SIX

From the Confluence to the Headwaters

Early to Late May 2015

Canada Warbler

April is promise. May is fulfillment. May is a time when everything is happening, when life rises to a peak. May is the birdsong month.

—EDWIN WAY TEALE, A Walk through the Year

I travel to eastern Missouri and Trail of Tears State Park, which sits atop a bluff on the western bank of the Mississippi River, fifteen miles north of Cape Girardeau. Encompassing 3,415 acres of hilly upland oak woods with an understory of Redbud and Sassafras, the park marks the spot where bands of eastern Native Americans, uprooted by government mandate, crossed the Mississippi on the way west to a reservation in Oklahoma in the winter of 1838–39. This tranquil place memorializes a tragic story, which I have come to learn, as well as to check in on spring migration at this important patch of green along the river.

As I walked to the visitor center, a Wood Thrush and a Kentucky Warbler sang from the woods just behind the building. Above the road to the campsite, three Mississippi Kites—the slim blue-gray raptors of riverine lowlands—circled in the clear blue sky. Another Kentucky Warbler sang down in the glen, a species that here outnumbered its vocal counterpart, the Carolina Wren. Woodland thrushes overran the park and foraged beside the narrow forest roads. A Chestnut-sided Warbler—a passage migrant—sang its cheerful song, and the camp hostess told me she had been hearing a Whip-poor-will calling most nights. I chose a ridgetop campsite that was woodsy but bug-free, graced with an oak canopy from which a Great Crested Flycatcher on territory sang out wheep! over and over in the evening light. Migrant songbirds—both breeders and passage migrants—were here in force.

First thing the next morning, I biked out to the high, rocky Boutin Overlook. In the river below, a pusher tug guided a long barge upstream amid considerable river traffic. East across the Mississippi were the expansive, forested hills of Illinois, including the towering summit of Bald Knob, with its giant cross. Aside from the cross, there was minimal sign of habitation, merely a vista of rolling green forest. Much of that green space was Trail of Tears State Forest—the next stop after my stay here at this state park.

Here on the bluff top, I was greeted by various passage migrants: Northern Parula, Tennessee and Chestnut-sided Warbler, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and Scarlet Tanager. The Mississippi Kites continued their display flights preparatory to nesting, and several thrushes appeared: Swainson’s and Gray-cheeked (passage migrants) and Wood Thrushes and Veeries (local breeders). I wondered what this spot had been like during the Trail of Tears exodus, almost two hundred years ago.

THE TRAIL OF TEARS

In 1830, President Andrew Jackson lobbied for passage of the Indian Removal Act, which called for the forced relocation of populations of Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River. American settlers were pressuring the federal government to remove Native Americans from the lands of the Southeast; many white pioneers filtering into Native American territory wanted the government to make these lands available for their own settlement. Although the effort was vehemently opposed by many, including Congressman Davy Crockett of Tennessee, Jackson was able to gain Congressional passage of the legislation, which authorized the government to extinguish Native title to lands in the southeastern United States.

The ensuing Trail of Tears exodus was a series of government-mandated relocations of remnants of various Native American nations from their ancestral eastern homelands to an area west of the Mississippi River that was designated as Native Territory (now Oklahoma). At the time of the forced migration, a few Native Americans living in the Southeast managed to remain on their ancestral homelands; for example, today some Choctaw still live in Mississippi, some Creek in Alabama and Florida, and some Cherokee in North Carolina; a small group of Seminole moved to the Everglades and were never uprooted by the U.S. military. But Jackson sent the vast majority of Native Americans west.

In 1831, the Choctaw became the first Nation to be dislodged. Their removal served as the cruel model for all future relocations. After two wars, many Seminoles were removed in 1832. The Creek removal followed in 1834, the Chickasaw in 1837, and last the Cherokee in 1838. By 1839, forty-six thousand Native Americans from the southeastern states had been forced from their homelands, thereby opening twenty-five million acres for white settlement.

The term “Trail of Tears” originated from a description of the removal of the Cherokee Nation. While some Cherokee migrated voluntarily, more than sixteen thousand were forced out of their homeland against their will and made to march to their destinations by state and local militias. In the winter of 1838–39, a long procession of wagons, riders, and people on foot traveled eight hundred miles west to Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Most of the Cherokee made their way through Cape Girardeau County, now home to the state park. Floating ice stopped some of the attempted Mississippi River crossings, so the Cherokee bands had to set up camp on the riverbank. While waiting to cross, the Native Americans endured rain, snow, severe cold, hunger, and disease. Many women, children, and elderly people died; it is estimated that more than four thousand Cherokee lost their lives in this march of tribal decimation. Trail of Tears State Park, part of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, preserves the native woodlands much as they appeared to the Cherokee as they passed westward. These Native Americans had a special reverence for the animals that shared their land. My own travels encountering birds and mammals intersected at a number of places with those of Native Americans past and present, but how different my trek was from their tragic journey over the past two centuries.

OAK FOREST MANAGEMENT

A bit northeast of Trail of Tears State Park, and across the Mississippi, lies little-known Trail of Tears State Forest, in Illinois, which I reached after crossing the river at Cape Girardeau and wandering backroads beset with migrating turtles of various species. I set up camp on a sharp ridge cloaked in oak forest, much like the Ozark forests I had seen west of Mingo in Missouri. In fact, the Ozarks ecological region spans five states, including slivers of easternmost Oklahoma and southeasternmost Kansas, good chunks of northwestern Arkansas and southern Missouri, and a portion of southern Illinois.

Trail of Tears State Forest comprises more than five thousand acres of hilly upland forest, and I was probably the only person camped in it at this time, because it was midweek in spring. I saw Sugar Maples growing in the woods—a botanical signpost telling me I was easing into the northern half of my journey. Barred Owls hooted in the dark, and a long train rolled by in the distance at around 10 p.m. It must have taken twenty minutes for the string of cars to pass—the loud trundling on the rails and the periodic tooting of the locomotive’s whistle brought on musings of a time in my childhood when railroads ruled and I heard the sound of trains every night.

In this state forest, I planned to learn about the challenges of midcountry forest management. Tracy Fidler, of Shawnee Resources and Development (a local nonprofit), had agreed to show me around, with guidance from Illinois state foresters David Allen and Ben Snyder. The trio are dedicated to the foresighted management of the forests of southern Illinois. It turns out that the mature oak-hickory forests that have long dominated the central hardwoods area of the country are reaching an ecological dead end, neither regenerating nor properly supporting an array of threatened migratory songbirds, due to the absence of periodic fire in the ecological regime and the resultant closing of the forest canopy. Smokey Bear perhaps has been too successful in halting fire in America’s forests.

Hunters and birders love oak-hickory forests, which attract both game birds and songbirds. The problem is, in the absence of natural regimes of fire and canopy disturbance, these mature oak-hickory woods will slowly but inexorably transition to less productive maple-beech woods. Expert forest managers such as Allen and Snyder manage these forests to foster the healthy recruitment of new generations of oak and hickory to replace those in the canopy today. This forest needs active disturbance to bring about the succession of young oak and hickory seedlings into canopy trees. This seemed counterintuitive, but these eighty-year-old forests are not replacing themselves. That’s why the foresters need to step in and take action.

Here is the true story of these oak-hickory forests. Recall that after the Civil War, southern Illinois probably was entirely deforested because of the chronic impacts of widespread agriculture, charcoal production, and the cutting of remnant woods for timber. Slowly, over a number of decades, farmers abandoned the unproductive hilly lands, which regenerated to old fields, then scrub, then woodlands, and finally forests. What stands here today is a direct result of this single historic cycle of succession from bare fields to mature forest. In earlier generations, recurrent fire events, small-scale agriculture by Native Americans, and other patch disturbances generated a mosaic of woodland and oak savannas that supported a wide array of habitats. Today, closed-canopy forest dominates, without the fire or patch dynamics that would keep it a diverse mosaic. Larry Heggemann and the Central Hardwoods Joint Venture seek to create a mosaic of woodland types, from the sunny and savannalike oak openings I’d seen at Cane Ridge in Missouri to the mature oak-hickory forests I saw here at Trail of Tears State Forest in Illinois.

As we toured a 925-acre demonstration area in the state forest and looked at a number of plots pre- and post-treatment, I gained understanding of what needs to happen here to generate fresh habitat for the Cerulean Warbler, Wild Turkey, and other local wildlife specialties. Proper management requires a combination of canopy thinning, midstory removal, and controlled burning. It is an expensive proposition, but it’s necessary to restart the natural disturbance regime that molded these forests in centuries past. Of course, there has been a fair amount of pushback from the general nature-loving public, who often see the existing forest as “pristine” and “natural,” although, of course, it is neither—it is the specific dead-end product of local human history, and it requires the human touch in order to provide the greatest benefit to biodiversity and birdlife. The public needs to learn that “disturbance” can be good as well as bad, depending on the scale and context.

Certainly, the devil is in the details. A field study by Aaron Gabbe and colleagues in southern Illinois has demonstrated that the threatened Cerulean Warbler preferentially forages in an uncommon species of tree: the Shellbark Hickory. It is a large-seeded bottomland forest species that has difficulty recolonizing logged-over lands because its big seeds are not as easily dispersed as those of the many more common small-seeded species, such as the maples, oaks, and beech. Gabbe’s research suggests that fully functioning forest ecosystems require the regeneration of Shellbark Hickory in order to provide ecological benefit to the Cerulean Warbler. The take-home point: in some cases, good management means more than simply setting aside land and keeping it undisturbed and free of fire.

After our field seminar, Fidler and I headed to Dixie Barbecue, a favorite local dining spot in Jonesboro, Illinois, where slow-smoked pork is sliced very thinly, grilled until slightly crisp on the edges, put on a warmed bun, and topped with a secret homemade BBQ sauce. That, with a cherry Coke, makes a fine downhome lunch. Aside from its barbecue, Jonesboro is famed as the site of the third Lincoln-Douglas debate, held on September 15, 1858. The seven “Great Debates” set Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln against Democratic incumbent Stephen Douglas in the race for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois. Slavery (including the Missouri Compromise and the Dred Scott case) was the dominant topic in the debates. Unlike the soundbite format of current debates, the 1858 exchanges allowed one candidate to speak for sixty minutes, the second for ninety minutes, and then the first candidate was given a final thirty minutes to respond to the words of the second speaker. Lincoln lost that election to Douglas. Afterward, with free time on his hands, Lincoln collected and published the transcripts of the debates as a book, which was very popular and assisted with his election as president two years later.

URBAN BIRDING

My next field activity is scheduled for downtown Saint Louis, an urban birding hotspot. I have plans to birdwatch with local naturalists in one of the popular downtown parks of the city. Although I’m including city birding in this largely rural journey, I do not plan to stay in Saint Louis. Instead I’ll camp in Pere Marquette State Park, north of the city in Grafton, Illinois.

Driving north on Interstate 55 toward the city, I encountered the first road-killed Coyote of the trip, plus a couple of road-killed Armadillos. Both species have been on the move in the East in recent decades. The Coyote has colonized much of the suburban East Coast, even appearing in city parks and preying upon local residents’ domestic pets. The Armadillo, confined to Mexico in the 1880s, continues its march northward into America’s heartland, but not without abundant road mortality. On a happier note, a Pileated Woodpecker, high in the blue sky, crossed I-55, the big black bird flashing its white underwings as it undulated gracefully from one woodland patch to another.

On my way to Pere Marquette State Park, I passed through urban Saint Louis, which the summer before had been rocked by the Ferguson, Missouri, riots precipitated by the police shooting of Michael Brown. I made my way through downtrodden northern sections of Saint Louis toward the bridges crossing the Missouri and the Mississippi to Alton, Illinois. Passing the high, pale-gray limestone bluff on the Illinois side of the Mississippi, I followed the Great River Road twenty-one miles upstream to Pere Marquette State Park, where the Illinois River joins the Mississippi. It then became clear to me that Saint Louis is in this spot precisely because the three great rivers—the Missouri, Mississippi, and Illinois—come together here, smack dab in the middle of the country.

Pere Marquette State Park, at eight thousand acres the largest in the state, has access to the Illinois River and a large boat basin. The park is lent a rustic ambience by a number of 1930s-era stone-and-log buildings built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, including a large guest lodge facing a set of pretty stone cabins. The tenting ground, a bit uphill, had trees, but overall this seemed a rather suburban park, influenced by its proximity to the big city just to the south.

The next morning, May 14, I rose at 4 a.m. and drove downtown to meet my birding party: knowledgeable naturalists Christian Hagenlocher, Brad Warrick, Jacob Warrick, and Garrett Sheets, local residents who had answered my emailed call for birding guidance in the city. Together we headed for Tower Grove Park, in the middle of Saint Louis, and spent two hours birding for migrant songbirds. It was one of those cool and wet spring days that birders learn to appreciate—gloomy weather quite often produces excellent urban spring migrant birding. Small flocks of White-throated Sparrows foraged under every patch of shrubbery, their presence telling me that I was still near the front edge of the northbound wave of songbird migrants.

Birding downtown parks is best during the spring migration, because cities’ vast expanses of concrete and asphalt make every small patch of green vegetation attractive to migrants at the end of a long night of flying. New York’s Central Park and Chicago’s Magic Hedge stand out as the most famous, but in fact most eastern and mid-western cities hold green spaces that bring in migrant birds, as well as birders, in numbers. Today the birding was good: our little team recorded fifty-four species, including a Black-throated Blue Warbler (a rare passage migrant this far west), vocalizing Olive-sided and Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, and a total of thirteen species of wood warblers passing through town.

Later in the morning, I set the GPS for West Alton, a noted birding destination on the southwest bank of the Mississippi. Waiting at a downtown stoplight, I looked down an alley to see several feral cats hanging around what looked like a feeding station: a site periodically provisioned by some kindhearted person. Cat lovers maintain hundreds or thousands of feral cat colonies in cities and towns across the United States, an act of kindness with unintended consequences. Outdoor cats kill more than two billion birds each year in North America and can carry and transmit serious diseases, such as toxoplasmosis, to humans. Feeding feral cats does not halt their hunting of birds and mammals. Cats are efficient natural predators, and their introduction to novel landscapes has contributed to the extinction of thirty-three species of birds around the world. And for every wild bird killed, cats kill two to three wild mammals (chipmunks, rabbits, voles, shrews). The harm to vertebrate wildlife populations is substantial. Studies have also shown that feral cats live unhealthy, brutish lives, with none of the pleasures known to indoor cats properly cared for by their owners. It turns out that the trap, neuter, release, and feed movement is really not humane treatment for these creatures, which lead mean lives and which are destructive in urban and rural landscapes. The American Bird Conservancy, through its innovative Cats Indoors! Program, has worked for more than a decade to educate cat owners and cat lovers about the proper stewardship of their pets and to foster state and national policies that protect wildlife from the depredations of wild-roaming cats.

ABC works on other urban/suburban bird issues besides cats, two of which are particularly important for migrant songbirds. The nighttime illumination of tall urban buildings leads to the maiming or death of many spring migrants, especially on foggy and rainy nights, as do lighted transmission towers. The threat is exemplified by a kill of more than four hundred songbirds of twenty species, including many migrant wood warblers, at a lighted building in Galveston, Texas, in early May 2017. ABC is working with cities to alter building and tower lighting to reduce bird deaths. Reflective windows also kill many birds, especially in suburban habitats where windows face a mix of lawn and woody vegetation, and so ABC has worked with companies to create specialized window tape that discourages bird collisions. Cats, windows, and lighted buildings are just three of the threats that migratory birds face when passing through urban and suburban landscapes.

The confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, on the northern verge of Saint Louis in West Alton, includes verdant wetlands and bottomlands, even though it is adjacent to a sprawling urban center. Because of the area’s flood-prone nature, the Army Corps of Engineers has created all sorts of impoundments and flood-control structures that, happily, are attractive to birds. After a brief visit to the Audubon Center at Riverlands, just north of town (highlight: Blue Grosbeak), I wandered about on what is essentially a peninsula between the two big rivers and ended up, without knowing where I was going, at Edward and Pat Jones Confluence State Park, where the Missouri and Mississippi meet. I walked out to the wooded point where these two streams of silt-laden water come together. It is awe-inspiring to stand at the narrow point of land where these great rivers collide, and where geography and history and nature come together.

Birding on the wooded point yielded a Gray-cheeked Thrush, an Indigo Bunting, a White-crowned Sparrow, and both Baltimore and Orchard Orioles. Several vocal Warbling Vireos and Northern Cardinals hung out in the small triangle of Cottonwoods that forms the heart of the park. Out low over the muddy and turbulent Missouri, Chimney Swifts and Purple Martins hawked insects. It was gray and cool, damp and river-girt, and now I felt I was truly launching into the northern sector of my journey. Goodbye, southlands.

At 5 p.m., back at Pere Marquette State Park, the rains had finally finished. The sun began to shine, and the black flies to swarm. They know exactly where to land and bite to generate the greatest effect. I slathered bug repellent on my neck and temples and behind my ears—the target zones of these devilish little dipterans. I looked through my food supplies and discovered that I had lost yet another loaf of bread to marauding Raccoons. When I had chased off last night’s thief, he’d also been sampling my tortilla chips.

In the early evening, before cooking dinner, I tallied a Black-capped Chickadee here at the campground, a species confined to the northern half of the country. Tower Grove Park, downtown, hosts the southlands-dwelling Carolina Chickadee as well as some hybrids between the two species, but at Pere Marquette, it is all Black-capped. The local bird fauna was signaling my arrival in the North. I had now completed a bit more than six weeks out on the road—almost half the journey’s allotted time.

NAVIGATION RIDDLES

The thrushes that I had seen at Edward and Pat Jones Confluence State Park, and spotted in numbers elsewhere in the midcountry woodlands, are ideal subjects of field study because they are large enough to carry tiny radio transmitters on their backs, which allow researchers to follow the migratory movements of individual birds. This is a great way to learn about how songbirds navigate to their nesting territory in the North Woods.

William Cochran and Martin Wikelski have conducted three decades of radio-transmitter research, and their studies reveal the basics of thrush navigation. After each night flight, northward-migrating thrushes stop over in woodlands and feed until their fat levels are restored to preflight levels (which requires several days). In spring, these birds have a remarkable ability to put on the fat reserves needed to power migration as well as to handle the future demands of establishing a breeding territory. Stopover birds forage in an area only about a hundred yards in diameter. At the end of the day, before departing on their next flight, the thrushes calibrate their magnetic compass based upon where the sun sets or upon the plane of the polarized sky light that they detect overhead.

The birds migrate only at night, and only on nights when the air temperature is not too chilly and when the wind speed at ground level is less than six miles per hour. In flight, the birds beat their wings about six hundred times per minute. Their heart beats at around the same rate. They typically fly about thirty-five miles per hour (ground speed) but usually benefit from a tail wind. They fly until they deplete their fat reserves or until daybreak, whichever comes first, and then they drop down into another wooded patch with access to water.

Night flights last as long as eight hours, and the birds travel as much as five hundred miles each night but typically only half that distance. Perhaps most remarkable is that the thrushes keep a constant magnetic heading during their entire migration up the Mississippi. Once the northward-traveling birds reach the latitude of their breeding habitat, they switch to eastward- or westward-trending flights to locate their preceding year’s nesting territory. The mainland migration (from the Louisiana coast to breeding habitat in Canada) takes on average about forty days, which includes about eight night flights and many additional days and nights of rest and foraging. The flight from Panama, where they winter, to Ontario entails 3.2 million wingbeats.

Unexpected findings include the discovery that overland migration imposes only a moderate energetic demand on the thrushes. The researchers also found that birds typically stop migrating and drop into a woods upon encountering a cold front. Most remarkable of all is that migrating thrushes change their orientation to fly toward a thunderstorm when lightning is visible. The most likely explanation for this phenomenon is that the thrushes want to stop over in a site that has plenty of water available (which is likely if a thunderstorm had recently passed). The most important result of recent studies of thrush migration is that the birds can successfully navigate across the continent by using a set of simple migratory decision rules, rendering what at first appears impossibly complex into the realm of the understandable. Some mysteries remain, of course. For instance, once the songbird arrives at the proper latitude, how does it determine whether its natal breeding site is west or east of that point? Which GPS-like cue provides that information? That riddle remains for researchers to answer.

EFFIGY MOUNDS AND THE BIRDS OF THE DRIFTLESS AREA

I next travel north to the confluence of the Wisconsin River with the Mississippi, site of Wyalusing State Park, where I will camp for several days. Along the way I stop at the restored prairie at Wapello Land and Water Reserve in Hanover, Illinois. In the early nineteenth century, this patch of prairie was a Native American village headed by Chief Wapello of the Fox (or Meskwaki) people, and the archaeological site reveals two periods of occupation, the oldest tracing to 1050 CE. North of Hanover, a Red-bellied Woodpecker flies across the road in front of the car, reminding me that I am at the northern edge of the range of this nonmigratory southern species, which has expanded northward over the past half century.

As I approached Galena, Illinois, in the northwestern corner of the state, I turned onto the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Highway, which leads to the former president’s hometown through verdant rolling country, a mix of woods and well-tended agriculture, and descends the high sandstone plain to Galena. Looking down, I saw what seemed like a New England college town, its church steeples rising out of maples. The best historic aspects of old Galena have been preserved and restored—it is one of those small and picturesque rural towns whose economy has adapted to attract tourists who love pleasing scenery, restored old buildings, tranquility, and good dining.

In midmorning, I arrived at the Wisconsin state line. The Mississippi has cut a deep valley here, and adjacent to the river the land is wooded and hilly; back up on the ancient elevated plain, away from the river, it is flat farmland. Here the farms were big and prosperous, each farmhouse surrounded by four or five major outbuildings. The neatness of the farms was impressive, but they were too tidy for my taste, one reason that on my way north I kept mainly to small roads nearer the river, which were greener and less tame. A lot of Black Cherry trees were in bloom, and the leaves of the commonplace Black Walnut trees were just starting to unfold; many trees on the exposed ridgetops had not yet fully leafed out. Spring was only just arriving here, although it was already May 18. The radio announced an expected predawn low of 39°F for the 19th, and the northwest wind was starting to blow, which would slow the northward songbird migration.

Wyalusing State Park perches atop a high bluff looking down on the deep valleys of the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers, whose confluence lies just west of the park. I settled into a campsite set a bit back from the bluff, protected from the winds striking the northern face of the escarpment. As I erected my tent, I was greeted by the songs of Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Wood Thrush, and Tennessee Warbler. A female American Redstart gamboled about the campsite no more than a few feet off the ground, and a male Cerulean Warbler sang repeatedly in the forest canopy just above the picnic table. The birdsong was welcoming, but the approaching chilly weather was not.

Cerulean Warbler

In the afternoon, I visited Effigy Mounds National Monument in Harpers Ferry, Iowa, just across the Mississippi and upstream from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, the nearest town to the state park. Here, about a thousand years ago, Native American communities fashioned giant animal-shaped earthen mounds on the high plateau overlooking the river. Of its 206 surviving earth constructions from the mound-building culture, Effigy Mounds National Monument exhibits a range of examples, and I visited several of the most famous: Big Bear, Little Bear, and a line of simple conical mounds that resembles a necklace of beads, just back from Eagle Rock lookout. The stiff climb from the visitor center up to the main concentration of mounds was lightened by vocal songbirds in the woods, including numerous locally breeding Rose-breasted Grosbeaks and American Redstarts. Mature forest has grown up to engulf the mounds, which are scattered far and wide. The Park Service has cleared the mounds of woody vegetation and trees to make it possible to see the details of the ancient earth sculptures. One wonders what the environment looked like when these mounds were in active use. Were they set in woodlands or open country?

The Mississippian Mound-Builder culture spread out through the central reaches of this great watershed between 1100 and 1350 CE. The mound-building people here in eastern Iowa fashioned hundreds of mounds, some in geometric shapes and others that graphically represent turtles, bison, lizards, and, most commonly, bears and birds. Some tribal narratives held that the bear was the guardian of the earth and the bird the guardian of the sky. Excavation has shown that fire, too, was associated with many mounds.

Perhaps the most remarkable construction is the Marching Bear Group, a linear assemblage of ten bears plus three birds. The true meaning of these thousand-year-old mounds remains a mystery. They were constructed by people of the late Woodland period, hunter-gatherers who prospered on nature’s bounty in the watershed of the Mississippi and mainly inhabited the environs of southern Wisconsin and Iowa. The last of the effigy mounds were constructed 850 years ago, when the people of the Oneonta culture came to dominate the region with large permanent settlements and new forms of pottery. Surveys of northeastern Iowa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries documented more than ten thousand prehistoric mounds in that state alone. By the mid-twentieth century, fewer than a tenth of these had survived the widespread development of the landscape. Effigy Mounds National Monument was established in 1949 to preserve a small remnant of this important archaeological legacy.

By 8 p.m., back at Wyalusing State Park, it was windy, cloudy, and cold. I had a hot meal and bundled myself in several layers of fleece, a woolen watch cap, and woolen gloves. High up here, bundled against the weather and looking down on the Mississippi, I was reminded of November days I’d spent at my favorite autumn hawk watch, northwest of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Wyalusing bluff top was as exposed as the typical ridgetop hawk watch, and just as chilly, too. Luckily, I had brought plenty of clothing in anticipation of cold in the far north. At my little campsite, I was serenaded by the singing male Cerulean Warbler and several Rose-breasted Grosbeaks—signaling that in spite of the cold weather, today’s movement of the sun across the sky had told the birds that yes, it was indeed spring.

The predawn chorus started around 5 a.m. as a bunch of American Robins gave a weird short song in the full dark and then shifted into their typical longer, warbling dawn song. Finally, other bird species chimed in as the cloudy morning broke. I emerged from my tent at 6 a.m., and the same male Cerulean Warbler sang over my shoulder as I ate breakfast in the cold and windy morning. The Cerulean was yet another of my quest birds on its breeding territory.

The Cerulean Warbler, a species in decline, is one of those migrants that everybody seems to search for. It is fine-looking and it dwells in the canopy of tall forest, which typically makes locating a Cerulean a challenge. The male, while it cannot compete with the beauty of the male Goldenwing or Blackburnian, is a demurely handsome creature, with sky-blue upper parts, white wing-bars, white underparts broken by flank streaking, and a neat, dark throat collar. The species breeds from northern Arkansas to southern Ontario but is found mainly in the heartland states of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. It prospers these days only in mature deciduous forest atop ridges, in places where oak and hickory trees grow tall (e.g., a place just like Wyalusing). To find one, a birder must listen carefully for the bird’s evocative, rolling, and musical song, which gives me goose-bumps when I hear it each spring: tzeed tzeed tzeed tzeed ti ti ti zeee?

I continued my hunt for novel migrants and local breeding songbirds. On this morning, I visited the restored prairie along the Wyalusing entrance road, highlighted by a number of educational signs discussing the restoration. Here I found five species: Ring-necked Pheasant, Red-winged Blackbird, Field Sparrow, Common Yellowthroat, and American Goldfinch. A cuckoo gave a cadenced series of coo notes in sets of three—it was a Black-billed Cuckoo, rather than the more common Yellow-billed. Hearing this uncommon and declining Neotropical migrant got my blood pumping. What other oddities might be around?

Standing in the restored prairie, I saw old pasture land in the distance, behind a little astronomical observatory set back from the entrance road. I wandered in to look for interesting grassland and edge habitats. Before going far, I heard the song of a bird I have heard only once before, in northern Texas. Here at Wyalusing, it was giving its rapid and buzzy zig-zagging song from a row of trees between two old fields. Its often-repeated song helped me locate the bird in a jiffy: a Bell’s Vireo.

Absent from the East but widespread in the Great Plains, Bell’s Vireo also occurs in the arid Southwest. Its plumage is plain, like a cross between a Warbling Vireo and a Philadelphia Vireo, and this species, like the Warbling, is distinguished by that remarkable song. The rapid-fire series of musical notes is unlike that of any other North American bird, and its habit of repeating its song over and over makes the bird all the more distinctive. This singing male was being harassed by a male Ruby-throated Hummingbird, which repeatedly dive-bombed the vireo. The vireo remained in its low tree, singing, while I photographed it at close range. I had hunted for the species at Mingo in Missouri, with guidance from Mark Robbins, but without success; what a surprise to find it here in Wisconsin, at the very northeastern fringe of its breeding range.

Sated with the sights and sounds of the vireo, I wandered farther from the main road into a series of large, unkempt, hilly fields surrounded by woods. Before long, I heard a single Henslow’s Sparrow singing deep in the grass of one weedy hill. But it was midmorning, and this species is an early bird. I would have more luck seeing this elusive species if I returned very early the next morning.

I completed my midmorning birding tour of Wyalusing on bicycle. The state park supports oak uplands, prairie, and steep, forested bluffs that drop down to the two rivers, where wetlands and bottomland forest predominate. The tree community, from the top of the ridge to the bottomland, includes Black Oak, Shagbark Hickory, Black Cherry, White Oak, Red Oak, White Ash, Sugar Maple, Basswood, Ironwood, American Elm, Silver Maple, Eastern Cottonwood, River Birch, and Black Willow. At the end of my bike ride, I tallied my morning count of warblers: ten American Redstart, seven Tennessee, five Common Yellowthroat, five Blackpoll, five Cerulean, two Kentucky, and a Chestnut-sided—five species of breeding residents and two passage migrants, but only the Cerulean an addition to the quest list.

At midday I reviewed the map and brochure for Wyalusing State Park and discovered, to my great surprise, that the park itself had held 107 Native American mounds when it was first surveyed in 1894. I wandered the roads and located a number of signboarded mounds, one in the form of a bear. The day fined up and the sun came out, but it remained windy and cool. Even at 2 p.m., I needed to wear gloves to work on my diary—the temperature was in the 50s. At the end of the day, I bathed in a shower house whose ambient temperature was 45°F. At 7 p.m., I’d finished dinner at my campsite, but that resident Cerulean Warbler male was singing its buzzy song every eight seconds nearby. Lots of other birds, too, still sang in the gloaming—orioles, wood pewees, and more.

Wyalusing and Effigy Mounds lie in the heart of the Driftless Area (also known as the Paleozoic Plateau), a region noted for its deeply incised river valleys. Primarily located in southwestern Wisconsin, the Driftless Area also encompasses portions of southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa, and northwestern Illinois—an area of sixteen thousand square miles. The region’s unusual terrain is the result of its having escaped the most recent period of North American glaciation. Retreating glaciers leave behind drift—silt, clay, sand, gravel, and erratics (loose boulders), plus unsorted material called till and outwash deposits from glacial meltwater streams. This area lacks all of the distinctive calling cards of recent glaciation; the only drift found here dates from more ancient glacial periods, reaching back five hundred thousand years. The Driftless Area is an eroded plateau with bedrock overlain by varying thicknesses of loess, or windblown sediments. And most characteristically, the rivers flow through deeply dissected valleys, along which the river bluffs stand tall and prominent. The sedimentary rocks of the valley walls date to the Paleozoic Era. The area has not undergone much tectonic action, and its visible layers of sedimentary rock remain horizontal. Considering how far south the last glaciers advanced, this glacier-free zone is a geographic mystery.

At 5:30 the next morning, I was back at the weedy fields behind the observatory, listening for Henslow’s Sparrows. Within a few minutes, I heard the voices of four singing males in the rolling overgrown grassland, but I did not see a single bird. Henslow’s is among many birders’ holy grails, a will-o’-the-wisp that seems always just out of reach. I’d hunted for it unsuccessfully for several decades and only recently had gotten to know the bird first-hand. Most prevalent in the prairie lands of the upper Mississippi drainage—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin—the bird is an old-field specialist that needs just the proper amount of thick, shrubby growth in a field to make it desirable habitat. Breeding populations of the species come and go as fields evolve through successional stages. Well-kept hayfields tended by farmers never have Henslow’s.

Another reason for the difficulty of finding Henslow’s Sparrow is its voice. Its quiet, slurred single note of a “song”—sllinnk—is easily overwhelmed by the cacophony of a morning chorus, when virtually every other bird species has a louder and farther-carrying vocalization. The only similar vocalists in the region are two other uncommon grassland specialists: the Grasshopper Sparrow and Le Conte’s Sparrow. Yet another reason for the difficulty of finding Henslow’s is its behavior. It sings mainly before dawn and after dusk, and it hides quietly deep in the grass for most of the day. Late-rising birders will not find many Henslow’s Sparrows. This morning, I was here early, and I scored. But I had no luck with photography, given the poor light and the reclusive nature of the singing males. As a consolation, I did hear, once again, the noisy song of that male Bell’s Vireo on territory back in the tree row next to the observatory.

From atop the grassy hilltop I also heard the tatatatat—tatat—tatat drum of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker from a nearby woods, the distinctive staccato spring sound reminding me once again of the North Woods. The arrival of spring here could be seen in the abundant bloom of Black Cherry trees and Shadbush, as well as Northern Bush-Honeysuckle. Yet it remained cold: even at 8:30 a.m. it was 44°F, although not as windy as the preceding day. It occurred to me that I’d heard no frogs calling in the park—perhaps it simply was too cold for them.

As I brought my bicycle back to the paved main park entrance road, a Meadow Jumping-Mouse, with its very long tail, crossed the road in several prodigious jumps. I counted up the numbers of warblers I’d seen today: four Blackpoll Warblers and a single Myrtle Warbler. These two passage migrant species typically represent the earlier half (Myrtle) and the later half (Blackpoll) of the warbler migration season. Their presence here confirmed that I was right in the heart of “warbler spring” as it flowed ever northward. Later in the day I’d see several White Pine sentinel trees outside the park: still more harbingers of the Northlands.

CREX MEADOWS

As I travel north from Wyalusing, the GPS takes me to both sides of the Mississippi, from Wisconsin to Minnesota and back to Wisconsin. The sky is deep blue, the air clear and fresh. The spring sun begins to warm the air; this Friday, near the end of May, is one of those days we hope will last forever. I stop for breakfast in the little Minnesota college town of Winona, named for the legendary first daughter of Chief Wapasha of the Mdewakanton band of the eastern Sioux. Five colleges and universities are here: Winona State University, Winona State College, St. Mary’s University, Minnesota State College–Southeast Technical, and the College of St. Teresa. I judge from this quick visit that Winona would be a great place to retire and perhaps teach a course every other semester. But I can’t stay to explore the town’s charms. I must move on, as I am on my way to northern Wisconsin to camp near Crex Meadows, a famous birding reserve in the northwestern part of the state, and well into wolf country.

I stop in Saint Croix Falls, Wisconsin, on the east bank of the Saint Croix River, in search of lunch. Loggers Bar and Grill fits the bill. I sample local favorites: batter-fried cheese curds washed down with a Leinenkugel beer brewed in Chippewa Falls.

In Grantsburg, Wisconsin, I headed to the visitor center for Crex Meadows State Wildlife Area. Adrian Azar, a young birder from North Dakota whom I’d met at Wyalusing State Park, suggested I see Crex Meadows, singing the praises of the large protected wetland and telling me that he himself would visit Crex Meadows on his way home. That was recommendation enough for me.

The rangers at the center resolved my concern about finding an available campsite over the Memorial Day weekend. They pointed me to Governor Knowles State Forest, right on the banks of the Saint Croix River, a National Scenic Riverway, which had an abundance of open campsites. Here I’d spend the rest of the weekend camped along the river and reveling in Crex Meadows’ natural wonders, heightened by the prevailing rain-free weather, unlike the typical cold, misty, and rainy spring days of the North Woods.

Before setting up camp, I spent several morning hours checking out Crex Meadows, some thirty thousand acres managed for wildlife and nature. The area is part of the northwest Wisconsin pine barrens, a large sand plain left from the retreat of the last glacier, eleven thousand years before the present day, and its extensive wetlands are a remnant of glacial Lake Grantsburg (we are clearly out of the Driftless Area). When Native Americans lived here, the area was a fire-prone brush prairie. The wetlands were drained in the 1890s, and in the early twentieth century, Crex Carpet Company owned much of the land and manufactured grass rugs here. The wildlife area was established in 1946.

Autumn migration here is famous for its Bald Eagles, Sandhill Cranes, and many species of waterfowl. During the spring, birders come from far and wide to witness the communal mating display of the Sharp-tailed Grouse and to search for various rare marsh-breeding birds. Current management focuses on restoring the wetlands and prairies through deployment of a dike system, mechanical opening of closed forest tracts, and prescribed burns. Here is a prime example of the successful restoration of a major wetland resource after it had been essentially destroyed.

At my campsite above the Saint Croix River, I was greeted by the voices of an array of songbirds on their breeding habitat: Wood Thrush, Veery, American Redstart, and more. The campground was mainly young deciduous forest with a scattering of White Pines, and the tent site was bracketed by two big stands of Interrupted Fern, a plant I knew well from summers in the Adirondacks. In the late afternoon, as I organized my camp before making dinner, the sun remained high, a pleasant breeze blew, and I looked forward to spending all of Saturday morning exploring Crex Meadows. Abundant black flies swarmed but did not bite; my head net was not yet required.

I heard another song at the campsite, too: that of the Ovenbird, one of my quest breeders. It was surprising that I had not already located the species; this common and vocal bird breeds as far south as Arkansas, and winters from Florida to northernmost South America. Like the waterthrushes, it is a ground dweller, and it has the look of a sparrow: olive above and white below, with black streaks on the breast. An orange stripe adorns the top of its head, bracketed by two black racing stripes, and it sports a prominent white eye-ring. A common species of deciduous forests in spring, the Ovenbird makes the woods ring with its loud song: teacher teacher teacher TEACHER TEACHER!

Another voice of a different quest species came to me here as well: that of the Chestnut-sided Warbler. It is a gaily colored inhabitant of brushlands and the edges of northern swamps and cutover woodland openings, breeding north to central Canada and wintering south to Colombia. The male is mainly dark above and white below, with a distinctive yellow cap, a black mustache, and a chestnut stripe down the flank. Its cheerful and rapid chattering song is reminiscent of that of the Yellow Warbler.

At 5 a.m. Saturday, I was awoken by a loud dawn chorus of American Robins in the chill air (it was only 39°F). A croaking Common Raven greeted me as I drove into Crex Meadows—the big black bird sailed right down the middle of the road and passed low over the car, its long, wedge-shaped tail prominent. All morning I traveled the huge reserve’s extensive system of gravel roads, stopping to bird favorable spots. Standing on a dike cloaked in early-morning mist, I listened to abundant birdsong. Cranes were bugling. Canada Geese were honking. Sedge Wrens and Grasshopper Sparrows chorused lustily from the grass. A Sora gave its strange musical upslur from the marsh. An Alder Flycatcher sang fee-BEE-oh. Loons and Ring-necked Ducks moved silently over the glassy water.

And here I could see daytime migration! Dozens of small flocks of migrating Blue Jays passed overhead in waves all morning long. Their relentless flight northward reminded me of the migratory imperative—it’s like the tide, not to be denied. A single Veery, another northbound migrant, crossed a large swath of open marsh. I hiked the Phantom Lake Trail, where the many oaks were just pushing out their tiny, pale leaves, whose translucency reminded me of the wings of a butterfly when it emerges from its chrysalis: the start of a new life in early spring, here in the north country.

Like a rapidly beating heart, the courtship drumming of a male Ruffed Grouse atop a fallen hollow log resonated from afar, so low-pitched that I felt it more than heard it. The characteristic cadenced North Woods drum of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker joined it. And the wood warblers were in voice, too: Golden-winged, Nashville, Black-and-white, Tennessee, Yellow, Wilson’s, Chestnut-sided, Common Yellowthroat, and Ovenbird. The woods trembled with birdsong. In the marshlands I heard the weird pump-er-lunk of the American Bittern—an uncommon marsh bird that is rarely seen except when in flight—and the spring courtship whinny of a Pied-billed Grebe.

Yet I failed to detect three birds that I had specifically hoped to see at Crex Meadows: it is famous for Yellow Rail, Le Conte’s Sparrow, and Nelson’s Sparrow, all of which breed in low, wet, grassy, freshwater marshlands near the U.S.-Canada border. All three are elusive, and they stayed true to form on this day. I saw plenty of Sedge Wrens and Grasshopper Sparrows and even a Clay-colored Sparrow, but not a single hint of the more elusive trio—the early bird does not always catch the worm.

Of course, I was eager to see other types of wildlife. The ranger at the visitor center had mentioned that a pack of wolves lurked near the northwestern corner of the reserve. I managed to locate wolf footprints in the sand but had no sightings of the animals themselves. I would have another chance for this wilderness wraith in Ontario.

By midafternoon, I was back at my campsite to bird in the cool, sunny weather. The campground was favored by species of early successional vegetation: I found Interrupted Fern, White Trillium, and flowering Shadbush, and I was pleasantly surprised to find no Poison Ivy. Male Chestnut-sided Warblers chased about the edges of the campsite, singing frequently. A couple of Eastern Cottonwood trees shed their fluff in bits that filled the air throughout the afternoon. A migrant Philadelphia Vireo sang from various of the taller aspens in the campground.

A vocal male Mourning Warbler moved about the tangled thicket in the adjacent campsite, and I spent an hour trying to get a decent photograph of him. He represented another quest bird; a raspberry-thicket specialist, the Mourning Warbler is most common in scrubby, regenerating clearings left after logging or fire. This big and handsome species is a favorite of birders, though not quite so revered as its lookalike, the Connecticut Warbler. The Mourning is neatly plumaged: dark-gray hood, olive back and wings, and yellow breast and belly. Its species name refers to the blackish bib that hints the bird is dressed for a funeral. A shy thicket-skulker, it is difficult to glimpse, but its strident song gives away its presence: cheerEE cheerEE cheerEE CHEEReeoh! This vocalization is evidently a favorite of U.S. TV advertising executives; one can often hear the Mourning’s song in make-believe suburban backyards on TV. Few people’s backyards actually boast singing Mourning Warblers, but my current side yard in northern Wisconsin did—one of the treats of staying at this little reserve on the Saint Croix.

After dinner, I returned to Crex Meadows to watch the sun set over the marsh. Spring Peepers and Gray Treefrogs chorused. Two American Bitterns called back and forth. At 8:20 p.m., two Sandhill Cranes bugled. Various Sora rails sang out as the sun dropped below the horizon. The light dimmed and the temperature dropped, and yet the male Red-winged Blackbirds continued to vocalize from their exposed call perches, their testosterone pumping. Returning to camp after dark, I was greeted by the rapid and cadenced musical notes of a Whip-poor-will: wir-wuh-WRILL…wir-wuh-WRILL…wir-wuh-WRILL. A bit later, three Barred Owls held a noisy discussion in the trees behind my tent.

On Sunday, I was up well before dawn to search again for that elusive threesome, the Yellow Rail, Le Conte’s Sparrow, and Nelson’s Sparrow. The cool, misty spring morning was perfect in every way but for the absence of the target birds. Yet other treats—Vesper Sparrow, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Sedge Wren—alleviated my disappointment. The Sora rails were singing. A Wilson’s Snipe noisily zigzagged past. I saw more large wolf tracks in the sand. A Red Fox crossed the road in front of my car; a flock of Black Terns foraged low over one of the impoundments; and I found a Pine Warbler in a big stand of planted pines. A morning highlight was a singing male Sedge Wren that refused to leave his perch in spite of my close approach; typically, getting a glimpse of this bird verges on the impossible. I spent more than ten minutes admiring the little extrovert. Then a statuesque Sandhill Crane posed for me, allowing me to photograph him from various angles.

I also spotted the Golden-winged Warbler, a quest bird and one of North American birders’ rarely seen wood warblers. Once merely uncommon and patchily distributed, its population has declined substantially, and now it is a true rarity. The species breeds only in the mountain uplands of the Appalachians and the North Woods in the northern tier of central states into Manitoba. It favors early successional woodland clearings and bog edges and tends to disappear from places where it has long bred as the vegetation matures. The male is a stunner, with a black throat, black mask, golden cap and wing-bars, and natty gray-and-white body plumage. Seeing this bird sing its brief buzzy song from a small sapling in the sun is one of warbler-watching’s high points.

In the afternoon, back in the state park, I biked the Wood River Trail down to Raspberry Landing, on the Saint Croix River. Young secondary hardwood forest, noisy with Veeries and Ovenbirds, dominated the whole area. The White Trillium was flowering in profusion in the forested bottoms, but here in the northlands it was still on the early side of spring. The Black Cherries were just now flowering. The only butterfly I encountered was a Pink-edged Sulphur.

I returned to the Crex Meadows visitor center to get a map, and during our conversation the ranger told me that the town of Grantsburg had trapped and removed twelve nuisance bears the preceding summer. They were translocated to Chippewa National Forest, in northern Minnesota. The presence of bears and wolves seems to be taken in stride in northwestern Wisconsin, and people appreciate them as a part of the local environment. The nuisance animals are managed nonlethally, with a minimum of fuss. In the interior West, where cattle and sheep are grazed on open range, these predators are treated with less forbearance.

In the evening, at 7:42 p.m., a Barred Owl hooted down in the hollow. A gorgeous sunset flamed behind the trees across the Saint Croix River. At 8:20 p.m., a Veery, Ovenbird, and Chestnut-sided Warbler were all still singing. As we head toward the summer solstice, the song of birds extends later and later into the evening hours—a welcome feature of late spring for birders.

A review of the breeding ranges of the boreal wood warblers in the Sibley field guide shows a common pattern of geographic distribution. The breeding ranges of twenty-two species of wood warblers extend from the Canadian Maritimes, New England, and the Great Lakes region northwestward through central Canada to Alaska, with the largest part of the ranges located in eastern, central, and western Canada. This shared breeding range is typified by the ranges of the Tennessee, Cape May, Bay-breasted, and Mourning Warblers. These ranges all have the same environmental theme: they center on the Great North Woods, the spruce-fir forests of the taiga zone. At Crex Meadows, I was at the southern verge of this great swath of boreal vegetation, so extensive in Canada. Many of these warbler distributions also have the same geographic theme: they center on the heartland of northern Ontario.

This is why I was headed to northern Ontario: to visit ground zero for breeding wood warblers. It was a place I had never been, and it is a wild region that has been little surveyed for birds. I did not know what I would find, but I had hopes that I’d see lots and lots of wood warblers of many species singing on their breeding territories. But, before my visit to Ontario, I had three stops to make in Minnesota.

REVERSE MIGRATION

The Tuesday after Memorial Day breaks rain free but misty. A stuttering Hairy Woodpecker and a singing Scarlet Tanager send me on my way to Duluth, Minnesota. I take the long way, visiting the Barnes and Mokwah pine barrens in search of patches of young Jack Pine and the rare Kirtland’s Warbler. I find plenty of pines, some decent Kirtland’s habitat manufactured by the state, but no warblers. I also see along the way that northern Wisconsin, cut over repeatedly, remains a land of timber extraction and forest management focused on the timber and pulp industry—and not much on wilderness. Virtually all the roadside habitat I see is young second growth.

In the early afternoon, I cross the big bridge from Superior, Wisconsin, to Duluth, Minnesota. On the south side of town I look up a hill to a small local ski area, where a snow patch lingers on a ski run—a remnant of winter.

I’d scheduled a meeting with expert local birders Larry and Jan Kraemer at their home on a hill above Duluth this afternoon. The Kraemers know the area’s birds and wildlife and agreed to advise me on birding in the North Woods. We chatted about birding while we watched the bird feeders on their back porch: Pine Siskins, American Goldfinches, and various other songbirds came in to entertain us. The Kraemers noted that they had recorded 161 species of birds in their yard, including twenty-seven species of warblers, along with Black Bear, Coyote, Bobcat, both species of foxes, Pine Marten, and Fisher—and all this in suburban Duluth.

The Kraemers also related the story of a major reverse songbird migration, which took place on May 19, 2013, on the southwest shore of Lake Superior at Duluth. During inclement weather accompanied by strong northeasterly winds, tens of thousands of songbirds that had already passed Duluth on their way north reversed course and returned southward in search of better weather and foraging opportunities. It was estimated that more than 80 percent of the southward-moving songbirds seen were not identified because of the terrific winds, which made it nearly impossible to focus binoculars on the flying birds. It was the biggest local fall-out of thrushes, warblers, and other passerines in recent memory.

What they reported, however, was but a tip of an avian iceberg. None of the larger trees and shrubs on the shore of Lake Superior were leafed out due to winterlike weather that had extended well into May. Duluth had had its snowiest April ever, with more than fifty inches of snow and persistent cold. Despite the strong offshore winds, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of warblers were desperately trying to find food and shelter among the grasses and small shrubs along the lakeside dunes. Hummingbirds tried to find sustenance from willow catkins and buds on fruiting trees, without much success. Warblers congregated to forage along the southern shore of Lake Superior, Northern Waterthrush, American Redstart, and Magnolia and Yellow Warblers common among them. Orange-crowned, Tennessee, and Cape May Warblers were among the most common species foraging at or below eye level in willow, Red Osier Dogwood, and other small shrubs. American Redstarts and Cape May, Magnolia, and Chestnut-sided Warblers foraged on the ground and chased aerial insects from low perches. Warblers searched for invertebrate prey and any other available sustenance in the detritus washed up on the beach. Hundreds of Palm Warblers foraged along the wrack line. Most surprising to the observers were the Blackburnian and Blackpoll Warblers (species normally seen foraging in the high canopy) and the Mourning and Canada Warblers (species usually seen skulking in heavy undergrowth) that were out in the open, picking at debris down on the beach. Though adding a splash of color to the shore on a dreary and overcast day, the observers realized that these birds were suffering an existential threat from the cold, wind, and lack of food.

During the fall-out, the Kraemers, along with local birding colleagues Mike Hendrickson and Peder Svingen, made observations at several sites around Duluth and the lakefront, and Svingen compiled a full report (which I relied on to retell the story here). The birders also noted an additional four thousand warblers that they were unable to identify to species. This incident of reverse migration in spring was new to me. Given the meteorological conditions, I hope I never experience one, for the sake of the birdlife. Still, it is a remarkable phenomenon that once again reveals the courage and tenacity of songbird migrants even under perilous climatological conditions. Presumably most of these birds survived the terrible storm (the observers found few dead birds in its aftermath), but certainly there must have been some mortality.

HEADWATERS

After a night’s stay in Duluth, I head westward to Park Rapids, in central Minnesota. Whereas Duluth, in eastern Minnesota, is deep in the forest zone, the western half of Minnesota is prairie country. The town of Park Rapids is right on the boundary between forest and prairie, where farmers grow corn, soybeans, and potatoes. It lies just south of Itasca State Park, which hosts the headwaters of the Mississippi River—one focus of my northward journey’s route for the past two months. I have been following the river’s course for weeks, and now I am almost at its source. Ornithologist Marshall Howe and his wife, Janet McMillen, live in Park Rapids, and Howe has offered to take me birding at the headwaters.

The three-hour drive from Duluth was punctuated by a close encounter with a Sandhill Crane family foraging at the very edge of the highway. In front of me, a large truck roared by the group, and its slipstream toppled the two rusty-colored and fuzzy young into a grassy ditch. The parent cranes appeared nonchalant about this. When I stopped to look at the cranes, I saw Bobolinks in the field beside the road. The male Bobolink is mainly black, with bold white patches on the wings and a pale yellow nape, whereas the female has the look of a large, plain sparrow. Male Bobolinks displaying over an old field is an iconic boreal spring sight, made richer by the exuberant bubbling song of the displaying birds as they hover over the tall grass.

In midafternoon I booked into Breezy Pines Campground, a few miles from Howe and McMillen’s home and hidden in the woods at the edge of small Crooked Lake. My campsite was idyllic—isolated from the rest of the main campground. From the picnic table I had a lovely lakefront vista west to north-country sunsets. And the birdlife was great, too: I hadn’t expected to see so many southern species so far north, but here in north-central Minnesota I would find Warbling Vireo, Baltimore Oriole, and Great Crested Flycatcher, among others. Still, I was up north, as the Common Loons’ song each night on the lake would remind me. A regal-looking adult Bald Eagle liked to perch atop a tall White Pine across the lake from the campsite, and many other species were in song—Red-winged Blackbirds, Common Yellowthroats, Yellow Warblers, Veeries, and American Robins.

On the first day of June, Howe took me birding. First we visited Pine Lake County Forest, where we found a breeding male Golden-winged Warbler in song. I had seen the species several times at Crex Meadows, but one never tires of spending time with this rare bird. Then we moved on to Lake Alice Bog for boreal specialties, finding Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, Northern Waterthrush, Black-throated Green Warbler, and a singing Lincoln’s Sparrow.

But the day’s main focus was Itasca State Park. We walked the spruce-forested Beaver Trail on the back side of the park, where we came upon a dried carcass of a long-dead Timber Wolf, completely intact and with a horrible toothy grimace. I couldn’t take my eyes off the grisly sight. We wondered what happened to the poor beast: perhaps it had died at the height of winter and been naturally freeze-dried. Not much farther down the trail lay the severed leg of a Snowshoe Hare. The name of the trail, I thought, perhaps should be “Red in Tooth and Claw.”

Then Howe pulled one of his hearing aids from his ear and told me to pop it into my own. Suddenly a new soundscape appeared. I could hear several high-pitched warbler songs: there was a Blackburnian! Aha, a Black-and-white! A Canada Warbler in that dark forest thicket! Over there—a Golden-crowned Kinglet! It was a revelation: here was a device that could bring back much of the hearing of my youth. I high-fived Howe and, of course, refused to return the hearing aid until the end of the day. Now I was angry at myself for not purchasing a pair of hearing aids prior to the start of this journey; I hadn’t known what I was missing.

Our morning in and around Itasca produced several new quest warblers. The Northern Waterthrush lies at the low end of the beauty spectrum but still was new to my quest. Another of the sparrowlike warblers, this species is dark olive-brown above, dull whitish-buff below, with dark breast striping and a pale eyebrow. It forages on the ground in bogs and other northern wetlands, breeds from New England to Alaska, and winters south to Ecuador. Its crowning glory is its super-loud chattering song, which carries far across the boreal landscape—the most explosive song of any warbler.

The Blackburnian Warbler, a common conifer-loving species and another quest bird, is one of the most admired wood warblers because of the male’s colors and patterning: glowing-orange throat and cheek and black-patterned head, back, and flanks, with streaks and splotches of bright white in all the right places. This gorgeous canopy dweller, which winters from northern South America into the Andes, has a very high-pitched, lisping song and is easily missed by novice birders standing far below if they don’t crane their necks to see into the tops of hemlocks and spruces. It had been a long time since I had been able to hear this bird sing, but today, with the loan of Howe’s hearing aid, I could.

A third quest bird was the Black-throated Green Warbler. One of most familiar boreal warblers of the East, it ranges along the Appalachians south to Georgia and is most commonplace in the mixed conifer forests of New England and Canada. Wintering south to Colombia and Venezuela, it tends to be one of the earliest warbler migrants to return northward, heralding the arrival of the warbler waves. The male sports a black bib, yellow cheek, and green crown, back, and rump, and the plumage is further enlivened by black-and-white flanks and white wing-bars. Its cheery, buzzy, musical song is an announcement of spring migration: zee zee zee zo zeeet!

We heard a fourth quest species singing from its territory in a dark glade: the Canada Warbler, another of the boreal breeders, with a nesting range in the Appalachians, New England, and Canada. Wintering in the Andes and northern South America, it is an uncommon migrant and tends to lurk in low tangles in mixed northern forest during the nesting season. This is one of the more handsome species, with delicate patterning: gray above, yellow below, with a black necklace and a black face with yellow “spectacles.” Its song—high, rapid, and chattery—is a distinctive voice of the dark forest interior.

The morning, with four new warblers, was a substantial step forward for my breeding warbler list, bringing me to twenty-four species. After a rewarding morning of warbler watching, we lunched in Itasca Park at Douglas Lodge, a handsome 1905 log structure with a huge stone chimney and fireplace, a perfect place to relax after a stiff session of wilderness birding. We relaxed, gazed out the window at the greenery, and dined slowly, savoring our meal and recalling the beautiful birds we had encountered.

Blackburnian Warbler

After we got our strength back, we drove a short distance to the Mississippi Headwaters Center and located the trailhead to the headwaters track for our pilgrimage to the source of the Mississippi. There is a lot of hype surrounding the source of “the Father of Waters,” but probably, for most pilgrims, it ends in disappointment; the flat path to the headwaters, no more than a couple of hundred yards from the crowded parking lot, ends at an underwhelming small, shallow stream flowing out of Lake Itasca. We learned that the Mississippi starts as this inconsequential feature on the landscape: there’s no waterfall here, no mountain tarn, just the small outlet stream. Howe and I were among a crowd of tourists shuffling down the short headwaters trail; when they arrived at the signboard identifying the source of the Mississippi, most snapped a quick picture and then turned to head back to the parking lot. Not all headwaters are so disappointing, of course—the headwaters of the Connecticut and Hudson rivers, for example, start in beautiful and isolated wilderness spots high in the mountains.

The highlight of this iconic geographic locus was in fact a bird—a glossy adult male Black-backed Woodpecker, a rare boreal forest species, which flew into a big White Spruce next to a gravel path near the visitor center and offered us stupendously close looks before disappearing into the woods. It was our seventh species of woodpecker that day. Families and groups of tourists passed us by, oblivious to the elusive and handsome woodpecker. We also found a colony of a beautiful wildflower, the Large-flowered Bellwort, whose leaves look a bit like those of Solomon’s Seal, and whose bell-shaped yellow flowers hang off their stems. Returning to Howe’s home just outside Park Rapids, we found a wooded section of back road that swarmed with Band-winged Meadowhawks, which are large dragonflies with a bronze abdomen. Hundreds of the large odonates zipped back and forth over the road in an explosive emergence. They, too, were among the day’s best sightings, and more of spring’s riches.

WARBLER SONG AND TERRITORIALITY

Aside from their remarkable migratory story, warblers attract attention because of the males’ brightly patterned plumages and their diverse and often complex songs. The vivid plumage and song relate to the males’ territorial behavior: a male warbler arrives on his territory in late spring and spends much of each day for several weeks advertising and defending it. He sings thousands of times each day on territory to announce his presence to competitors, and his declaration of territorial ownership is a way that he defends his patch from other males. In addition, he employs the song to attract a mate to his territory. While males pursue this spring period of territorial establishment, they vocalize and perch in prominent places and make themselves accessible to birdwatchers. It is a behavior of such vitality and vigor that it brings joy to the heart of any birder experiencing it. When territorial song is being deployed by literally hundreds of birds scattered through the woods, it is one of nature’s most compelling seasonal events, and it is one of the great attractions of the boreal North Woods to naturalists and birders. Of course, we also love wood warblers because of their favored habitat: mature forest that in spring bristles with life of all kinds.

MANUFACTURING HABITAT FOR THE GOLDENWING

The morning after my insider’s tour of the Mississippi headwaters environs, I say my farewells to Howe and McMillen, break camp early, and depart toward forty-three-thousand-acre Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, an hour west on back roads, where I’ll visit an American Bird Conservancy field project. Situated where the tallgrass prairie meets boreal and northern hardwood forests, Tamarac’s great mix of lakes, bogs, wetlands, streams, and forests is home to healthy populations of Timber Wolves, Trumpeter Swans, and Bald Eagles, as well as scores of breeding migratory songbirds. On the drive, I pass a pure stand of oaks that still has tiny, very pale young leaves. Spring is slow getting to some of these places.

Meeting Peter Dieser and Aditi Desai of the American Bird Conservancy at the refuge headquarters, I headed out into the field with them to see what the conservancy is doing to increase Tamarac’s breeding habitat for Golden-winged Warbler and American Woodcock, both of which have been in widespread decline and are on the Watch List of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (the NABCI, as readers will recall, hosts the Joint Ventures work that I visited in Missouri). The woodcock is a chubby, short-legged, long-billed, bug-eyed sandpiper relative that has evolved to inhabit wet deciduous woods rather than the seashore. It breeds in the eastern United States and winters in the Southeast. Birders head out to boggy openings in rural areas in early spring to witness the woodcock display flight at dusk, and hunters and their dogs pursue woodcock as a game bird in the autumn.

Dieser led the way to three sites where the refuge, working with ABC, had conducted habitat management plans to open up patches of closed deciduous forest to create early successional glades, prime habitat for Golden-winged Warbler and American Woodcock. This kind of management, as I had seen in Illinois and Missouri, is not for the faint of heart. Heavy equipment is brought in to thin closed forest and enable patchy regrowth of sapling-stage woody vegetation—ideal breeding habitat for the two target species. Although mechanical opening of the forest looks brutal, within a couple of years these areas green up nicely and start to attract the target bird species. All three managed sites at Tamarac were already supporting populations of the two species.

Over the past seven years, ABC, partnering with various private, state, and federal landowners, has created more than twenty thousand acres of new early successional habitat for breeding Golden-winged Warblers and American Woodcocks in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Wisconsin as well as Minnesota. This is a working experiment, and associated censuses monitor impacts on the abundance of singing males onsite. ABC has found that the target species are already on territory and breeding in a number of the newly managed sites. In addition, recent field studies have shown that early successional habitat is an important foraging resource for young songbirds of the year in the late summer, prior to fall migration. Thus this extensive field experiment may produce additional benefits for migratory songbirds.

At the third site, we met Earl Johnson, a forester and woodcock expert, who was using hunting dogs to census woodcock and locate woodcock nests in an attempt to document the effect of the ongoing habitat management. He showed us a nest, set inconspicuously on the ground in thick grass, with eggs upon which an adult American Woodcock sat. The dorsal plumage of this marvelously camouflaged species is patterned like dead leaves on the forest floor, and even from a few feet away, I’d been unable to detect the bird on its nest.

Weather at Tamarac was gloomy, with on-and-off light rain and mist, but we were pleased that we were still able to carry out the field visit. Aside from the woodcock and Goldenwings, we observed Ring-necked Duck, Black-billed Cuckoo, Veery, Black-and-white Warbler, Yellow-throated Vireo, Scarlet Tanager, and Rose-breasted Grosbeak. I spotted two annoying species as well: Poison Ivy, surprising this far north, and Wood Tick, dozens of which I picked off my clothing at the end of the field visit. Because of warmer winters in recent decades, ticks of several species now abound in north-central Minnesota, as do the several diseases typically associated with tick bites.

Once I dispensed with the ticks, I departed Tamarac and headed northeastward toward International Falls and the border with Canada. To date, I’d tallied twenty-four wood warbler species on their breeding grounds. Thirteen more to go. I was now in a northern zone where singing breeders outnumbered passage migrants, and I had high hopes for northern Ontario.