Urban birding

A day of late May birding in and around Brigantine and Cape May, N.J., was to be my reward for being a dutiful husband and helping out with projects around my wife’s grandmother’s home just outside Philadelphia. Alas, after arriving and getting a glimpse of the “honey do” list, it became evident that a daylong birding trek was out of the question.

However, early the first morning of our stay I went out to get some things from my auto and was greeted by the thin, high-pitched “zii-zii-zii-zii-zii” of a blackpoll warbler. The song was coming from a small clump of locust and poplar trees across the street. I grabbed my binoculars and took a closer look.

In that small greenspace along with the more urban house wrens, house finches, house sparrows, common grackles, robins and mourning doves, I found blackpoll warblers, an American redstart, an eastern wood pewee and red-eyed vireos.

That is when I remembered, from a previous trip, a small natural area in the vicinity of Denise’s grandma’s. I queried her family and found out that Silver Lake Nature Center was just around the corner – within five minutes.

So, for the next three mornings I would get up around 6 a.m. and quietly leave the estrogen-laden domicile where my wife, daughter, mother-in-law and grandma-in-law slumbered to spend a few hours at Silver Lake. I didn’t have great expectations the first morning. Silver Lake is in Bristol Township, Lower Bucks County about 25 minutes from Philadelphia – a very urban area.

The first morning I spent a little while around the edge of Silver Lake. There were the obligatory gulls – laughing and ring-billed – and a resident herd of Canada geese. A small grove of pines and some other trees scattered in an open park-like area along the lake provided refuge for common urban birds like starlings, grackles, mockingbirds, robins, house sparrows, etc.

But as soon as I left the open area for one of the trails at Silver Lake, I was pleasantly surprised. Abundant gray catbirds, red-winged blackbirds, grackles and robins provided a noisy avian backdrop but after about five minutes on the trail I could pick out the songs of yellow warblers and red-eyed vireos in the din. A small opening along the trail revealed a couple of pairs of yellow warblers actively foraging.

The trail led to an observation deck overlooking an expanse of marsh along an arm of Silver Lake. The first morning it was pretty late (9 a.m.) in birding terms before I reached the observation platform. It faces east and the morning sun was cooking pretty good by then. Still, willow flycatchers were singing loudly from the marsh. A pair of Baltimore orioles was foraging at the edge of the forest and yellow warblers were still quite active.

The next two mornings I made it a point to be at the observation deck and a nearby boardwalk in the marsh early and it paid off. Some of the birds seen and/or heard from these two spots include, little green heron, wood duck, yellow-billed cuckoo, ruby-throated hummingbird, eastern kingbird, willow flycatcher, tree swallow, marsh wren, black-and-white warbler, yellow warbler, common yellowthroat and Baltimore oriole.

I tallied a total of 67 species of birds for the three mornings I visited Silver Lake Nature Center. The list included seven species of warblers – black-and-white, yellow, magnolia, blackpoll, ovenbird, common yellowthroat and American redstart. Non-avian critters included two gorgeous “fresh” red-spotted purple butterflies, two gray foxes and a white-tailed deer.

Silver Lake Park encompasses 465 acres including the 235-acre Silver Park Nature Center and the 175-acre Delhaas Woods. The center and the woods are probably the best remaining remnants of Costal Plain Forest left in Pennsylvania. The rich diversity of flora and fauna present show how important it is in this time of ever-increasing urbanization to protect these kinds of oasis.

While these types of greenspaces will never replace the need to preserve and protect large expanses of wilderness, they are extremely important in urban settings and offer great educational and recreational opportunities as well as important stopovers for migrating birds and important refuges for native flora and fauna within urban settings.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at ddihen@earthlink.net.)