As May comes to a close and June arrives, we are experiencing the end to the spring bird migration. As I type, since March 1st approximately 53,745,000 individual birds have flown over Dawson County. From March 1st to April 1st, about 3,000,000 crossed over us and then by May 1st the totals jumped to 14 million! However, May is the migration peak and 40 million flew over in just two weeks!

Usually by mid-May the number of birds levels off and we can expect maybe three to four million more migrants to cross our County before the end of the season.

This year things started to level off on May 13th with the peak single day total of 661,000 birds flying over the night of May 9th.

One of the species that started to arrive during the past few weeks are the Baltimore orioles. I started to hear them calling and I put out my oriole feeder. They are eating me out of house and home!

I read a few years ago that the only kind of grape jelly the Baltimore orioles would eat is Welch’s Concord Grape Jelly. I told Cindy to get me some. She brought home the “store brand”. I said, “No, they only eat Welch’s!” She said, “They’re birds they won’t know the difference.”

Well, I’m a scientist so to speak, so I went and got a jar of Welch’s Concord Grape Jelly. My oriole feeder has two small jars. I put the Welch’s in one jar and the “store brand” in the other and set them out. The store brand was gone before any of the Welch’s was touched! Apparently the birds DID know the difference and they preferred the “store brand!” Out of the mouths of babes and the wisdom of wives!

As of this writing I have two pair of orioles in the yard, one pair to the north and one pair to the south. They are in strong competition for the yard and each morning I can go out and there is constant back-and-forth calling as each male tries to establish and defend his territory.

Orioles are members of the family Icteridae, which include the meadowlarks, various blackbirds, the cowbirds, and grackles. I’ve been seeing and hearing all of those for over a month now, but the orioles are one of the last migrants each spring and one of the first to head back south in mid-summer. The other Icterids feed on insects and the orioles, while they will eat insects, are basically nectar feeders and they don’t start to arrive until the plants are flowering out.

Some other birds that arrived this month are the kingbirds, both the western and eastern, the orchard oriole and the brown thrasher. I haven’t’ seen any of those just yet but I’m sure the kingbirds will be flycatching around my mower as I mow Vicky’s yard out north. About that same time, the thrasher that nests in her lilac bushes will be showing up. The orchard orioles usually nest in small colonies and they are far more common along the river, not so much here in town or at Vicky’s.

This is the best time of year to see birds. Not only are the birds that nest here showing up and making a lot of noise as they develop and defend their territories, the northern migrant birds that are on their way further north are stopping by for a day or two to wait out the weather, or to just rest. Yep, it is an active time for birds. Get out and enjoy them!