Keep Calm and Bird On: March 2022
“If you don’t look, you don’t see. You have to go and look.”
-Edith Andrews
March is a great month for birding! There are times when spring pops open and times when winter says, “not so fast”, sometimes all on the same day. But jumbled as temperatures and winds maybe, there is always something to look at. Longer days mark the changing of the guard, bird-wise. Winter birds become restless and the earliest spring migrants begin to return. Scaup will be heading north for the tundra; mixed flocks are an opportunity to study them. If you missed Harlequin Ducks, Purple Sandpipers or a Snowy Owl; if you want just one more look at a Tufted Duck, this is the time to get out and look before they depart.
There’s also the lure of being first to spot returning summer residents such as American Oystercatchers, Piping Plovers, or Ospreys? You never know who may just drop in.
American Oystercatchers often arrive at the west end, returning to places they nested the previous year. Some return as banded pairs, others with a new mate in tow. It requires a scope to read the band in the field, but a good photo can often be enlarged, and it is fascinating to learn where the bird was banded. We have had birds stopping over from as far away as Nova Scotia.
It’s also important to help researchers keep track of this imperiled species, by reporting them to the American Oystercatcher Work Group. There have been occasions when an also endangered Piping Plover hung in here all winter, but those are rare. Ospreys usually return within a day or two of the 24th of March. But birds follow their own timetables. Noting them gives us updated information about the conditions of the world we share.
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