My Life’s Birds: #222-224

June 29, 1994 – Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, Mo – I wrote once about a prior trip the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield just outside of Springfield. Once my dad and I discovered it as a hot birding location in the area, we made a point to get there regularly. In particular, the combination of hundred year old forests and scrubby reclaimed farmland made the area good for some nesting warblers I had yet to put glass too. Here at the end of June they were likely to be on territory and easy to find, so off we went.

One spot of particular interest on the self-guided auto tour was the Ray House, an old farm house converted during the battle into a makeshift field hospital. The field around it, while no longer farmed for corn as it was when it was occupied, is now sumac groves and shrub. It’s perfect for Yellow-breasted Chats, belting out their weird song from the tops of the sumacs. Along the margins with the younger woods you can find Blue-winged Warblers too, and we did, ticking two life birds mere minutes from each other.

Along the back of the drive the road winds through older oak forests, shady and cool compared to our previous stop where little stands in between the unrelenting Missouri summer sun and the top of your head. We were looking for a third yellow warbler here, and after a few Carolina Wren induced false starts, we finally heard, then saw, a male Kentucky Warbler, practically glowing in a dense, dark stand of undergrowth. Not a bad trio, if I do say so myself.

While these three nesting warblers would make a day, or even a week, I had bigger things on the horizon. The very next day, I was heading to Southeast Arizona, and the buckets of birds that awaited me there.

BWWA from Scott A Young via flickr
KEWA from Gavatron via flickr