Bird Songs Workshop, Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary 

and Blue Ridge, Asheville, NC

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

It was another wonderful spring morning here in Asheville with clear blue skies and a cool wind. We all gathered at Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary, and despite the traffic heading down Merrimon Avenue, we managed to pick out a pretty good number of singing birds. I also had the group blindfolded, so as to avoid any visual clues that they might use! We heard House Wrens singing their bubbling songs, American Robins warbling away and the lisping and emphatic songs of American Redstart and Yellow Warbler. Eastern Kingbirds gave their "electricity" style fizzing and a walk down to the other end of the lake produced both Baltimore and Orchard Orioles and great views of a singing Warbling Vireo. Then it was off to the house for lunch and some classroom work with the help of some tapes and CD's - always very useful for finding good bird songs to talk about. A brief excursion up to Craven Gap after lunch was pretty quiet, although Hooded and Cerulean Warblers were still singing and a Scarlet Tanager sang its raspy song from the treetops. Now if we could all get the Song Sparrow completely memorized!