You still have time, if you’re lucky, to see one of our most spectacular winter visitors: the Tundra Swan. Hundreds of these graceful white birds spend the winter in the Chesapeake Bay and tidal Potomac from November through mid-March. When they gather in large flocks, the sight is unforgettable.

We’re in the middle of fall migration season. For birdwatchers, fall migration can be challenging because the warblers are drabber, but, of course, it’s even more challenging for the birds!

During spring migration’s height, in April and May, from 6 a.m. to noon, volunteers catch and band birds in the Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge near Marumsco Creek three mornings a week, a project undertaken there every spring since 2001, except 2020, the “covid year.”

The Tundra Swans are back in town! Between 200 and 400 of these magnificent birds are spending the winter in the Great Marsh of Belmont Bay and will leave in mid-March for their breeding grounds in the tundra of far northern Canada near the Arctic Ocean.  

One of the most anticipated sounds of spring in northern Virginia is the exquisite song of the returning Wood Thrush.

Remember the last time you saw the Milky Way? Around 33 percent of the world’s population can’t see it. In North America, nearly 80 percent of us cannot.

Spring is a busy time for bird-watchers in northern Virginia as flocks of tiny warblers migrate through our area to northern breeding grounds. But there are some that migrate to northern Virginia to breed, and it’s exciting to welcome them back.

Every spring, warblers and other neotropical songbirds journey north from South and Central America and fly through Virginia via the Atlantic Flyway. Observing their spring migration presents an incredible opportunity to experience the colors and sounds of the season in northern Virginia.

What few people know is that there is a lot of natural habitat at Upton Hill, and that habitat attracts a lot of migratory birds. In that sense, Upton Hill is a microcosm of northern Virginia – we have lots of people and lots of development, but we also have lots of birds, especially in spring and fall.

Fall migration through northern Virginia is by no means over, but the numbers of birds traveling to, as well as passing over and through, our area is on the decline. Some of us may now stop obsessively checking BirdCast daily to see what we may anticipate passing through overnight.

Fall migration is expected to peak from September 15 to November 3 in the northern Virginia area. You can help protect the hundreds of millions of birds that are expected to fly over our area by turning off or dimming non-essential lighting during critical migration periods.

Peak songbird migration in our area is mid-April to mid-May. Now is a good time to take extra steps to greet our migrants by making our homes and neighborhoods a little safer for them, helping them avoid window collisions and exhaustion.

Get ready for Birdathon: Here are the 4 main tricks to seeing the maximum number of species in a 24-hour period!

Have you ever wondered how birds are able to make their way to their fall/winter migration location? Migration has to be one of the most fascinating topics in ornithology.

More and more information exists to help determine the peak of migration in any given place. However, in Northern Virginia, we have a golden gem of a resource that highlights anything you might want to know about spring migration of landbirds – it’s a website called MPNature.

There’s something truly delightful about autumn nights. The crispness of the air, the sound of the trees rustling in the wind, and catching a glimpse of fluttering owls from deep within the woods. Northern Saw-whet Owl migration kicks off in late October which means another season of observing these elusive raptors!

In Virginia, migration season is peaking for Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, which are here throughout the summer during their breeding season.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most quoted (and misquoted) poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” tells the story of a sailor who shoots a friendly albatross, cursing himself and his crew. As punishment, he is forced to wear the bird around its neck, making the albatross a symbol of his burden and regret. Good omens in life and bad omens in death, albatrosses have become symbols of both good and bad luck. Fittingly, while some real albatrosses have been fortunate, others have had tough luck.

In the 19th century, a curious phenomenon stumped European bird watchers and zoologists. Why did some species of birds disappear and then reappear every year? People back then had no way to track birds as they traveled long distances, so they had to come to their own conclusions.