Taylor Piephoff

This spring has produced one of the most disappointing migrations in several years for many area birders. All of that seemed to change recently.

For the past two weeks I have been inundated with questions. About half of the messages are from folks lamenting the sudden and alarming drop in numbers of birds visiting their feeders. The others are overjoyed with the arrival of some striking feeder birds that many have never seen before.

Last Saturday I participated in the Charlotte Spring Bird Count, a census of the breeding birds and migrants in our area that day. During the course of the day I was able to observe several instances of nesting behaviors from several different species.

I spent last Saturday morning walking through Dilworth’s Latta Park in search of spring migrants. The date was too early to hope for the trees to be full of neotropicals passing through, but a modest variety could be hoped for nonetheless.

I always feel like spring is here to stay once the white-eyed vireos arrive. I have been hearing lots of them lately. These small birds are among the earliest of the returning nesting birds.

I made a short chase to McAlpine Creek Park in east Charlotte last Tuesday evening to find a pair of horned grebes that had been reported the previous day. I thought it would be a long shot for the birds to still be present.

Birders often have to look for structural differences among birds to clinch the identification when plumages give little evidence. I was reminded of this earlier this week when I found some scaup on the lake at Colonel Francis Beatty Park, located just outside Interstate 485 in Matthews.

In response to last week’s column, I received several suggestions on how to discourage grackles from raiding feeders. Several readers suggested substituting safflower seed for sunflower seed. Apparently grackles do not like it at all.

Grackles are quite ravenous, enjoying sunflower seeds and especially suet dough. A group of hungry grackles can make short work of a suet cake. This is frustrating for backyard birds and birders alike.

The migratory movement of birds will increase steadily in our area until it peaks around the first of May, and then quickly diminish about three weeks later.