April 12, 2026

Where: Blackwater NWR, Cambridge, MD

When: 6:15am - 1:20pm

Bird Species: osprey, common grackle, red-winged blackbird, eastern bluebird, northern mockingbird, chipping sparrow, tree swallow, greater yellowlegs, common yellowthroat, American robin, king rail, great egret, northern flicker, brown-headed cowbird, Carolina chickadee, brown thrasher, great blue heron, bald eagle, northern cardinal, wild turkey, mourning dove, white-throated sparrow, trumpeter swan, mallard, killdeer

Things I Thought About:

• I spent the night at an $82 dollar motel that offered a Hunter’s Special, a $10 rebate back to your card for an early checkout. I cannot imagine a single person ever failing to qualify for the Hunter's Special. Once one room checks out at 4:30am, the night is over at this motel.
• I still managed to miss a proper sunrise; I must remember that if the weather app has sunrise at 6:37am it has been light enough to read by since 5:20 or so.
• The very first thing I see today is an osprey posted up a little low in a tree, eating a big fish. I manage to get shockingly close.

• The first turn on the Wildlife Drive is where you must decide if you are content to go in one direction for the rest of the loop, and it comes less than a mile into the four-mile loop. This would not be so annoyingly early if the only bathroom wasn’t at the entrance. I usually pull off right before this turn and do a fair amount of walking, up to the observation deck, down to the first blind. I am late for waterfowl; there is very little to observe at the observation point, but it a truly beautiful breezy Sunday morning.
• Is this the same shorebird as yesterday? Or even the same kind of shorebird as yesterday? If only there were literally any way to tell.

• A passing car rolls down the window as it passes, and the driver asks me my least favorite question: “Anything interesting up that way?” The long answer is “That depends on how interested you are. There’s a yellowlegs by himself in a pond, and a little flock of tree swallows that I tried in vain to get a decent photo of, and I saw my first common yellowthroat of the year.”

• The short, and perhaps more universally accurate answer is, “no.” At least, none of that is going to be interesting to the kind of person who would trust a stranger’s determination of what is and is not interesting.
• The moment I click the shutter on the king rail, I do a legit "Rocky at the top of the steps" jump, if it took Rocky’s triceps several moments to stop flapping around after. That was just for me! No one else is here at the right place yet, but they are all on their way, because the sound of a king rail cuts through the air like a blunt sword, and is absolutely incredible.
• The bugs are not so bad today because it’s so windy. I already have an affinity for a strong wind that borders on the sexual, and now it is saving me from misery and malaria.
• I wasn’t sure what bird I was hearing yesterday and today. Turns out it's the chipping sparrow, a variety I’ve only seen once or twice, and never in my neighborhood. It has been constant background noise here, and it's almost every small bird I see this morning. It sounds like the brrrrrr of a ringing phone right after they stopped being rotary but way before they were cordless, and pitched up about a tone and a half.

• Sometimes people ask how I can pick out one call from another, but it’s just like anything else, the more you do it the easier it gets. Of course I don’t recognize every different sparrow call, but I recognize which bird’s call it isn’t, if you get me. I believe this is also how doctors diagnose rare diseases. Also, Sherlock Holmes.
• It is very annoying how engaging your core really does take the strain off your low back and hips. Bodies are such a fucking racket. How dare everything the fit people say about them turn out to be true.
• An osprey was crying out on her platform, and another osprey brought her a fish. What an amazing couple, getting ready to nest together.

•  No warblers today except the yellowthroat, but I did see a brown thrasher, which is another one of those where I was able to instantly identify it in flight, mostly because it wasn’t a cardinal or anybody else.
• A very serious photographer has stopped to ask me what I am looking for, to which I honestly reply, "For whatever is out there, man." Very serene, very Matt McConaughey. With the exception of moments like hearing that king rail and then desperately, desperately wanting it, I think I do manage an attitude to birding, and honestly, to a lot of other things, of “you get what you get, and you don’t get upset.”
• Am I beginning to feel that in contexts other than birding, this is more a failure of character and ambition than of an open-hearted acceptance of come-what-may? That is certainly a thought for another day, when it is not quite so beautiful out, and on which I didn’t see a king rail.
• Oh! Remember yesterday when I said "maybe tomorrow" for the killdeer? This one was on the visitor center lawn when I stopped to pee on my way out.

BOTD: King rail. Still rather early, 7:05 or so, I park my car at that first turn, and I hear a king rail. No mistaking it. I have read the analytics for this blog, and I know that y'all don't click the links, but I really encourage it this time so you know that it is a singular sound, and much more percussive, even explosive, than you would think. I have heard it three times in this refuge over three visits in the past two years, and the third time, out of sheer frustration, I went ahead and listed him, because it was, for sure, a positive ID, despite me not catching a glimpse of one.

The king rail is a very rare bird to see! Not just for me, for everyone. Their preferred habitat is very dense marsh vegetation, and that's all there is here. I don't even see a ripple in the reeds, and it doesn't even sound close. I give up after a bit and take the stroll up to the observation deck and watch the swallows for a while. When I come back down to the car, I hear it again, but on the other side of the road, and close.

I casually throw around the phrase "finding a bird," on the blog, like "I hear a wren and then I find it," but that is child's play. This guy is hard to find, famously. I have no idea what I'm looking for here. I know what it looks like from photos, but one thing that photos in a marsh can't give you is scale. I don't know if it's the size of a duck or the size of goose or the size of an egret. I don't know if he's quick or steady or anything at all, except that sound, which is VERY loud. We are also in an area of the wildlife drive where there is no shoulder or path at all; if you step too far off the asphalt, you are in the drink. He's either going to step out into an open sightline, or he won't. There's not too much I can do to make this happen, except follow the noise, which is moving at a quick march along the curve of the road, and hope he takes a route across the matted down reeds instead of the tall ones to get to the other side.

And he does. I couldn't believe it. This is where I did my little Rocky jump up the air and managed a few pictures too. He is bigger than a duck, maybe about the size of a Canada goose. His plumage is a really nice brown with some fun white and brown patchwork, and he has a little white duck butt. What floored me is the way his mouth moved to produce that staccato "kek kek kek kek kekkekkekkek" call, opening and closing like a cartoon alligator eating. Unreal, and I was the only one there for this, the only time when he was that exposed. Humbling, a gift.

Then he got back into the reeds, but on the greener, wetter side, and a human couple who had parked and gotten out of their car up the road a bit now joins me, holding their phone open to Merlin, asking is that it and I've never heard any bird like that and did you see it? It is a uniquely gratifying experience to be able to say, "See where that little stand of marsh grass is moving out there?" and hear them catch their breath when they spot him. It is a uniquely gratifying experience to telepathically tell a bird, "Please, please, I need you to take just one more step out of the reeds before you call again," and laugh out loud with delight when he does.

That sound is so incredible paired with the movement of the beak. For about 10 minutes there are eight of us lining the curve in the road, tickled pink. Unsurprisingly, it's a lifer for six of us. Seven, if you include me, which you probably should.

Also incredible: to drive 105 miles to bird and the biggest shithead there is still the tufted titmouse.