Pickering Creek AUDUBON CENTER Bird Walk

BY REN GILBERT

Ornithologist Dr. Wayne Bell began welcoming a group of avid birders who had gathered at the Pickering Creek Audubon Center in Easton on a splendid spring morning. Mid-sentence, he cocked his head to one side and cried, “Did you hear that? That...There it is again. A white-eyed vireo—first hearing and sighting of the spring!” We hadn’t even left the parking lot and we were already surrounded by a multitude of bird calls and songs. “Witch-ity witch-ity witch-ity!” called a common yellowthroat from the nearby meadow.

“Sometimes we see them, sometimes we hear them,” explained Susie Pratt, a member of the Talbot Bird Club and a volunteer at Pickering Creek. “We’ve learned so much from Wayne, ever since a birding class started through the Chesapeake Forum during COVID—it was a great chance to get outside.” Pratt coordinates these weekly monitoring walks. “We accrue volunteer hours counting birds as citizen scientists,” she explained enthusiastically.

The bird walks are one of many programs the nonprofit Pickering Creek

Audubon Center hosts throughout the year for school groups, families and the general public, including guided nature walks, paddles on the creek, gardening and environmental education classes.

I had joined this group of volunteers for a walk on the center’s 450-acre site on this tidal tributary of the Wye River. Bell retired from his position as the founding director of the Washington College Center for Environment and Society and currently teaches through the Maryland Ornithological Society.

Like Mr. Rogers preparing for his day in the neighborhood, Bell changed into his birding boots and secured his scope and binoculars. “It’s best to use a pair of 8x42s,” he advised. “Then you’ll have a wide enough viewing field, with just the right amount of magnification. Too much and it will be difficult to view birds that are moving in the trees.”

Mark Scallion, the Pickering Creek Center’s executive director who accompanied the group, agreed. “You can get a decent pair of Vortex or Celestron binoculars for about $100,” he noted. “The more you spend, the better the quality of the lenses, the more fun you’ll have birding.”

Just over 20 years ago, Pickering Creek Center’s site consisted only of agricultural fields. Through the donation of land by the Olds family, the center now includes a diversity of habitats: meadows, fresh and brackish marsh, a mile of shoreline along the creek, tidal and non-tidal wetlands and a mature hardwood forest.

As we set out toward the meadow, Talbot Bird Club member Lisa Sargeant opened up the eBird app on her phone and began recording our finds. It was an active and exciting time to take a walk on the numerous trails. “Right now we are seeing the songbird migration,” Bell explained. “Winter species such as the white-throated sparrow are heading out, and our spring birds are setting up their nests. The shorebird migration will peak in May.”

Though we spotted birds as they flew by every now and then, our group identified more of them by the plethora of sounds all around us. Bell explained that many bird calls are composed of triplets, and often sound like words.

“Clear! Clear! Clear! ” We heard the greater yellowlegs, a shorebird that breeds in the Arctic tundra, cry out as it flew off from the pond’s edge. Bell recognized a tufted titmouse by its “Peter, Peter, Peter,” not to be confused with the white-throated sparrow who calls, “O Sweet Canada, Canada, Canada! ” Two bald eagles raced overhead as Bell noted that it takes five years for them to get a fully white head and tail.

“Each habitat consists of four components: food, water, shelter and space,” Scallion explained. Mourning doves shelter from predators in the cedars in the winter. Tree swallows often

Right: Cedar waxwing, a species that capitalizes on the berries and other fruits of the center's extensive scrub and edge habitats.

Below: “We have seen as many as a dozen eggs in one wood duck nesting box. When it’s time to incubate the eggs, the mother duck moves them all into a neat order on top of the downy feathers.” — Quote & photo by Mary Carpenter (Talbot Bird Club member) take up residence in the numerous bluebird boxes along the meadow trail.

Since formal bird monitoring began 11 years ago, with the use of eBird as a recording tool, Pickering Creek volunteers have counted 233 species on the center’s collective “life list.”

And Pickering Creek is just one of the many places in Talbot County to take a bird walk. The Bill Burton Fishing Pier State Park on the Choptank River, Black Walnut Point on the southernmost tip of Tilghman Island,

Claiborne Landing on Eastern Bay, Marengo Woods Wildlife Preserve near Easton, Mill Creek Sanctuary near Wye Mills and Poplar Island are all excellent places to view Talbot County’s 331 sighted bird species.

Informative online options exist to help enhance your birding experience. Birdcast.info works with weather radar to report what’s seen flying over an area in peak season. Merlin is a popular app that identifies birds by sight with a photo or sound by listening to the calls occurring in real time.

Ren Gilbert is profoundly grateful she gets to write, photo, sail, teach, and live on the Eastern Shore of the ever-changing canvas that is the Chesapeake Bay.