One of the stranger things I learned back 30-some years ago in forestry school was that our woods are visited every year around this time by “neotropical migrants”. Our wildlife biology professor was referring to the many birds of a feather who flock together here during warmers times, only to head south in the winter – and who can blame them? The true neotropicals typically overwinter in Central America, though other migrants make due in places like the Carolinas. I just found it fascinating – and still hard to believe – that many of the beautiful birds who appear in our woods this time of the year are just seasonal residents. I remember this lesson every time I see a Scarlet Tanager or Indigo Bunting in the woods – two of my favorites who are hard to miss! If you’d like to see where these and hundreds of other birds make their annual rounds, check out the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s newly released bird migration maps: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/03/ornithology-lab-releases-high-resolution-migration-maps
Brett Chedzoy
Senior Resource Educator in Agriculture and Natural Resources
bjc226@cornell.edu
