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The New river Birding and Nature festival is a friendly birding vacation for everyone, this weeklong event
features guided birding excursions, classes, seminars and world-class speakers. Signature guided bird watching experiences include guaranteed birding vans, birding by boat, hands-on bird banding and backcountry birding.
Please feel free to sign up for our Birding Festival Newsletter as it is a great way to stay informed about the latest happenings with the festival and Birding in West Virginia.
Highlights from Latest Birding Newsletter
Festival 08 Moving Along
For
those who may be wondering, the dates are May 5-10 and many of our
great friends will be back as presenters and field guides – Bill
Thompson, Julie Zickefoose, Jim McCormac, Jeff Gordon (almost entirely
sure), Howard Youth, Connie Toops, Scott Shalaway, Bill Hilton, Jr.,
and more.
Added to the lineup this year will be a few new territories and also
the opportunity to enjoy an extra-long day in the field that has you
birding from 6 am to 5 pm. These trips will not only get you into
territories we have not traveled to in past years, but they should get
you the opportunity for some rarities that have been hit-and-miss at
best in our tried and true turfs.
As always, the Festival will feature great days of birding with
wonderful evening presentations and the finest food to be found at any
birding event. To kick it up just a notch again this year, our final
dinner will be held in a tent at a location with a view just as
spectacular as the one offered at our popular Wednesday evening dinner
at Smokey’s. And don’t worry, Smokey’s remains as that Wednesday slot,
Cathedral is back and our popular cookouts at Opossum Creek return as
well.
A Summer to Remember
Ruby Throated Hummingbird
Despite the Easter freeze, which had to have had negative impacts
on the first clutch of hummingbirds, our numbers are way up for summer.
As everyone knows, this is peak time for ruby-throated numbers because
the adults and juveniles are all still here, but even at that we seem
to be off the charts in our backyard and were also that way for our
event. In fact, the event was held at Hawks Nest State Park and they
did not even have feeders out until I put them up in mid-July.
The
message of free food certainly went out though because I could not
visit any of the feeding stations without being buzzed by multiple
birds. And not to worry, Hawks Nest put their feeders out as soon as we
closed down our event.
But the wonderful surprise of the summer had to
do with the hummingbird feeders, though not with the hummers. We had
several Baltimore Orioles take up residence on our property. In years
past, we have had some decent success getting these birds to visit
feeders filled with orange slices, but not this year – though the
catbirds really liked them. What the orioles did like and visit with
incredible frequency was our hummer feeders.
First, they took up
feeding from on locate right in front of a picture window in our
kitchen. This feeder had one of those fake flowers missing, so it was
easy for them to get their beaks in to feed. The next thing we noticed
was that they went to a feeder right behind our back deck and they took
off all four flowers. You just can’t imagine how cool this was and how
blessed we felt.
Males, females and their offspring all visited
regularly. Our bluebirds successfully fledged two broods, the house
wrens were too numerous to count, as they took advantage of multiple
boxes and Lynn was at her best finding and observing song sparrow
nests, cardinal nests and so on.
We also had family of redstarts raised
in the yard – we suspect they were in the apple tree that now grows
horizontally instead of vertically, but it is too thick to have even
thought about trying to observe a nest location. That is a great story
too. During an ice storm a few years ago, that tree had the root ball
pulled up and it laid on its side. A spring arrived we were considering
how to remove it when we noticed that it was sprouting leaves. It
remains today the healthiest looking fruit tree in our yard – the only
problem is that its horizontal growth is removing lawn space (did I say
problem? That much less grass to mow!). It also provides great habitat
for lord knows how many rabbits...
And Now That School Has Begun…
We will be trying to find time to get in a visit or two to the hawk watch tower at Peter’s Mountain www.haingingrocktower.org.
In fact, one of our guest last year bid on a trip to the tower at our
silent auction and she will be here soon for a stay at Opossum Creek
and guided excursion. Lynn, the kids and I will be going off to the
Florida Keys for a fall trip instead of our usual winter excursion.
Lynn goes for the great birding, but I won’t kid you, the children and
I are there for the fish. If I get a chance for a good look at
flamingos, skimmers and the like it is gravy. Now, that said, if a
mangrove cuckoo shows up I will probably be forced to put down the rod.
All of that means that the now annual winter eagle watch is close
at hand. Our resident population seems to be doing well and the winter
watch also brings in some migrating golden eagles. And then, before you
know it, we will be greeting you for the May 2008 New River Birding and
Nature Festival. We look forward to it!
If you do book and
don’t get an email back within a few days, please drop me a direct
email so I can confirm things for you. I can be reached at –
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Cheers!
We look forward to greeting old friends and making new ones in May!
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