Counting Birds and Friends

Wakerobin trillium (photo by Tim Ryan)

New River was amazing in so many ways. First and foremost, I attended the festival for the birds. It is my goal to get to 200 life birds this year (before attending the festival, my ABA life list was 178). Living in eastern PA, I already have a lot of warblers on my list, but there were a few that were target birds for me - cerulean and chestnut-sided. I actually need to concentrate more on shore birds to get those numbers up and New River was not really the place for shore birds!

Secondly, I was attending the festival for the Flock. I met some of the Flock at the Cape May, NJ Autumn Migration Festival last year. After "lurking" on their blogs for over a year, I finally met them in person and they welcomed me with open arms. Now I am a full-fledged Flock member. But a lot of the Flock were new to me:

Jane from Wrenaissance Reflections
Mary from Mary’s View
Nina from Nature Remains
Tim from From the Faraway, Nearby
Kathie from Sycamore Canyon
Kathy from Life, Birding Photos and Everything
Kathleen from A Glorious Life
Jane from Jaylynn’s Window on Nature
Barb from My Bird Tales

Jeff from Jeff Gordon

Bill from Bill of the Birds and

Julie from Julie Zickefoose

Then there were friends that were not Flockers - Geoff Heeter, Dave Pollard, Keith Richardson, Connie Toops and my hotel next door neighbors and breakfast-at-Burnwood buddies, Dave and Kristi (thanks for pointing me in the direction of the good coffee!).

I don't know what was more exciting - the life birds or the life friends. Sharing a love of birds and nature brought us close online but being such caring and warm people made for easy laughter and true affection.

But back to the birds. I saw 12 life birds on this trip. Ten at the Festival and another two at the cabin in Renick.

Yellow-throated vireo, yello-throated warbler, Northern waterthrush, Louisiana waterthrush, black-throated green warbler, Canada warbler, bobolink, ruffed grouse and chestnut-sided warbler and Swainson's thrush were my Festival birds. American woodcock and yellow-bellied sapsucker were my Renick birds. On the Greenbriar River trail I also think I saw a Swainson's warbler and magnolia warbler, but without a positive ID, I can't count them.

My two days in Renick were restful and delightful. I love spending time with my uncle and his daughter (both from Maryland) who bought 80 acres on a mountain in WV ten years ago and built a beautiful vacation cabin. It is a misnomer to call it a simple cabin - it's a gorgeous log home with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, a field stone chimney with a woodburning stove, wraparound deck with a porch swing, copper trimmed kitchen and homemade quilts on the homemade wood beds. The home is decorated with animal heads, antlers and skins from my uncle's successful hunting trips (he makes his own bows and arrows!). It's not as yucky as it sounds. I have gotten 10 life birds on their property alone (including these last two) and they humor me with long walks in the rain in the Monongahela Forest and Greenbriar River trail.

Handcarved wood bed with Christy's hand-stitched quilt.

Barry and Christy on the Greenbriar River Trail.

They are interested in wildflowers and trees the way I am interested in birds. They taught me much about the flowers we saw so now I can ID some of them myself. Marsh marigold, trillium (all kinds), star chickweed, serviceberry, squirrel corn (my favorite of all the flowers we saw), may apple, hobblebush, hemlock and red spruce, swamp buttercup, dwarf bearded iris, wild geranium, golden ragwort, yellow buckeye (my favorite tree), Japanese honeysuckle, multiflora rose and wild ramps. As a chef, the ramps and the morels on their property were more interesting to me than the flowers.

But the birds rule all! My life list is now up to 190. Ten more to go this year.