Like many bird species, my wife and I migrated south for the winter.
Ours was a personal choice, while the annual movements of migratory birds are hard-wired into their brains, so they migrate instinctively, come hell or high water.
We humans have the luxury of being able to modify our environment to enable us to tolerate inclement weather or potential food shortages. Birds, on the other hand, can’t control their environment. If seasonal changes threaten their survival, they have to move to more accommodating environments.
Food supply is the key: birds, with their amazingly efficient feather insulation, can tolerate Minnesota’s coldest winter temperatures. But they can’t survive if the kinds of food they need aren’t available.
So, chickadees, nuthatches, most woodpeckers, and other species that feed on seeds, berries or “hibernating” insects are able to survive our winters and are typically non-migratory.
Species that depend on mobile insects, however, are left high and dry when cold weather causes their preferred foods to disappear. These species have little choice but to migrate.
Most of them, the species we refer to as neotropical migrants (e.g., most warblers, vireos and flycatchers) spend the winter in Central and South America.
Some are more cold-tolerant and may only migrate as far as the southern U.S. Examples of these are most of our ducks and geese and a few songbirds like yellow-rumped warblers, white-throated sparrows and dark-eyed juncos.
The return migration in Minnesota can begin as early as March and April for species that winter in the southern U.S.
Many of the waterfowl return that early if they can find patches of open water. An example this year was a wonderful group of at least 150 common goldeneye ducks that lingered for a while in April on the shallow lake across 34 from the Long Lake public access.
The dark-eyed juncos are among the few species of songbirds that return in April, and most of them pass on to the north by the end of the month.
Adobe Stock
May, however, is prime time for the return of the great majority of our migratory birds, particularly the neotropical migrants.
This is always a very exciting time for us birders. Experiencing spring migration is often the stimulus that causes birding to become a lifelong passion for people who enjoy nature and the outdoors.
In May, you can expect to find new species arriving almost every day, particularly during the early morning after a night with favorable migration conditions.
On May 2, I was excited to see my first Eastern phoebes of the year, always the first species in the flycatcher family to return. Their habit of bobbing their tail up and down separates it from other similar looking species.
Any day now the ovenbirds and black and white warblers should be back – and they are just the tip of the iceberg.
Birders, it’s time to dust off your binoculars and get ready to enjoy this great annual spring event!
Marshall Howe is a retired biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He specialized in bird population studies. Howe has been a Park Rapids resident since 2010.
