Ciblek Mania

After taking some time off between book projects I'll be back on the road this spring and summer hitting several new birding/nature events as well as some old favorites. I'm really ready to do some field birding. I really, truly enjoy guiding people and showing them birds.

Here's a list of where I'll be and what birds one might see at each event. I hope to see you out there with the birds!

Santee Birding & Nature Festival
Santee, South Carolina.
April 26-29, 2012

This will be my first time at this event deep in the heart of the range of the painted bunting (and Bachman's sparrow, red-cockaded woodpecker, Wilson's plover). Much of this event is held on and around the Santee National Wildlife Refuge. I'm leading a bird walk, giving the Friday keynote, and playing some music during the social hour on Saturday.


New River Birding & Nature Festival
Fayetteville, West Virginia
April 30-May 5, 2012
This down-home bird fest is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, in the mountains along the New River in south-central West Virginia. It is famous for warblers, including golden-winged, cerulean, and Swainson's warbler, but the spectacular vistas, amazing wildflowers, and Mountaineer hospitality also contribute to bringing back many repeat attendees each year. I'm leading a different field trip each day and The Rain Crows are playing a show on the final night in The Meadows lodge at the charming Opossum Creek Retreat, where the event is centered.

Wine & Warblers
Grange Insurance Audubon Center, Columbus, Ohio
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
I originally thought this was a birding-by-ear event called Whining Warblers, but I was happily wrong. The title says it all: There will be wine. There will be warblers. The setting is the amazing "green" GIAC building in downtown Columbus and, given the early May date, there will be loads of warblers and other migrants streaming through the trees along the Scioto River. Did I mention there will be wine? Julie Zickefoose and I will be leading a bird walk or two, after the wine, which should be interesting.

Kenai Birding Festival
May 17-20, 2012
Kenai, Alaska
We're really looking forward to heading to Alaska in May for this relatively new birding event on the Kenai Peninsula. The bird life there is going to be refreshingly different from what we will have been seeing during spring migration in the Midwest—and I'm hoping for a couple of lifers (Aleutian tern and spruce grouse—a jinx bird for me!) We'll be doing bird walks (including a float trip!), evening talks, and some music. Best of all, this event is totally free and open to the public!

Canton Audubon 50th Anniversary Dinner
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Canton, Ohio
Julie Zickefoose is the keynote speaker for this celebratory event for one of Ohio's oldest Audubon chapters. But after she's done yakkin' we'll be playing some music for everyone.


Potholes & Prairie Birding Festival
June 13-17, 2012
Carrington, North Dakota
Sooner or later you've got to go to the northern Great Plains to see some of the specialty sparrows that live there (Baird's, Nelson's, and LeConte's sparrows top the list). Why not do it this year during this charming, intimate event? The birds are enough to draw people to Carrington, ND for this event, but once you get there, the breathtaking prairie landscape and the small town hospitality will enthrall you. Highlights include the Pipits & Pie tours where we head out in the pre-dawn to find Spargue's pipit, then celebrate with lunch in a small-town cafe featuring homemade pie (I recommend the strawberry-rhubarb!). Oh and there will be music, too! Here's a photo gallery from last year's event.


Hog Island Audubon Camp "Joy of Birding"
June 24-29, 2012
Hog Island, Maine
Hog Island is legendary for many reasons: famed naturalists such as Roger Tory Peterson and Allan and Helen Cruickshank taught there for many years; and it's the home of Project Puffin, one of North America's most successful species reintroduction/preservation efforts (restoring the Atlantic puffin to its historic nesting sites off the Maine coast). Julie and I and the kids will be there the last full week of June immersing ourselves in the splendor of the Maine summer.

Among the tiny handful of birding events that I do every year is The New River Birding & Nature Festival in Fayette County, West Virginia. There are plenty-plenty reasons why I love this annual spring birding bacchanalia: it's run by good buddies of mine, the birding is truly incredible, Swainson's and cerulean warblers, the landscape is breathtaking, it's a small and intimate gathering of the tribe, they let me play music, there are hottubs in the cabins, and it's only a three-hour drive from the Bill of the Birds man cave. Now, there's another reason. The catwalk!

In the photo above you see a view of The New River Gorge Bridge which carries WV Route 19 across the vast, rocky, gaping maw of the New River Gorge. Do you see the horizontal line of brown steel girders running below the roadway? That's where the bridge's catwalk is located. Come along little kitty-cats and take a stroll with me. If you are acrophobic, you might want to stop reading now. I suggest you google the phrase "Rick-rolling" as an alternative way to soothe yourself.

Here is the understructure of the gorge bridge, stretching off into infinity, toward the south and the Fayetteville end of the bridge. We're climbing out onto the catwalk on the north end.


The company that owns the rights to take people on the catwalk (they market it as "BridgeWalk") has figured things out quite nicely. You are fit with a rather all-encompassing harness—the same kind that mountain climbers or bridge maintenance workers use. You are instructed to bring only items that can be lashed onto your body (see my binocs in the photo above). If you drop your precious iPhone over the edge, it's gone, dude.

The harnesses are attached to a lead which is latched via caribiner to a turnbuckle device that rolls along the safety cable. But that cable is attached to the bridge structure in about 50 places along its length. This is where the ingenious turnbuckle comes in: it ratchets through the attachment brackets, like a mini paddlewheel, while keeping you safely attached at all times. A few gentle tugs gets your line and harness past each attachment point. It's a very clever solution and much safer and more convenient than having to unhook and re-hook each bridge-walker's harness.

We walked the catwalk with six other people, plus a guide. Geoff Heeter, one of the New River Birding & Nature Festival founders and the fellow who invited me on this little adventure, wisely suggested we bring up the rear of the group. This was a very good call as we were able, after the first few sections, to lag behind a bit to take photos and do a bit of birding.

Here's our group, lined up for a photo, taken by our BridgeWalk guide Jim Smith.

And here's Geoff all harnessed up and grooving on the view. And speaking of the view: it is spectacular. I've been to the New River many times in the past 20 years, but being out over the gorge like this was a new and thrilling experience.

As you move out over the gorge, there is only the metal grate of the catwalk below your feet and two steel bands plus a top rail guarding you on the the sides. I'm not afraid of heights, but my knees did wobble a bit for the first 10 minutes or so. Once you get used to it, the thrill takes over for the chill and the experience becomes utterly enjoyable.


That's the New River way down yonder! But there are other fabbo things to see, too!

We saw at least four peregrine falcons on the bridge. These birds are from a population that was hacked on a local cliff face as part of a reintroduction program. We noted bands on the legs of two of them. And the birds seemed utterly unimpressed with the humans clanging along the catwalk—probably because there is a constant roar of traffic on the bridge just feet above, and because there is a steady stream of bridge maintenance workers, and now bridge tourists, coming along the catwalk each day.
The structure of the bridge has numerous holes, ledges, and perches perfect for peregrines. They have nested on the bridge for the past couple of years. Perhaps the birds we were seeing were adults with this year's young?

The BridgeWalk experience is going to be offered at the 10th annual New River Birding & Nature Festival next April 30 through May 5. The festival fills up really fast, so if you've been thinking about attending, don't wait! This final photo shows how close we got on our BridgeWalk to one of the peregrines—my closest look ever at a perched p-bird!

Hope to see you next spring in West Virginia, on the catwalk or elsewhere!

Saturday, October 8 dawned cool and clear in southern West Virginia where I was scheduled to lead a bird walk for the Fall Birding Weekend hosted by the fledgling New River Birding and Nature Center at its new property in Wolf Creek Park near Fayetteville, WV. Normally on the Saturday before The Big Sit I'm running around like a headless chicken trying to get ready for my favorite event of the birding year. But I'd made a commitment to this new fall event run by my good pals Geoff, Dave, Bill, and Rachel.

I got up, scarfed down some brekky and headed south across the fog-enveloped New River Gorge Bridge toward the meeting place for the bird walk.


The birding was stupendous at the park! We barely made it 100 feet along the boardwalk before the sheer volume of bird activity forced us to stop and scan with our binocs. Kinglets, vireos, warbler, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, sparrows, and woodpeckers zipped and flitted in the trees and shrubs along the edge of the woods bordering a creek dammed by beavers, creating a wonderful meeting of wetland and woodland. We noted a variety of species moving on this gorgeous fall day, in particular white-breasted nuthatches, blue jays, robins, American crows, and yellow-bellied sapsuckers.

As the day warmed up with the rising sun we began seeing more and more raptors, including several sharp-shinned hawks, a cluster of five (!) Cooper's hawks, resident red-shouldered hawks, and a couple of very late broad-winged hawks. A peregrine falcon shot past overhead—probably one of the pair that nested on the New River Bridge this summer.

By the time the bird walk ended at mid-day we had more than 60 species. If you enjoy fall birding in an exquisitely beautiful mountain setting, consider coming to the 2012 Fall Birding Weekend along the New River in Fayetteville, WV. It's limited to just 12 people and the focus is on identification and enjoyment of fall migrant birds—especially warblers and raptors. To get on the info list for next year, send an e-mail to goshawk AT birding-wv.com.

After a filling and tasty lunch at The Vandalian in Fayetteville, our group split up for an afternoon off. I said my goodbyes and headed back north to Ohio to prep for The Big Sit. But that was still many miles, hours, and interim tasks in my future...

The following day the Fall Birding Weekend gang went to Hanging Rock Tower for some hawk watching, lead by Bill Hilton, Jr. I was sorry to miss this trip and doubly so when I head that they had more than 50 raptors of seven species, including merlin. We're hoping that next year the Big Sit and the Fall Birding Weekend will not conflict.

And speaking of the Big Sit...I'd done a bunch of prep work prior to leaving for WV. Hauling things to the tower: chairs, coats, hats gloves, towels, optics, clipboard, food, beverage cooler, another beverage cooler, iPod, junk food, heating pad, coffee maker, field guides, cameras, headlamps, plastic owl decoy, more junk food, and Tums.

I was ready. But I had just one more task to complete. I had to pick up a princess from a ball.

Saturday night was Phoebe's homecoming dance and, since Julie covered the drop-off, I was assigned the pick-up duty. The dance ended at 11 pm. The school is a 45-minute drive from home. The Big Sit starts at midnight.

It was going to be close....the full moon was already rising as we raced home on the snaky-curvy country roads, Phoebe chattering excitedly about the dance to her always-proud papa...

... to be continued .....

Though he swore it wasn't a caption, I loved this one from cyberthrush:
I hope I die one day just like my dear old grandaddy, quickly and peacefully in my sleep... and not screaming hysterically like the 25 passengers of the bus he was driving at the time.

Jason, from OpposableChums said...All entreaties in hopes of convincing Lorenzo to leave his baguette at home for the trip to sit amongst the Silver-back gorillas were sadly fruitless, and with regrettably gruesome consequences.

Janet Creamer said..."Well, I was told Bill will show us more warblers than you can shake a stick at."

bpadgett said... I *said*, "Speak SOFTLY!!"

Thanks to everyone for your enthusiastic participation. I wish I had participation ribbons for all of you because you're ALL winners in my book (which just came out, by the way!). [smooth, huh?]

For the record, the be-hatted guy with the walking stick in the front of the shot is Scott, a regular at the New River Birding Festival. He hand-makes those walking sticks and they are really functional works of art.

When I lead field trips at birding festivals, I often snap photos of the group on the bus. I'm not sure why—it just happens, I guess. This photo comes from last spring's New River Birding and Nature Festival in Fayetteville, WV. I believe it was on the High Country tour, where we go forth seeking warblers.

It struck me as a good one for a BOTB caption contest. So let your freak flag fly and send your most cleverest caption in by midnight, Sunday, September 12, 2010 using the comment window below. The winner will receive a genuine BWD lens cloth (a $5 value!) which works great for cleaning optics, eyeglasses, cellphones, or the Cheeto-stained screen on your iPad.

Good luck and we'll see you on the bus.

Briefly, because I know we all have better things to be doing, I wanted to share a couple of images with you showing why I come to the New River Birding & Nature Festival every single year.


Two words having to do with warblers: Cerulean and Swainson's.

Both of these birds were digiscoped today on my trip down Sugar Creek Road to the Gauley River. And I only took the images AFTER we'd shown every participant views of these species through my Leica spotting scope.

It's always a bit dodgy when you're asked to lead a birding festival field trip that is dedicated to finding one particular bird species. This is exacerbated by the following additional factors:

1. It's a rare bird, known for skulking in rhododendron thickets.
2. Lots of people sign up (and pay money for the privilege).
3. It's pouring rain.
4. It's the last day of the festival and everyone is COUNTING on seeing this bird.

And so it was last Saturday morning when my friend (and festival founder/raconteur) Geoff Heeter and I loaded 12 or so brave and eager souls onto a Ford Econoline van somewhere near the New River Gorge in West Virginia. This was the Swainson's Warbler Trip and it had but one target bird.

As we drove across WV 19 onto a country road that would take us to a spot that had at times hosted a Swainson's warbler, I was already drafting my apology for the trip participants in case we totally dipped out. The rain pounded on the van roof, pouring down like silver over the windshield, visibility nil.

"Well everyone, we tried our best. Some days you get the bird. Some days the bird gets you. Some days you feel like you've been flipped the bird. Sorry we missed it, but that's a great reason to come back next year!"

or this:

"Those Swainson's warblers are harder to find than a working microphone at a Milli Vanilli concert!"

or this:

"If I had a nickel for every time I've missed this bird, we'd be birding from a stretch limo instead of this rattletrap and eating caviar for lunch instead of flat meat."

Little did I know, I was wasting my time thinking up disappointment-softening excuses.

At our first stop Geoff and I heard two distant Swainson's singing along the creek in separate directions. Neither one was close enough to see or to lure in with a taped call. I decided to walk the group down to a nearby bridge while Geoff and Ned Keller got the vehicles.

From the bridge, one singing male sounded lots closer. Then he moved even closer, but was still out of sight in the thick rhodies, 30 yards upstream. I filled Geoff in about this new development and we motioned to the group to stay put while we carefully moved up the road for a better vantage point. Barely 150 feet farther along, I spotted the bird, teed up and singing against the trunk of a giant hemlock. Within seconds I had him in the spotting scope. Geoff beckoned our group forward and we all took turns drinking in this very rare sight. And the male Swainson's warbler sang and sang and preened and sang....

It felt SO great to show more than a dozen birders this cool and hard-to-find bird. It felt even better to locate a bird that was relaxed and singing from a favorite perch on its territory. No audio luring necessary! No trying to get bird watchers onto a het-up, moving bird. Just us, this beautiful male Swainson's warbler, some nice optics, and the rain, still falling down, but completely unnoticed.

After we all got great looks I realized, in one of those I-could-kick-myself moments that I had ABSOLUTELY NO CAMERA WITH ME to take this bird's photo. No digiscoping rig. No 30D with a 300mm lens. Nope that stuff was warm and dry in the van. Hearing my remorseful cries, Geoff handed me his camera phone. I held it up to my Swarovski spotting scope and here's what I got!

What IS a zipline? A zipline, typically, is a set of metal cables stretched between two platforms, one higher, one lower along which a person rolls on pulleys, suspended from a set of safety harnesses. Many bird watchers have encountered ziplines in the tropics, where canopy walkways and towers often have this extra feature for those inclined to thrill seeking.

There's a new zipline near Fayetteville, West Virginia, on property owned by Class VI, a New River rafting and adventure company. A handful of the trip leaders from the New River Birding & Nature Festival were invited to sample the new zipline one afternoon during the festival. Called TreeTops Canopy Tours, the zipline operated by Class VI is an amazing experience. Our primary guide was none other than Tiny Elliott, former rafting guide and regular birding guide for the New River Birding & Nature Festival for many years.

We arrived at the patio of Smokey's on the Gorge, the main restaurant of Class VI, and were geared up in our harnesses by Tiny and Shaun, another TreeTops guide. From there we vanned over to the start of the canopy tour course for ground school. In ground school the guides instructed us in everything we'd need to know and do to have an enjoyable and safe zipline experience. Our harness pulleys were hooked up to the twin zipline cables and we took a short run between two tree stumps, just a few feet off the ground. We learned how to speed up and slow down while moving along the cables. We learned how to stop ourselves. And we learned how to self-rescue in case we got stranded in the middle of a zipline run. Self-rescuing was reasonably easy—you just lean back and pull yourself, hand over hand to the nearest zipline platform. We were required to demonstrate all of these capabilities and skills before we were allowed onto the main part of the course.

Perhaps most importantly, we were instructed how to minimize discomfort in our harnesses, which, when holding up our bodies, put large amounts of pressure in certain unusual places. The guides told everyone—males and females—to try to "keep all of your furniture in the same room" for reasons of comfort and health. Believe me, if some of your furniture sneaked into another room before you "zipped" you knew it and wanted to get it moved back right away.


The first zip was a short one and not very fast—down the hill into the river valley. When my turn came, I stepped onto the stump next to the lines to be hooked up. My heart was pounding and I admit to having some butterflies. After the initial moment of adrenaline, I was quickly overtaken by the feeling of how incredibly cool it was to be "flying" through the forest. I'd seen three of my large fellow "zippers" go down the line ahead of me, so I knew the lines would not break. Still, it's a bit disconcerting to have nothing below your feet but blurry hemlocks and oaks.




After the second and third zips, we all got much more comfortable and started video-taping the runs of others from the platforms. We also noticed that we were high in the hemlocks, getting a true bird's-eye view of the landscape. I was amazed at the diversity of plantlife living on the top sides of the hemlock branches. No wonder these woods were so full of birds! This was not something I had ever noticed from the ground, looking up at warblers in these mountain forests.


The course had been designed very sensitively to minimize impact on the forest, especially the native eastern hemlocks, which are being decimated by a non-native pest, the hemlock woolly adelgid. One of the goals of the owners and designers of this canopy tour zipline course is to keep the surrounding forest healthy. Thus, ziplines were plotted so as to minimize the removal of trees and branches. Platforms are built with minimum bolts or screws drilled into trees. Cables around trees are supported by block-stabilizers to protect the bark and trunk. An arborist will make regular inspections of the entire course to monitor the health of the trees being used. I was impressed at how much of the forest seemed untouched considering that the course was only just nearing completion.

People on the ziplines are encouraged to have fun but discouraged from making lots of noise. Nothing will clear out the forest creatures faster, or diminish the natural beauty faster than a bunch of screaming thrill-seekers. Time will tell if this course will settle in as a feature of the landscape, or will become more like a ski-lift, with an alley of nature-free clearance for its riders.

I felt a few screams of joy well up in my chest as I rode the zips. And on the platforms we encountered close-up songbirds, poking their ways through the tree tops. A female Blackburnian warbler passed within eight feet of us at one point, gathering nesting material. I was sorry that I was not allowed to bring binoculars along on this initial run. I missed easy looks at Swainson's warbler and northern parula from two different platforms. Tiny thinks compact binocs may be OK if they can be secured by a harness strap. Before we started this adventure we were encouraged to leave ALL valuables behind. Finding anything that fell off the zipline would be impossible.



In the middle of the zipline course there are several rope and board bridges that we walked across to get to the next zip. They were surprisingly stable and gave us a chance to soak in the beauty of the forest and the plants and birds around us. We smelled the sweet flowers of a Fraser magnolia and heard the flat chip notes of a Swainson's warbler. It was a literal and spiritual high to be moving, as we were, through the top of the forest, looking down instead of up.


As we neared the end of the tour, several of us got more daring, letting our harnesses and safety lines do their work as we leaned out over the edge of the wall-less tree platforms. I should stress again, that at no point during the tour were we not hooked by our safety lines to a secure anchor. It's nearly physically impossible to fall and our guides were particularly focused on keeping our group both safe and relaxed.

I could write about this zipline adventure for hours more, but think I'll share a couple of videos instead. These are two of my fellow "zippers", Geoff Heeter (one of the New River Birding & Nature Festival founders and owner of Opossum Creek Retreat where many of the festival events are held) and Jim McCormac of the Ohio Ornithological Society, whom some of you may know as the good-natured target of many of my online and offline jokes.

From Tuesday night through Sunday morning last week I was in West Virginia at The New River Birding and Nature Festival. As I left for the festival, crossing the Ohio, West Virginia border, a large weather front appeared in the West, darkening the previously blue, sunshine-drenched sky. Apparently this weather front was also attending the New River Birding and Nature Festival because we both arrived at the same time and stayed for the rest of the week.

But what's a little weather among avid bird watchers? We laugh in the face of a driving rainstorm, as long as we can get somewhere sheltered to dry off our lenses, preferably somewhere with hot chocolate.


The birds were showing well despite the weather—the only miss being the golden-winged warbler, which we figured must have not yet returned from the tropics. The bobolinks at the bobolink field were already in, but the males were flying around in bachelor groups singing and perching in trees. Two days later they had staked out territories and were at war with each other. What a difference between their migratory behavior and their on-territory/breeding season behavior!

Every trip I lead for this year's NRBNF netted some lifers for one or more of my group. On some trips we had new birders along, or bird watchers from the West (for whom many eastern birds were new), and we cleaned up on life birds! One festival attendee netted 70 life birds! That's nothing to sneeze at!

There are at least 50 reasons why you should go to the New River Birding & Nature Festival. Twenty-five to 30 of those reasons could be warblers, because that's how many North American warbler species are seen annually at this event.

More on my New River adventures tomorrow. If you are starved to read more about this wonderful event right this very minute, check out some of the posts from the Flock of Bloggers that attended this year's festival, which included:


I met most of these fine folks during my six days in Fayetteville, WV. Also posting mightily about the event are Jeff Gordon (from whom I copped the list above), Jim McCormac, and Julie Zickefoose.

Gentle readers of Bill of the Birds. I am back at the New River Birding Festival, which this year has seen an infestation of bird /nature bloggers like you would NOT BELIEVE! Anywho, this makes it nigh on impossible to get any posting done for several reasons:

1. There is not enough bandwidth to go around, so the connection is gone by the time I am free in the late afternoon or late evening.

2. The birds call me forth to the glorious montane woods and I forget myself.

3. Warblers, baby!

I beg your forgiveness for my sporadic posting. Please bear with me and I will share some tales from this grand event and location.

I'll be attending, trip leading, speaking and performing at a couple of upcoming birding events here in the greater Ohio/West Virginia region.

The first is the North Coast Nature Festival held in Rocky River, Ohio, near Cleveland starting on Friday, April 24 through Sunday, April 26, 2009. I'm giving a Friday night talk, twice (The Perils & Pitfalls of Birding at 7 and 9 pm), a Saturday afternoon talk (No Child Left Inside: Birds as a Doorway to Nature), and morning bird walks on Saturday and Sunday.

The second event is one of my annual favorites: The New River Birding & Nature Festival held near the New River Gorge near Fayetteville, West Virginia. If you want to see 25 or more species of eastern wood warbler, The New River Birding & Nature Festival is THE event for you. It's set in the gorgeous Appalachian Mountains of south-central West Virginia and the festival atmosphere is friendly and laid-back.


I'll be leading field trips at the New River fest from Wednesday, April 28 through Saturday, May 2. And on Saturday night the festival will end with a special performance by The Swinging Orangutangs at Opossum Creek Retreat.

I'm hoping I'll see you out there with the birds at one of these two fine birding events or at another one, farther on down the road. Until then....