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By Jane Holt

Ten people gathered at Spring Creek Prairie ̽����ѡ Center on a recent April morning, a morning filled with sunshine, warm temps and bird song. While the sun and 60-degree temperature were nice, the real draw were the birds. 

Spring Creek’s Operations Manager, Kevin Poague, led that morning’s Third Tuesday Bird Outing, a regular monthly offering through the fall months. He said that, in the spring, chances are good that new bird visitors will show up almost every day.  

Song sparrow.  Tree swallow.  Wood duck.  Hairy woodpecker. White-breasted nuthatch.

Local bird enthusiast Renee was drawn by the prospect of seeing new visitors.

“I try to come to the prairie during migration to see the different birds,” she said.  “I love Spring Creek’s natural habitat and all the birds it draws.”

Pheasant.  Red-winged blackbird.  Eastern meadowlark. Brown thrasher. Northern flicker.

Marlin, another of the morning’s birders, talked about a motorcycle trip to Alaska, and waiting for a ferry on the Chilkat River, surrounded by hundreds of bald eagles - more than he could count. “It was a great place to spend 90 minutes.” 

Eastern bluebird. Brown-headed cowbird.  Goldfinch.  Yellow-rumped warbler.  House wren.

Ned, also there that morning, said he’s a new-ish convert to birding, something he clearly has come to love.

“W�󲹳� ��Dz�’t I love about birding?” he laughed.  “I love their songs, their bright colors, the melody of a bobolink.” Originally from Pittsburgh, once known as “Smoke City” during decades of heavy industrial pollution there, Ned recalls a morning studying at Cornell College in New York, hearing the honks of Canada geese as they passed his classroom.  It was a moment that stuck with him.

“I’m away from Pittsburgh, in nature, where I need to be,” he recalls thinking.  

That sense of being where you need to be is something Spring Creek Prairie ̽����ѡ visitors know well.

Eastern phoebe.  Mourning Dove.  House finch.  Cormorant.  Canada goose.

The April birders saw and heard more than 30 species of birds that morning.  Join a monthly birding walk from 8-10 on the third Tuesday of each month, through October. You’ll be glad you did.