Virginia Way

2024 is almost over. On to my last post of this calendar year and then on to 2025. Not that I'm wishing away my life or anything...

I know I said this earlier this month when I wrote about finding art in the New York City subway but I have to say (again) that I don't want another travel year like 2024 any time soon. Taking just two week-or-more trips with a lot of small business trips and a (very) few weekend getaways just ain't going to cut it from a travel perspective for me. Too much time on the road for too little sustained really-being-on-vacation time. Never again. 2025 will be much different, I'm sure. Particularly because we have three one week trips already booked and are working on a fourth.

One of the effects of so much work travel punctuated by so few real getaways this year was me creating little pockets of down time and exploration when I was really doing something different in an effort to replace lost real travel. In some cases, those eventually added up to real connected experiences. On the road for work, that meant finding interesting restaurants or exploring New York's nighttime attractions or ultimately venturing underground for a world-class art viewing experience one or two pieces at a time. When I was at home, that meant heading out to a series of spots around Northern Virginia or maybe as far south as Richmond to go indulge my new favorite at-home hobby of birdwatching.

Now, before 2020, I never would have thought of (1) considering anywhere I could day trip to as an honest to God vacation (and therefore worthy of this blog) and (2) exploring birdwatching beyond traveling halfway around the world. I know, that last one sounded strange. This year, those two things formed an important part of my travel narrative and one thing allowed that to happen: COVID-19.

Red-shouldered hawk, Three Lakes Park, Richmond. November 2024.

That's right: the global COVID pandemic that hit in 2020 and lasted realistically and dangerously at least until late 2021 changed my attitude both towards local travel and local birdwatching. 

On the travel side of things, it got me looking more closer at home for places to explore where I could realistically drive pretty easily for a few days or a whole week. The fact that I couldn't very safely get on a plane within the United States or get on a plane at all and come back from overseas travel without a negative COVID test (if I could even enter another country at all) forced me to look at the thing in my driveway or garage that usually was only used on travel to get me to the airport. 

That year, I made all sorts of local travel plans and took a couple of them, including a trip to Vermont in August of 2020 followed up by long weekends to Bethlehem, PA and Richmond, VA in the few months after that. Bethlehem? Richmond? Are you kidding me? I traded Costa Rica, Uganda, the Napa Valley and New Mexico in 2020 for suburban Philly and the former capital of the Confederacy? Are you kidding me? For real?

Yes. For real.

But you know what? It worked. It changed my attitude about value in places more locally. It removed my snobbery around having to get on a plane or a train to take a "real" vacation or getaway. There is a ton to do that's interesting without having to travel thousands of miles. Did it make me prefer southeastern Pennsylvania to sub-Saharan Africa? Not at all. But it's a heck of a lot easier to get to Bethlehem than Johannesburg. Places within driving distance can provide meaningful travel experiences. Shocker!!

Pileated woodpecker (with chick), Huntley Meadows Park, Alexandria. June 2024.

So let's talk how COVID changed how I look at birds, shall we? I wrote earlier that before 2020, we'd happily go birdwatching in just about any place that we could go on a plane...but...not here at home. Why is that? Well, honestly, because it was pretty easy to see birds that are different and usually way, way more exotic while out of town than we could see at home. Parrots in New Zealand? We are in! Bee-eaters and fish eagles in Africa? Oh yes!! But birds at home...meh! What's interesting about that?

In early 2020, I had never worked a full day at home in my life. In March that year I started doing it full time. And in between things like conference calls and checking fee proposals and following up on whatever I had asked people to do, I looked out the window occasionally. Not to deliberately see birds, because I had even thought about it, I figured there would be some sparrows, starlings, crows, robins and the occasional cardinal and that would be it. Ho-hum! But when I looked out, I did see birds. And they weren't all boring. What was that little brown bird making all that noise? Why does that sparrow-looking bird have a red head? And is that a woodpecker? And a different kind of woodpecker? All this in our back yard?

I didn't really need to go to the other side of the world to see some birds that were interesting. We have some right here at home. I started noticing.

White-breasted nuthatch, Fort C.F. Smith Park, Arlington. October 2024.

So how did we put all that change in attitude into action? Well, this year, it got us enjoying day trips or quick overnight or weekend trips to various parks within Virginia to build a continuous experience over pretty much every month of the year and mostly multiple times per month. And that's important for birdwatching in any one spot anywhere on the globe, because this is very much a seasonal experience. And by that, I mean the experience varies with the season. When we venture away from home, we get whatever birds might happen to be there whenever we happen to be traveling. Not so when we decide to do this at home. We can get continuity over the entire 12 months.

It also chilled us out a lot from the weekly rat race. It's definitely something we are going to continue to do and we are likely to continue to travel to different places within Virginia to do it. I'm also not likely to blog about this again. Not here in VA. This is my shot at this experience.

Great blue heron, Theodore Roosevelt Island, Arlington. October 2024.

This post is really not about searching for birds in Virginia, by the way. It's really about searching for birds around Washington, DC and Richmond. Not anywhere near even the whole state, you say? That's right. There's a lot more to explore still. And we will. We just didn't get there quite this year.

So what's so great about birding in two tiny little areas of Virginia? How about cedar waxwings in January? How about hawks pretty much everywhere we go? How about one of the largest populations of bald eagles in the world? How about all sorts of birds stopping to feed along annual migration routes? How about shorebirds and river birds? How about multiple species of owls and woodpeckers? 

This is definitely a hobby that takes patience and research and study and moving around to where you might have the best shot at seeing what you want and love to see. That last piece is where travel comes in. Because as thrilled we were at seeing Carolina wrens and house finches and downy woodpeckers and even a yellow-bellied sapsucker one time in our tiny little plot of fenced land out in back of our townhouse, we can't see all of that other stuff without traveling. At least a few miles anyway. And the more we move to different places, the greater our experience.

Great horned owl, Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, Alexandria. February 2024.

Near our home in Arlington, we spend our birdwatching time mostly in four spots: Theodore Roosevelt Island off the George Washington Parkway in Arlington; Fort C.F. Smith Park off of Lorcum Lane in Arlington; Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve in Alexandria; and Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria. We've tried other places locally, including Roaches Run Waterfowl Sanctuary, Great Falls Park, Monticello Park and Occoquan Wildlife Refuge but for proximity and birdlife, we like the first four the best.

So why these four? We can reliably see herons and ducks at Theodore Roosevelt and in the summer there's the odd greater egret and even an indigo bunting or two. At Dyke Marsh, there's a pair of nesting bald eagles there year round and I think we've seen at least one on every trip we've made there. C.F. Smith is about a mile from our house and so it's particularly my fallback if I want to go for a wander; I'm not likely to see something incredible there but there are a ton of (non-pileated) woodpeckers and a good variety of thrushes in the woods. Huntley Meadows is by far the best of the four. There's everything in that park. It's also the furthest away but that place is fantastic every time we've been.

And I do mean fantastic. And if I'm being totally honest, we saw a pileated woodpecker at C.F. Smith one time.

For the most part, our experiences in these parks are mostly the same thing over and over again. We keep adding species to our list (so I guess that's not really the same...) and we keep taking pictures of the same birds over and over again. But here's the thing about this hobby: the perfect picture is never going to exist. So as many cardinals and nuthatches and yellow-throated sparrows we have seen, we are likely to keep chasing the perfect picture of these birds for a long, long time. And I'll bet we've seen easily 100 species of birds in our trips in Virginia alone. And some (hi, kinglets) will not sit still and are about impossible to get any sort of reasonable picture of. The perfect picture is going to take a while with some species.

Then in late summer of 2023 (I know, it's not this year), something happened that changed a lot for us. I was up at C.F. Smith trying to see what I could find and I saw some small bird flitting around a tree at the southwest side of the property where the foliage is a little more dense. Looked like a sparrow but maybe smaller and it would not stay in one place. I managed to get a pic or two: yellow-rumped warbler. 

Say what? What the heck is a warbler?

Yellow-rumped warbler, Three Lakes Park, Richmond. November 2024.

Warblers are like the Easter eggs of birdwatching in Northern Virginia. Is seeing kingfishers or killdeers or ospreys or hawks or red-winged blackbirds in their native environments fun? Sure it is and they are obvious and out in the open and doing stuff worth watching and worth photographing. But in between all those birds in trees and on grass and water and in reeds and wherever else you can find things with wings, warblers lurk. Not out in the open. Not standing still. Difficult to find.

Why are warblers awesome? Because they generally only show up around our house in NoVA during migration season and they are hard to spot but when you see them, they are these exquisite little frenetic birds that are brightly and colorfully patterned and there are so many different kinds. Yellow-rumped. Yellow-throated. Pine. Blackburnian. Prothonotary. Palm. Cerulean. Hooded. Black-throated. Black-throated gray. Black-throated green. Black and white. American redstart. Kentucky. Nashville. I could go on and on and on here.

Finding one of these birds in a spot near to our own backyard was special. Then we took a weekend trip down to Dutch Gap Conservation Area near Richmond on our anniversary weekend (yes, we went to Richmond for our anniversary) in late April and found a number of other species of these little jeweled birds. This is the stuff!!! I thought it was exciting seeing a bald eagle. Warblers...I'm just saying...

Yellow-throated warbler (top) and prothonotary warbler (bottom), Dutch Gap Conservation Area, near Richmond. April 2024.

If birdwatching is really pretty satisfying and interesting near where we live, it is way more so near our state capital. I often think about Richmond being a big city, but it's not at all. The population of Richmond proper is about the same as the population of Arlington, which is all of 25.8 square miles (Richmond is about 2.5 times that size). And around Richmond, it's just rural. Which means lots of parks. And when that much open area is combined with the mighty James River flowing through town, that means birds aplenty.

This year we went down to Richmond on two separate long weekend trips to go birdwatching in the morning (there's other stuff to do in the afternoon when the birds are done being active). I expect next year, we'll probably do the same thing. 

House wren, Fort C.F. Smith Park, Arlington. July 2024.

Dutch Gap Conservation Area is a giant, 810 acres strong piece of land just down the James River to the south and east of Richmond. You could spend days exploring this place. We spent about five hours or so early in the morning until just about noonish. We weren't the only people. We ran into a number of other folks boating and fishing and yes...birdwatching. 

It was admittedly bigger than we possibly thought it could be. We figured we'd walk the loop trail that appeared to be a few miles long. We didn't get close. We can spend hours on the swamp trail at Theodore Roosevelt Island and that's less than two miles or maybe even a mile and a half long. We didn't stand a chance at Dutch Gap, particularly because birdwatching is not a speed hobby. 

We picked up some warbler sightings early in our time there and managed some waxwings and a woodpecker or two along with some distant ospreys. I'll remember this place for the warblers and the vast size of the place. Maybe there's a return trip but that place is daunting in its size.

We paired Dutch Gap in a weekend with Robious Landing Park on the west side of the city where we got more warbler sightings (although no great pictures) along with our most incredible owl sighting in our travels. The barred owl at the top of this post spent 20 or 30 minutes watching us and its two chicks that were exploring the forest. I'm sure it kept watching the chicks after we left. The way its head swiveled and its eyes followed our every movement was powerful. I have no doubt if we'd have made any move towards the two fluff balls under its watch that we'd have been divebombed and we would not have done well. Pretty cool watching something watching you that intently.

We also got a lot of value out of Three Lakes Park towards the north side of the city this fall. Some of these outdoor spaces that have been created around the city are just such great places to walk and see what you can find. When we visited in November the place was flush with ruby and golden-crowned kinglets and tufted titmice along with some cormorants and a spectacular look at a red-shouldered hawk. Probably the best viewing we've had of one of those birds. It helps when the birds are right on top of the swing set.

Greater yellowlegs, Huntley Meadows Park, Alexandria. September 2024.

There is no doubt we've just scratched the surface on birdwatching in and around Richmond, let alone in the rest of the state. There are so many great parks and open spaces to discover and so many birds out there on the "not seen" list. On the November trip to Richmond we stopped by the Potomac River in Westmoreland County to try to find some migrated loons but with no luck. And we've still got a ton of different warbler species to find.

I know I've already laid out why I've written this post as part of my travel journey in 2024. These weekend day trips and weekends away are not the best way to unwind and find some relief and wonder in this world. But for the time we are in these parks looking, we are generally relaxed and fascinated by what we find, even if we don't always see what we want in the way that we want it. I know I've written many a time on this blog that nature trips are a crap shoot and we've frequently been disappointed by what we have not found in parts around the globe. The great thing here about our birdwatching travels this year close to home is we are rarely disappointed. And if we are, there's always the next weekend or the weekend after that to have a do-over.

These next (almost) two paragraphs put a wrap on this post and for blogging in total for calendar year 2024. I am confident there are many more treks into nature to find birds, both in our home state and as far away as other continents. Of those three week-plus-long trips (with a fourth pending) that we have already planned in 2025, I'll be taking the big camera and doing some birdwatching on three of those four. But I'm also looking forward to our next trip to Richmond to uncover some new spot that we will fall in love with. And maybe one or two other places in Virginia. Who knows.

These last two posts this year have been different travel experiences than I've had in past years. But they are every bit a part of our 2024 travel experience as spending Lunar New Year in Singapore, completing our 50 U.S. states quest and roaming around the coast of Cornwall. I see a lot of this stuff in Virginia in our future. I just don't see me blogging about it. Happy new year! Bring on 2025.

Belted Kingfisher, Huntley Meadows Park, Alexandria. October 2024.

I'd be remiss if I didn't give some credit to some resources that have helped us a lot in our birdwatching this year. So here's a shoutout to a couple of organizations that have pointed us in the right direction a lot over the past year.

First, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources has an excellent website featuring a Virginia Bird & Wildlife page that will give you all sorts of options for finding birds all over the Commonwealth. We've used this to find parks and sites locally and when we've traveled within Virginia, both in Richmond and other spots.

Secondly, there's Merlin, the app produced by the Cornell University Ornithology Lab that will identify birds by sight and sound for you. I most always have the app on when we are walking and I'm checking it frequently. It's allowed us to find all sorts of cool birds when we've been traveling and we are very appreciative of the Lab for keeping this sort of resource up to date.

If you have any interest in traveling anywhere to see birds in Virginia, I'd recommend using those two resources to make your travels easier. Happy hunting!