah status, Sabbatian antinomian beliefs and practices, eventual outward conversion to Christianity. Though questioned by some scholars, his followers supposedly engaged in incest, orgies, and the like, as the belief was that the complete reject of divine laws was the best way to bring about the end of the world.

Back in southeastern Montenegro, I had realize after further research that it would take more time than we had to ferret out all the supposed places Sabbatai was buried; more gravesites than his confrere Robert Johnson, it looked like. I settled for a quick trip to the waterfront to snap a selfie at his statue, but even that was stymied. The street we attempted to go on, thanks to Google maps, was one way and both ways at the same time, somehow, reminding us of the exit-entrance to the airport carpark. One would drive in it as far as one could, then back up until finding enough room for another car to squeeze past with centimeters to spare. Problem is, unlike more polite areas, Ulcinj’s drivers (or perhaps they were tourists) were stubborn and insisted on glaring and gridlock. Before we got hopelessly locked between opposing forces, I managed to back out; to the annoyance of the car behind, no way was the car coming at me going to give way, and I wasn’t risking a scratch at this late date. As we were thus stymied on the only route in and out of the old town that I could see, I took it as sign from above and scrapped the whole ordeal.

Not longer thereafter, we were stuck in the longest wait of any border on the trip, staring at the old Enver Hoxha-era communist watch tower overlooking the Albanian border post. What searches would we have to undergo when we attempted to re-enter the country we had left 16 days before? As it turned out, none; the bureaucrats were just glacially slow here, but they happily stamped out passports once we crawled to the front and wished us well on our way. (I should mention that, as usual, Montenegro had no exit station of its own, just the sign).

After an odd but tasty lunch in an Albanian seafood restaurant where we were the only customers (given, I hoped, the time of day), we scooted back a few more minutes across a fair section of the country, and checked in again at the same airport hotel.

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It was after dark by the time we reached Dubrovnik on October 7. Because of higher costs in the iconic tourist haven, and no chance of getting a spot close to the walled Old Town anyway, we had reserved a modern apartment nine miles farther on, at the upper approach to Cavtat, a more modest seaside town.

Traffic slowed to a crawl along the narrow, two-lane road that hugged the side of a cliff. Audible gasps came from my passengers: the right side, a few feet from the car, dropped almost sheer down to the sea. I gathered that guardrails weren’t much of a thing. After weeks of Balkans roads, we were now on the most vertigo-inducing leg of the journey. The few last miles couldn’t go by quickly enough, and I suggested that for the return to Dubrovnik the next day (my 56th birthday), we take a ferry instead and ditch the car for once.

As promised, our third-floor apartment had sweeping views over the sea, with the lights of Dubrovnik barely visible. For the second and last time of the trip, we had two nights in the same place, well deserved by all!

Cavtat, though tiny, was humming with Dubrovnik overflow, and the few bars and restaurants down by the waterfront were packed. We trekked down, feasted, then stumbled back up for a good night’s rest.

On my birthday morning, I headed out early for a quick walk-and-bird around the peninsula, which on the map looked to have some sort of a trail. I was not disappointed; after skirting the waterfront and passing a few hotels, a dirt trail clinging to the hillside took me through the Aleppo (Jerusalem) pine forest and out around the point. Beyond the seaside boulders, crowds of Black-headed and Yellow-legged gulls floated in the waves, and a handful of Sandwich Terns were also flying about.

The thick scrub on the tiny peninsula seemed promising, but the fierce wind was keeping everything down. The leeward side was popping with tits, jays, blackbirds, wood-pigeons, and other common species, which I endeavored to watch without getting run over by one of the tourist-joggers.

After breakfast, we urged Graciela and Jeff to go on ahead of us, as Paola wasn’t feeling too well, victim, perhaps, of one too many Balkans feasts. To be honest, we had all fallen victim to some sort of virus at one point or another on the trip; at one point, I think I even had a touch of it. They found a small ferry and reported that the voyage was painless, though not so quick, as it stopped at several ports of call before reaching Dubrovnik. I think they said it took well over an hour to go like seven miles.

Not wanting to miss King’s Landing from GoT, Paola eventually steeled herself (with a generous helping of seasickness pills for both of us) and we hopped a later boat. She managed to stomach the choppy ride, barely, and we stumbled ashore and were soon swallowed up by the late-season multitude.

Dubrovnik was predictably overwhelming. We were told that the Disney-like crowds had already thinned considerably, and we were thankful for that. Apparently, we were mere weeks away from the place shutting down almost entirely; even the international airport closes when the worst of the winter winds set in. A bare handful of restaurants and shops stay open to cater to the stalwarts. This seemed, therefore, like a great time to go; the summer is apparently horrendously hot, as there isn’t a bit of shade to be found.

Medusa’s blood

Before ascending to the walls, we found a place to buy some of the iconic red coral (Corallium rubrum) jewelry, the Clara Stones Coral Workshop and Gallery. The shop’s website claims that:

According to the ancient Greek legend, red coral was formed from Medusa’s blood. When Perseus cut off Medusa’s head, he sat on the sea-bank to wash his hands and laid down the sack containing Medusa’s head next to him. The blood from the head dripped into the sea and was instantly transformed into what is now known as the red coral.

Red coral was considered a mineral, a stone and a plant due to its shape. Even though the Neapolitan alchemist and astrologer Filippo Finella claimed that this stone or a plant was in fact an animal in the 17^th century, a French doctor Andre Peyssonnel was given merit of discovery hundred years later.

My misgivings about the ethics of coral jewelry were assuaged by the shop owner’s explanation that the heavily regulated extraction process involves licensed and extremely gutsy divers who use only hand tools to extract coral at depths much greater than 50 meters.

The Walls

We bit the bullet and paid the steep fees to ascend to the beautifully restored city walls. The experience was worth every penny: vertigo-inducing views in various directions toward the sea, and gentler panoramas toward the inside, with cats galore.

We saw several references to peace, and recalled that the city of Dubrovnik had come under heavy attack from the surrounding Bosnian hills in 1991, as the former Republic of Ragusa is a mere sliver here. Indeed, even the Old Town itself, already a world famous heritage site, was shelled by the Yugoslav People’s Army for well over a month, another of their intentional genocidal acts targeting cultural monuments. Even more, perhaps, than the dozens of civilian deaths the attack caused, international outrage focused on the attempted destruction of one of humanity’s true masterworks. Indeed, between the shelling and subsequent looting, over 50% of the buildings in the Old Town were damaged, and many were completely destroyed, including several Baroque palaces. Though the site has been largely restored, the event is still somewhat of a touchy subject in Serbia, Bosnia, and Montenegro, as responsibility by whomever exactly decided to support such an atrocity never seemed to be clearly accepted in certain sectors of society.

It’s worth noting that even though the walls didn’t ultimately end up saving the city from modern bombardment, they definitely stood up against Ragusa’s longtime maritime rival, Venice, who attacked multiple times over earlier centuries. What is more, though nearly every building was destroyed by the 1667 earthquake, as always, the walls held.

As we prepared to leave the Old Town at sunset, I noticed a black cloud swirling not far above. Some 200 Alpine Swifts were having their final feed. We departed at the west-side Pile Gate just as the birds came plummeting back to roost in rock crevices within the gate itself, a truly spectacular sight. I guessed this was either a transient flock or locals in their last days prior to southward migration to Africa.

Exhausted, we caught a cab back, our only such ride during the whole Balkans adventure. We got a taste of what we were missing: the driver, in good, heavily accented English, regaled us with stories and opinions involving the traditional values of Croatian society (I didn’t dare mention anything historical). I distinctly remember his strong approval of what happened to a local child molester - “they cut off his d-ck!” - and after that there was little more to say.

And so the next morning, my brief respite from driving at an end, we piled back in the car and prepared to depart the European Union by the back way (on the excellent advice of the taxi driver) to avoid the lines of tourist buses coming and going from the only place that could possibly upstage even Dubrovnik in scenic value, the eternal town of Kotor, back in Montenegro.

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We were unprepared for the sheer scale of Diocletian’s Palace. We were also rather shocked by how popular it was this late in the year. But even the palace was dwarfed by a massive cruise ship a few meters away, one of the last of the season; tourists flowed through the cheesy curio booth area, along the waterfront, up through the palace, and into the old city within the palace. We dodged off to the side with the more studious tourists to get a feeling for one of the most impressive Roman ruins in existence.

Diocletian was born in Spalatum (Split), Dalmatia, in 245 CE, became emperor in 284, abdicated (!) in 305, and died seven years after that. He rose from poverty, through the military ranks, to become the Eastern Emperor of the tetrarchy, achieving victories and peace on all sides.

Toward the rising Christian threat he was a bit of a softie at first. While wintering in 302 at Nicomedia, a Roman capital not far east of modern-day Istanbul on the Anatolian Peninsula, he tried to argue that the gods would be content if he just kept Christians out of military and bureaucratic positions. However, the oracle of Apollo at Didyma vaguely suggested that “impious” Christians were the root of all evil, and this was enough to convince him to issue an Edict against Christians, with persecutions including pouring salt and vinegar into wounds, beheadings, slow boilings and the like. The mayhem didn’t end up convincing Christian clergy that paganism was superior, however, and the whole thing ended up a failure. Indeed, Constantine himself was the next in line in the East.

Diocletian gave up trying to rule the corrupt and cynical imperial citizens and retired to his palace for a few declining years. He had started its gargantuan, fort-like construction around 295; after he died, the palace remained in his family before becoming the basis for the walled town of Split. Eventually, the existence of the lower level, the Cellars, where Diocletian himself had lived, passed beyond memory, even as the outer walls and upper interior structures were lauded as some of the best-preserved Roman relics in existence and became a principal inspiration for Neoclassical architecture.

For over a thousand years, the underparts of the Palace were used to store refuse from the town, until the 20th century, when, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, the packed and hardened garbage sediments were painstakingly (and partially) removed to reveal parts of a hidden world.

Given Diocletian’s predilections, the presence of dragons in the Games of Throne site of Meereen seems appropriate; they certainly would have had enough space to crawl about without getting stuck. Indeed, the sheer scale of the Cellars, levels below the old town itself, puts to shame most ancient monuments in the world. It’s one thing to see the old amphitheaters and aqueducts that are scattered liberally across Europe, but another to walk through a dwelling built by someone (nicknamed Jovius) who, genuinely believing in the gods of Olympus, might very well have conceived himself as godlike. The cold bulk of it all was quite overwhelming to us mere mortals; one could easily comprehend how people who lived in palaces like these left a legacy that echoed through the many pretenders to New Romes (or Romanovs) of East and West, Holy and not-so-holy Roman Empires, all the way to the pretenses of Pax Americana.

Up top, we were tempted to hang around, but with a long drive ahead, we opted against paying the entry fees that would get us sucked into hours more of exploration.

Instead, we continued southeastward through the hills on an excellent road until we finally dropped down into the delta of the Neretva River, Croatia’s so-called Golden Valley, with a California-like climate perfect for the region’s famous mandarins and tangerines. Its miles of canals, some originating as long ago as the 1600s, were particularly scenic from an overlook on the far side.

A few miles further on, I was expecting to have to leave the European Union to go through Bosnia’s tiny Adriatic connector at the town of Neum—and then back again into the EU, perhaps to endure a second lengthy vehicle search. To my surprise, we were instead routed over the brand-spanking-new and once-controversial Pelješac Bridge to Croatia’s Pelješac Peninsula. The project was combatted by environmentalists and also by Bosnia due to its potential to block seagoing vessels into Neum, a potential violation of the law of the sea. Confusingly, while the Federation opposed it, the Republika Srpska supported it. The bridge was completed in 2023, and we were definitely not complaining.

Traversing Ragusa

With every mile closer to Dubrovnik (“oak grove” in Slavic), the historical capital of the maritime Republic of Ragusa, the mountains closed in even further and we enjoyed a sublime sunset. The landscape, sere mountain slopes plunging Big Sur-like into the sea, now looked exactly like my mental picture of the Balkans, which I realized was largely a construct of Game of Thrones. But we still had quite the treat in store, miles to go before we slept at Cavtat on the far side of Dubrovnik.

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After Plitvice we drove directly south and back over the Velebit range to intersect with Croatia’s main coastal expressway, the E71. We skirted the head of the Velebit Channel, an arm of Kvarner Bay, and on through the scrublands to Zadar, Croatia’s fifth-largest city. As usual, our lodging was an apartment in the pedestrian zone of the old city. We drove through sprawling suburbs and city and then three-quarters of the way around the tiny peninsula that contains the ancient town, finally parking along the Zadar Strait, with views of the Zadar Archipelago to the southwest.

Our apartment was back a few streets through a familiar maze. Our wheelies clattered along over the large flagstones that looked in places as if they were polished by a special machine every night, and not just three thousand years of footfall.

The dizzyingly long and complex history of Zadar includes many centuries as a Roman colony, a Venetian colony, a Byzantine colony, and many more, layer upon layer of construction and destruction. Somewhere, somehow, each piece of this can be found in the existing architecture, which we had ample time to explore after a blessedly short drive. The weather cooperated as well, as indeed it did for the rest of the trip. Yesterday’s bura was quickly forgotten.

Our first stop was the Sea Organ (back in the morning for the vid). This contraption moans and groans along the waterfront, as tourists step about trying to figure out what sound is coming from where under the marble steps. The organ is simultaneously a musical instrument and an art installation, played by the tides and waves, with whale song-like tunes changing with the time of day and the season. It’s the creation of Nikola Bašić, an architect charged with helping revivify the waterfront after years of neglect. This unique experience made up a bit for the fact that earlier we hadn’t been able to visit another of Croatia’s quirky must-sees, a (closed for the day) house in Smiljan, birthplace of Nikola Tesla.

Salt snobs

After the sea organ, we wandered about well into the night, and resumed our exploration the following morning. By pure happenstance, we found a store and small museum dedicated to the local salt industry. They didn’t just sell any old salt— this was from the Nin saltworks, an Adriatic tradition stretching back 1500 years. The museum’s film featured the manual component of salt production, and the ecological sustainability of it all, and so we were hooked. Himalayan pink salt be damned! We loaded up on artisanal salts from the shelves, some called “flower of salt” and others flavored in various ways. I silently vowed to avoid that girl with the umbrella forever after.

Right after 6 AM, I slipped out through the Land Gate to explore Vladimir Nazor Park just southeast of the old town. The late 19th-century site, up on the ruins of a 16th-century fortress, afforded views of the Strait as well as the harbor, with hundreds of raucous Yellow-legged Gulls whooshing back and forth to feed at first light. The abundant understory and nearly intact canopy was rich with birdlife—features included a Common Firecrest, a Eurasian Blackcap, and a Song Thrush.

Croatian flying saucers!

Right after leaving Zadar on our long day’s drive to Cavtat/Epidaurus, we were treated to spectacular stacks of lenticular clouds. A bit later, we crossed the Most Krka and pulled over at a rest stop in Krka National Park, which afforded us beautiful views of a fjord-like estuary known as a ria. A pair of Crested Larks twittering and flitted about the grass in the stiff breeze, along with five White Wagtails. A loud and extremely drunken group of young male and female tourists, seemingly Croatian, were guzzling beer and throwing the cans on the ground; one particularly desperate fellow was happily urinating down into the magnificent view, oblivious to the world.

From there, we had only a few minutes more to go to Split, mostly comprising Diocletian’s Palace, AKA Meereen.

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After driving all the way from Piran and Trieste, we had little energy left to do much more than collapse for a few hours in our ample lodgings not far from the gates of Plitvice National Park. It was raining, anyway, but hopefully the next day would be clear for our hike in the park. We dined in a local joint crowded with tourists from several continents, reminding us that we were at a place visited by some 1.5 million tourists a year.

Dawn brought temperatures around freezing, so we bundled up and hurried to our entrance gate area, tickets in hand. Even at 7 AM, other tourists were already arriving, but no tour buses yet. We didn’t quite know what to expect, as none of the karstic landscape can be seen from the fringing highway. But we didn’t have long to wait, as the slippery trail brought us right to the edge of the gorge, across from the 285-foot Great Waterfall, highest in Croatia. We made our way gingerly down the path, avoiding the frozen spots for the most part.

Once at the bottom, we were treated to a couple hours of relative solitude, as we mingled with a trickle of tourists walking upstream on the multiple boardwalks and forest paths that crisscrossed the travertine (tufa) barriers between the many lakes.

As a lifelong fan of Lord of the Rings, I have to say the place seemed more like a Tolkienesque invention, some variation of Rivendell, than anywhere that could possibly exist in the real world. No wonder that it became a favored resort spot for Austrian royalty, and a pet project of the Croatian opera singer Milka Ternina even before the 20th century began.

That most overused of words to describe spots of outstanding natural beauty, “magical,” isn’t nearly sufficient to describe the trance-like effect that Plitvice has on one’s eyes and soul. This is particularly the case at the earliest hours before the boardwalks get crowded with selfie-sticking tour groups and the sun loses its effect. One feels sorry for the brains trapped in online echo chambers, convinced the world is such a horrible place and that we are all doomed. Plitvice, I don’t hesitate to say, is at least the equal of Yellowstone or any other iconic North American national park.

Minus the big animals, of course, but it makes up for this by an outstanding floral diversity, including a patch of bona fide primeval forest with 700-year-old trees and a species endemism rate approaching 50%. It has 55 species of orchids alone, well worthy of a tropical cloud forest. In recent years, due to contamination of the sensitive limestone aquifer by nearby development and agriculture, and degradation from too many tourists, a daily limit has been imposed, though it eventually became hard to see how more people could possibly fit in it. Nevertheless, the multicolored pools seemed pristine to us, and the greenish water was crystal clear.

We ended up hiking at least six miles, including a circuitous side-route up through the forest to a viewpoint over the lakes. At one point, we reached an infrastructure zone where we grabbed some horrendous park coffee (possibly the only bad coffee experience on the whole trip) and waited for a Maid of the Mists-type boat to slide out of the fog and pick us up to take us farther upstream.

After we had our fill of the park—or at least, we had lost any hint of solitude—we hopped a train-like, multi-car contraption that drove us back near to where we had started. Shopping for trinkets away from the crowds now squeezing out of tour buses, we asked the kid at the cash register if this was considered a lot of people, but she shook her head and laughed. This was nothing; you should see it in the summer!

At a certain point, it gets impossible to stop taking pictures

Every slightly different angle or turn of the body brings another temptation to click. Plitvice has some 16 lakes and over 90 waterfalls. The lakes are in some places close to 200 feet deep.

Anti-Fascist Paradise?

I’m not one to complain about other members of my species who have as much right as me to escape from our virtual prison for awhile. I just have to make sure I can have a few hours of relative solitude, and we certainly got that. There’s something sublime about a place that can bring humanity together in such a fashion, made more poignant once one realizes what terrible inhumanity lurks behind it.

Plitvice was a major resistance site for Croatian communists during WWII, and a secret meeting place for the National Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Croatia that organized against the ghastly Ustashe fascists bent on exterminating anyone less than their fantastical master race. Lord of the Rings, indeed.

In the 1990s, it was the location of the first fatality-producing battle of the Croatian Civil War. The Plitvice Lakes Incident (Plitvice Bloody Easter) took place there in 1991, part of the drama surrounding the Serb-controlled buffer zone inside Croatia known as the Serb Republic of Krajina. The ghost state did not outlast the war, and the region was extensively ethnically cleansed, with first the Croats pushed out, then the Serbs sent back to Bosnia or elsewhere and the Croats returning.

I saw no hint of this trauma in any park signage, which was probably a good thing—we were all there to see something far greater and longer-lasting than the squabbles of fascists fighting fascists to retaliate for what fascists did to communists decades earlier (I am simplifying things vastly, I admit). My greatest satisfaction of our visit was testifying to the triumph of nature conservation over genocide: the park survived both wars and modernization, and is probably more gorgeous today than it’s been in over a century, if I had to guess.

With our long hike behind us and our stomachs growling, we were ready for our first traditional Croatian feast at a nearby restaurant. And thence the road led ever on and on, back down to the Dalmatian coast, Game of Throne territory, if you will.

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From Pécs we took the straightest route on back roads through rural southwestern Hungary and back across the Drava into Croatia, destination Zagreb. As we needed to also make it all the way across Slovenia to the Adriatic town of Piran that same day, we opted to limit our Zagreb visit to a horribly crowded outskirts mall for some necessities. Tis, unfortunately, was the only glimpse the trip afforded Jeff of the land of his ancestors, who came from two nearby towns. That concluded, we continued onward to the Slovenia border.

Not far into Slovenia (#49), along the limited-access E70 expressway, we stopped at a roadside welcome center some ten levels in food quality above the American variety we were more familiar with. No gut-churning Sbarro’s here! We gorged on traditional Slovenian lunch fare and then continued across the increasingly Alpine-looking country, towering peaks in the distance, rolling hills and valleys in the foreground dotted with prosperous-looking villages.

Slovenia seems to stay out of the way of major conflicts and separated from Yugoslavia after a ten-day war in 1991 that had well less than 100 fatalities, not bad by the standards of the time. It’s been growing economically and liberalizing socially ever since. Our chosen stop during the long day’s drive was the capital, Ljubljana, which, months later, we are still trying to figure out how to pronounce.

City of dragons

Initially, Ljubljana seemed a rather drab and beat-up place, but once we reached the old city center, we found a fair amount of tipsy commotion in the impeccably-restored tourist district. Though we didn’t have time to hike up to the Ljubljana Castle, we enjoyed promenading about the cobbled streets, shopping for honey and fridge magnets, bemused by the head shops that signaled the country’s socially liberal climate.

The Devil’s town

And then it was time to continue onward to the Gulf of Trieste. A tiny sliver of western Slovenia reaches the Adriatic at the medieval burg of Piran, which made the smart decision several years back to ban all parking within the limits of the old town. After parking some distance away, we filled up overnight backpacks and walked the kilometer along the waterfront into the narrow alleys just at dusk. The town definitely had an Italian feel to it, testimony to 90%+ Italian habitation, with some Austrian overlordship, all the way up to the mid-20th century.

The town sits at the northwestern edge of the peninsula of Istria, with its own unique culture, now mostly part of Croatia. For over 500 years (1283-1797), Piran and the surrounding miniature “Slovenian Riviera” formed part of the Republic of Venice. Given the enormous strategic value of nearby Trieste,captured by the Allies in World War II, Piran remained overwhelmingly Italian and part of the Free Territory of Trieste until 1954 when it finally joined Slovenia. Most of the Italians left thereafter, replaced by Slovenians.

Two rather distinct personages mark the historical significance of Piran. The first is Giuseppe Tartini, a violinist born there in 1692 who went on to become a godfather of heavy metal, one might say. Tartini recounted that the Devil himself came to him in a dream, inspiring him to compose the so-called “Devil’s Trill” sonata, a truly diabolical masterpiece, as miniature as everything else in Piran.

The second figure is Peter Bossman, who in 2010 became mayor of Piran. Born in Ghana, Bossman was the first black mayor anywhere in the formerly Communist part of Europe.

A statue of the demon-possessed Baroque influencer is the principal feature of Tartini Plaza off the waterfront. After we found our extremely narrow and ancient Wahlberg- and Berry-haunted apartment a few alleys away, the most backpacker-ish of all the places we stayed in the Balkans (with, probably not by accident, the longest list of rules), we wandered back down to the square to look for food and drink. We found drink and plenty of it, mostly wine, Slovenia’s pride and joy. Food was a bit harder to get, but we settled on a pizza place. Later, I collapsed after the long day’s drive, while the others went back out to watch some live music. For the second time on the trip, Jeff had a chance to jam with musicians.

Bura: Part I

We had originally planned to do some further exploring of Piran the following morning, but we awoke to pounding rain. No let-up was in the forecast, so we donned our raincoats and slogged to Tartini Plaza, hoping to grab a taxi back to our car park. Rain was blowing in horizontally off the water, mixing with waves that were threatening to swamp the boats. Pumps had already been set up to get the rising tide out of the square, and the wind was gusting strong enough to almost knock us off our feet. Thankfully, an early public bus wandered by, and we grabbed it, already nearly soaked to the skin despite our overgarments. This was our first introduction to an early-season bura, the dreaded katabatic windstorm from the Dinaric Alps that can make living and driving in this part of the world quite hazardous.

Number 50 at last!

We wound our way back out of the top of Istria and around the bay for a visit to Trieste, a sizeable port city that now bills itself as the “world capital of coffee” thanks to its historical location as the closest port to the coffeehouses of Vienna. Today, it is the headquarters of Illy, which maintains the Università del Caffè, the University of Coffee, which for an addict like me sounds like somewhere I would go to get another PhD.

The storm showed no signs of letting up, so we made a plan to find somewhere to park so we could at least find some Trieste coffeehouse to eat breakfast and celebrate my attainment of 50th life country. Even though it was a Sunday, the waterfront was packed with cars, and we had no luck finding parking around any of the iconic riverfront squares. Instead, we drove further into the old town, finally grabbing a spot in a random parking garage. I asked Paola to look up the nearest cool place to drink coffee, and she found a spot less than a block away.

Caffè San Marco

In what could only be described as divinely serendipitous intervention, we stumbled out of the rain into none other than St. Mark’s, an Art Nouveau coffeehouse-cum-bookstore once frequent by the likes of James Joyce, and still a literary hub. What’s more, the spot is consistently near or at the top of the list of coffee houses in all of Europe. No more fitting location could we have found if we’d actually planned anything at all!

The uniquely Trieste coffee and breakfast did not disappoint, and I did a quick video commemorating the occasion (neglecting to mention Costa Rica in the list of places I’d been). And that was that.

Bura: Part II

We climb back up out of Trieste, the through a tiny portion of drenched Italian countryside and back across the narrow neck of the Istrian Peninsula from westernmost Slovenia into Croatia. At the Slovenia border was Porky’s, a roadhouse themed on a trashy-classic American 80s film—unless we had missing something, the sole tasteless element of an otherwise quintessential European country.

At first, the driving was rainy but not hazardous, but that quickly changed after we reached Kvarner Bay at Rijeka, Croatia’s third-largest city. From there, I decided to take a shortcut south along the Dalmatian coast to Senj, then slice inland through the mountains to the Plitvice karst region where we were to spend the night.

That was a mistake. While my passengers dozed, I had the white-knuckled privilege of battling the bura’s full fury on a narrow road high up above the water. Winds strong enough to flip the car rushed across the road, occasionally carrying limbs with them. The scant traffic crept along, exercising greatest caution at the most open parts, alert for higher wind gusts. Had I known that buras can blow at over 150mph, I would certainly have taken the much longer inland route, but under the “protection of fools and innocents” divine clause, it was decreed that the day of my 50th was not to be our final one on this earth.

After what seemed like many hours but was probably not much more than one, I was able to ease off the white knuckles when we reached Senj and zigzagged west over the coastal Velebit sub-range of the Dinaric Alps, the third of four times we were to cross these mountains on our trip.

On the other side, as we approached the Bosnian border, we found a thinly-populated upland filled with pastures and conifers. This had formerly been a Bosnian Serb region, but was depopulated during the Croatian Civil War. As we neared the outskirts of Plitvice, Europe’s number one outdoor destination, wet snow began to fall.

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We eventually left the Bosna valley and E73 motorway behind to pursue a more direct route over rolling hills to Brod and its sister city across the Sava, Slavonsky Brod. That last stretch was truly eerie, with mile after mile of abandoned Croat (and presumably a few Bosniak) houses and farms overgrown with trees and vines. These were the legacy of the Croatian War of Independence (1991-1995), evacuated residences of some of the 300,000 ethnically cleansed souls during a conflict that overlapped with the Bosnian war happening largely at the same time. Franjo Tudjman, the Croatian president, a strongman himself, was to neutral eyes on a par with Milosevic but unlike the latter he had the good sense to die before he could be tried for war crimes. Serbs were cleansed out of neighboring Croatia, so the inverse happened here.

As eerie as the miles of abandoned homes were the new structures built right next to them, and the towns with their patchworks of new and old houses, bombed out and recently off the market side by side. I suspect most of what we were seeing was the result of postwar usurpation of Croat/Bosniak properties by Serbs, but it is possible that some of the new homes were owned by Croats who have been able to successfully regain control of old properties and rebuild.

The next challenge for us was entering the European Union. Getting into Croatia, our sixth country of the trip and my 47th all-time, involved the only border hassle of the whole vacation. The border agents weren’t aggressive, but they certainly looked askance at a car with Albanian plates, and we were pulled off for a lengthy wait until they could completely ransack the vehicle and search for (I presumed) the contraband for which Albania is famous (cigarettes? alcohol? cats?). After a while, when it became glaringly obviously that we didn’t even faintly fit the profile of smugglers, they waved us forward, and thus we passed the biggest test yet of our green card magic entry certificate. On to Croatia!

Slavonsky on the Sava

The Sava was the largest river we’d seen yet on the trip, and was fittingly wreathed in marshlands on the Bosnian side, with gulls and cormorants all about. It’s a tributary of the Danube to its east, and is most famous as a border between Islam and Christendom over the course of several centuries.

Slavonsky Brod is best known for the gigantic Fortress of Brod, the ruins of which, some reconstructed, take up a fair portion of the center of the city. The Fortress was built by the Austrians in the 1700s as a bulwark against the Ottomans across the Sava, though ironically, despite centuries of regional warfare, it was never really useful in times of conflict. Nevertheless, what is left of it is a stark symbol of the massive ego of the Habsburgs, that inbred, landlocked clan who always seemed to be at or near the center of major European dramas.

Our apartment for the night was, as usual, a small challenge to get to—not the location itself, which was obvious, but the precise fashion we were supposed to park and access it. After a bit of drama, we found ourselves in the most modern privately-owned apartment of the whole trip. As usual, we were right next to the main pedestrian zone, which, though mostly abandoned that cold and windy evening, with few restaurants open, was hopping the next day. Local folks were somewhat bemused to see us, as Slavonsky Brod, though not an unattractive place, isn’t the type of tourist haven that foreigners tend to flock to.

We stopped in at Grill Master Big Mamma for some Croatian fast food to go. This was a new experience for us, as hitherto our one-country-per-day rhythm had spurred us to seek out the most traditional cuisine we could. Croatia was another story, though: we would have nearly a week in and out of it, all told. There would be plenty of time for Croatian tradition; tonight was fried things and delicious grease, a good American tradition in itself.

The portly cook/server/possible owner, whom we took to be Big Mamma her/himself, was garrulous, with fluent English, and one of the friendliest and most welcoming people we met on the trip, which is saying a lot. Back at the apartment, we choked it all down with generous servings of our accumulated auto-bar (not seized at the EU border), wine and rakija from several countries, I think, and, as always, whatever the local beer was.

The Rookery and the Fortress

I was up before a breezy, frigid sunrise to bird along the lengthy river promenade. A rookery of at least hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hooded Crows and Eurasian Jackdaws, with at least one actual Rook mixed in, erupted from the trees above me and ebbed and flowed above the river, as increasing numbers of Black-headed and Yellow-legged gulls showed up to start fishing. A Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo) was also about, as well as two of the jewel-like Common Kingfishers. At several points I flushed Gray Herons, and six Great Cormorants were swimming and diving in the turbulent waters where a subterranean stream from downtown dumped in.

After exhausting the walkable part of the promenade, I doubled back by the Fortress, passing a memorial to 1992 war dead, then a corner of the unrestored fortress, then a sign commemorating the fall and subsequent massacre at Vukovar, a Croat stronghold that fell to the Serbs around November 18, 1991.

From Slavonski Brod we drove west and north through flatlands and rolling hills on the best and easiest roads we had seen since Albania. This eastern portion of Croatia, not unsurprisingly heavily contested throughout history, is known as Slavonia, supposedly the most “backward” of the country’s three major regions, after the main central portion (Croatia proper, so to speak) and Dalmatia, the resort-soaked coastal part. We were, as usual, in a hurry to get to the next country, which in this case was Hungary (#48).

No time for Liberland

With a few hours to spare before our main destination of Pécs, we decided to whoop over to the Danube itself. Sadly, there was not enough time to plumb any of the micronations that line the Danubian border between Serbia and Croatia, true patches of terra nullius that enter the news cycle now and again whenever some bitcoin-backed fraudster decides to attempt to set up camp in a willowy river bottoms to prove to his online “citizens” that his principality actually exists. These attempts are usually nebulous and short lasting, but provide enough fodder to raise enough money to…whatever. The pockets, such as Liberland and the Free Republic of Verdis, if they were to really become states, would make Andorra and San Marino look gigantic by comparison; like most such places, they will no doubt some day be parceled off between Serbia and Croatia.

Swamp creatures

Our first stop in Hungary was Mohács, high above the Danube, internationally famous—or infamous, depending on one’s experience—for the Busójárás, a winter carnival straight out of legend. From what we learned, the town, like a miniature New Orleans, is single-mindedly focused on pulling off a festival that involves all manner of debauchery and outlandish costumes. Those wearing the costumes are the busós, who have license to get away with a fair amount of harassment, or so we were told.

The best we could do at this time of year was find a shop that sold a few refrigerator magnets of the apparitions, as we had a pleasant stroll about the downtown. As a first-time visitor to Hungary (Paola had been there before), I was also pleased to confirm a stereotype: Liszt is the type of European superhero they put plaques up for if he slept there, as he had in Mohács on Oct 27, 1846.

Then we were off the 30 minutes back west to Pécs, Hungary’s fifth-largest city, site of an ancient university, and a famous destination for fine porcelain and leather shoppers. This time, we got to stay in an actual hotel at the edge of the old town and park in its lot, a rare find in our budget range.

The city is outstandingly attractive; my brief impression of Hungary overall was of a place that would be impossible to confuse with anywhere else, not least for the mixture of an out-of-place language brought from far to the east by the Huns and a Catholicism straight from Rome. We roamed about for hours in the spotlessly clean streets, and Paola was able to buy a little of the porcelain as well as high-quality leather gloves. We dined in a recommended restaurant, washing down a meaty Hungarian feast with abundant unicum, a liqueur that I became quite fond of. It is reputedly made with some 40 herbs, according to a secret recipe.

Paola and I had a somber moment at the gorgeous Synagogue of Pécs, built in the mid-1800s, managing to get in not long before it closed and buy a self-guided tour. Very few Jews were left in the city after the Holocaust; most died in Auschwitz, but a few still use the synagogue, which functions more as a cultural icon and remembrance site than anything else.

Less somber were the decidedly non-traditional signs in our dinner restaurant’s bathroom. Perhaps a fitting reminder that we were, quite temporarily, in central Europe rather than the Balkans?

A reminder of 1956

Pécs sits at the southern edge of the Mecsek, a range of wooded limestone mountains that reach slightly over 2,000 feet in elevation, part of the Trans-Danubian Hills region west of the Great Hungarian Plain (which, to my regret, we never saw). The next morning, I took a bracing hike to the top of the first hill in the range, dodging the switchbacks of the road to follow a maze of forest paths through the combined nature park/watershed area. This was to be my main chance at a Hungary bird list, and the woods did not disappoint.

At first light, the thick landscaping around the small mansions along the approach sheltered Eurasian Blackbirds, Goldcrests, European Robins, Black Redstarts, and Spotted Flycatchers, common dawn callers that seemed to be in every European forest. Farther up, as I reached the top, I saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker and hordes of chickadee-like Eurasian Blue Tits, along with Long-tailed, Great, and Marsh tits.

The woods also contain restored stone works that seemed to be associated with the park’s function as a water reservoir. On one wall was a memorial to the local 1956 resistance, part of the doomed Hungarian Revolution against the Soviet Union.

Not far away, I found a small stone tower with a staircase spiraling down into gloom, and a pair of sandals left out for some reason. I began to descend with the light of my phone, but heard loud protestations, something like “get out!” in Hungarian; this was someone’s rent-free lair, it seemed.

Ultimately, I got what I came for on my brief hike, a view southward across the city to flatter parts of the Carpathian (Pannonian) Basin this side of the Drava River, more or less in the direction we would take a bit later in the day.

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