CBA's North Park Village Birding: Kicking off Spring 2025
Hello North Park Village Birders,
This spring reminds me in many ways of the confusing Spring of 2020. It's April 3rd, so that means five years ago, we were about two weeks or so into lockdowns. We're experiencing a different type of infection today, and it has people feeling equally down or overwhelmed.
2020 was an inspirational year for many, as we collectively confronted our place in this world and in this society. It was also then that a deluge of folks were introduced to the world of birds as a tool for mental grounding, including myself.
Julian and I joined the walk for the first time on May 15, 2021. It was our first time out with a group. The eBird checklist reports 56 species. I'm sure I didn't even see a third of those. I was mainly experienced with neighborhood birds then, and I had yet to appreciate the flurry of warblers. Two lifers for us included the amazing Scarlet Tanager and the Cedar Waxwings I found, which I was almost too nervous to point out to the group.
It was great, but I wasn't sure these group walks were for me. Then I started to receive Mark Pohlad's email about the walks. I was drawn back. Since then, I'm glad to have found so many friends in you all. I hope in this and subsequent seasons that we can welcome several new birders and serve as an onramp for them to the rest of the local birding community, as this community did for me.
Scarlet Tanager, Cedar Waxwings, and NPV Birders
Come for Kinglets, stay for the Redstarts!
I've been looking at a lot of data and finding several ways to visualize it all. So naturally, as we begin a new season of NPV walks, I thought I'd find ways to visualize what we can expect to see!
I downloaded the histogram data from the North Park Village Bar Charts from eBird for the following graphs: creating a weekly distribution chart, averaging data from the last 20 years, and breaking the months into four weeks each. It's what's already on the eBird page, but compressed into a single line for a more comparative view. In this case, for four species. The bar is set up such that the y-axis is average frequency, so the higher the bar that week, the more likely you are to see it that week.
Notice how the colors come in waves. As many have come to expect, our first few weeks are most likely to feature birds such as the Golden-crowned Kinglet and Brown Creepers, with Ruby-crowned Kinglets following shortly thereafter. Swainson's Thrushes and Warblers, including the American Redstart, arrive later in the season in May.
This information is not new to many birders, but it can be richly insightful for newer birders still learning our bird migration patterns. It's also a good reminder to those who have found it difficult to get out lately that now is a great time to go birding. You don't want to miss out on the cute fluffiness of the kinglets—and it'll make it easier to still around for the Redstart's arrival as well!
Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned Kinglets, and an American Redstart.
As bonus encouragement, here are four other species to inform when you might want to join us this season. Fox Sparrows don't stick around for long, and the Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers sure are a treat to see. Don't miss out!
Fox Sparrow and Red-eyed Vireo.
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and Wood Thrush
Beyond North Park Village
I owe so much of what I'm doing today to the birding I have experienced with you all. This year, I received a grant from Cornell's Celebrate Urban Bird program to lead bird walks in Riis Park, the neighborhood park from my childhood. I hope to do what this bird walk series did for me in my neighborhood—and to bring more attention to Riis, which could use some TLC in terms of clean-up and plant diversity. It may be out of the way for many folks here, but I wanted to share the opportunity in case you know anyone in the area.
Happy Birding!
- J'orge 🐦
P.S. One of the more frustrating things about the general overuse of AI is that I learned that the emdash is an indicator for AI use. While I use AI for things, including sometimes checking my writing flow, I did not use AI for this. I did use the emdash three times here, though—because I'm a fan. So much so that when I'm on a Windows computer, I frequently visit emdash.fan by Dan Sinker from Evanston. Such a shame that I am trying to abandon it now, so as not to get confused for a robot.
Speaking of things getting confused for things... Have I told you about my Black-crowned Night Heron decoys? If not, be sure to ask me about it next time you join us at North Park Village. Geoff Garland helped print many of the first few!
