Dear reader, have you ever been going for a walk and you hear either an entirely new bird singing, or it’s one you’re familiar with but you know is newly arrived in the area again? Is there any better sensation? I love going for a walk and hearing birds, especially ones I can identify, because it feels like I’m amongst old friends, like I’m not walking alone.

You may have guessed already, but I’m a certified bird nerd! I’m the crazy lady you will see standing in the middle of the sidewalk staring up at a tree. I can’t read a street sign until I’m almost past it, but I can sure spot a bird in a tree from a good ways away! Selective seeing? Perhaps! The camera roll on my phone consists mostly of birds and cats. Let me tell you, dear reader, it’s an art form to follow a bird as it flits from branch to branch and even tree to tree! If you can get at least one good picture you’ve done well for yourself. It’s the thrill of the chase, isn’t it? I bet you talk to the birds too, just like I do, telling them to stand still for a split second, turn this way, etc. I hope to one day run into somebody in the wild exhibiting bird nerd behavior just like I do. It hasn’t happened yet but I’m hopeful!

Anyway, it’s spring in Wisconsin, so you know what that means! No, I’m not talking about the wildly fluctuating weather – did I see a frost warning for overnight on my weather app! Let us not speak of it! – I’m talking about migratory birds! Let me tell you dear reader, there is no greater motivation to get me out of doors after another horrid winter has come and gone. Hearing the songs of migratory birds is akin to hearing your old favorites on the radio. Along with standing and staring at trees, I also stand with my phone pointed into the air, the Merlin ID app recording a new bird song, or one I’ve forgotten and am delighted when I guess it correctly. This past weekend I identified a new bird in a nearby park, the palm warbler! You can learn more about this bird here.

Birds & Blooms Beauty in the Backyard by Birds & Blooms

Create the yard of your dreams with more than 300 gardening and landscaping tips from the pros. Learn how to increase curbside appeal with seasonal flair, attract birds and butterflies to your backyard, landscape with color, keep houseplants healthy, and make the most of small and shady spaces.

300+ tips, hints and ideas from experts to help transform your yard into a showplace all year long.
Hundreds of stunning full-color photos make this a keepsake book you’ll cherish for years to come.
Container arrangements, décor and other ideas to make your front porch pop.
Seasonal secrets that guarantee a lovely yard no matter the time of year.

Bring the outdoors inside with tips for houseplants, crafty ideas and more.

Relish nature’s beauty all year long when you create a yard that celebrates everything nature has to offer. From landscaping with color and texture to attracting favorite fliers in every season, the secrets to creating your own sanctuary are shared in Beauty in the Backyard from the team at Birds & Blooms magazine.

Learn how to enhance small yards, turn shady spots into stunning areas and get the most bang for your buck with oversized plants and blooms. You’ll even find expert advice on house plants, front-porch décor, crafty ideas using nature’s bounty and so much more. More than 300 no-fuss tips, hints and suggestions make it easy!

Best of all, hundreds of jaw-dropping photos make this book a joy to page through all year long. Whether you’re an experienced gardener or working on your first yard, whether you own acres of land or a tiny city plot, Beauty in the Backyard is a book you’ll reach for time and again.

This book was a treasure trove of information! Even if you are just starting out with feeding birds, you can learn so much. There is a seemingly infinite amount of different bird seed out there, and it can be intimidating to figure out what kind to buy, can’t it? Even I’m still learning and I’ve been feeding birds for several years! There are also so many different kinds of feeders, and they each attract certain kinds of birds. This book will even tell you what native plants and flowers to plant to attract birds to your yard.

The Singing Life of Birds by Donald Kroodsma

Listen to birds sing as you’ve never listened before, as the world-renowned birdsong expert Donald Kroodsma takes you on personal journeys of discovery and intrigue. Read stories of wrens and robins, thrushes and thrashers, warblers and whip-poor-wills, bluebirds and cardinals, and many more bird. Learn how each acquires its songs, how songs vary from bird to bird and place to place, how some birds’ singing is especially beautiful or ceaseless or complex, how some do not sing at all, how the often quiet female has the last word, and why.

Hear a baby wren and the author’s own daughter babble as each learns its local dialect. Listen to the mockingbird by night and by day and count how many different songs he can sing. Marvel at the exquisite harmony in the duet of a wood thrush as he uses his two voice boxes to accompany himself. Feel the extraordinary energy in the songs just before sunrise as dawn’s first light sweeps across this singing planet. Hear firsthand the unmistakable evidence that there are not one but two species of marsh wrens and two species of winter wrens in North America.

Learn not only to hear but to see birds sing in the form of sonagrams, as these visual images dance across the pages while you listen to the accompanying audio.

Using your trained ears and eyes, you can begin your own journeys of discovery. Listen anew to birds in your backyard and beyond, exploring the singing minds of birds as they tell all that they know. Join Kroodsma not only in identifying but in identifying with singing birds, connecting with nature’s musicians in a whole new way.

I know I mentioned the thrill of hearing a new birdsong while out for a walk, but did you know that many birds have more than one song? They have a main song, a call – which is a short, simple noise – and then a flight song, which is exactly what it sounds like, a song they sing while flying. The American Goldfinch has one of my favorite flight songs. If you’ve ever seen them flying it’s a very wavy, up and down motion, and that’s exactly what their flight song sounds like! Once you learn a bird’s various songs you can not only identify it, but also what it’s doing! You can learn more about the American Goldfinch here. The American Goldfinch is a year-round resident in Wisconsin, but I couldn’t help but talk about it!

One of my most treasured bird memories is one summer evening when I was biking home from Kohler Andrae State Park and I heard the Hermit Thrush singing. It’s a very delicate song of simplistic beauty, and hearing it at dusk with the dark woods around me was beyond magical. These birds are robin-sized and consist of soft browns and whites, a very unassuming bird with the most beautiful song! I saw one not too long ago perched in the cherry tree in the backyard. Hermit Thrushes are the last to migrate south in the fall, the first to head north in spring, and the only ones to winter in the United States. You can learn more about this bird here.

The little Northern House Wren has one of my most favorite songs. If ever a bird’s song could be described as mellifluous, it would be this bird! These cute little birds winter in the southern United States or Mexico and return north from late March to early May. They are distinguished by their short tail that they hold sometimes completely upright until it’s at a ninety degree angle to their body. In fact, this is the characteristic that helped me spot one on a tree in the backyard a few weeks ago! You can learn more about the House Wren here.

Birds of Wisconsin Field Guideby Stan Tekiela

Get the New Edition of Wisconsin’s Best-Selling Bird Guide

Learn to identify birds in Wisconsin, and make bird-watching even more enjoyable. With Stan Tekiela’s famous field guide, bird identification is simple and informative. There’s no need to look through dozens of photos of birds that don’t live in your area. This book features 121 species of Wisconsin birds organized by color for ease of use. Do you see a yellow bird and don’t know what it is? Go to the yellow section to find out.

Book Features:

121 species: Only Wisconsin birds
Simple color guide: See a yellow bird? Go to the yellow section
Compare feature: Decide between look-alikes
Stan’s Notes: Naturalist tidbits and facts
Professional photos: Crisp, stunning full-page images

This new edition includes more species, updated photographs and range maps, revised information, and even more of Stan’s expert insights. So grab Birds of Wisconsin Field Guide for your next birding adventure—to help ensure that you positively identify the birds that you see.

Since we’re using fun words to describe birds, let me use the word gregarious to describe a little bird that I adore seeing each spring, the Ruby-Crowned Kinglet! With this chickadee-sized bird, you won’t actually see their namesake crowns unless they’re excited or alarmed, then, much like the Cardinal, their crest will pop up and down. In fact, the bird itself will do the same thing. I went on a hike several years ago and the Ruby-Crowned Kinglet allowed me to get very close, and it never seemed to sit still! Look for their characteristic wing fluttering to identify them. They breed in northern North America and western mountains, flying to the southern US and Mexico for the winter. Learn more about the Ruby-Crowned Kinglet here.

I can’t write a blog post about migratory birds without talking about my favorite one, the Brown Creeper! To spot these birds you’ll have to pay close attention to the trunks of trees, usually the bigger the tree the better! Unlike Nuthatches, Brown Creepers can only go up tree trunks, not both up and down. With their brown backs and tails they almost look like a piece of bark themselves, but their bellies are bright white. Brown Creepers traverse tree trunks to look for insects in the bark. Throughout most of their breeding range the Brown Creeper doesn’t migrate, but those in more northern regions move south in winter. You can learn more about the brown creeper here.

I’ve found it interesting that while looking up the range maps of all the birds I’ve talked about, Sheboygan tends to more often than not be right on a dividing line for different ranges, making it hard to determine where we land. I wonder why that is! Who would I even ask about such a question?

Regardless, dear reader, I wish you luck as you go out into the world in search of migratory birds, and birds in general! The amazing thing about birding is there is always a new bird to learn about, a new song to identify, and even new facts to learn about birds you see nearly every day. I hope, like me, you can shake off the winter blues and look forward to longer and brighter days, with more birdsong!