If you're in a place like this, just talk to all the birders that are studying weather maps and radar. If you go and stay on the upper Texas coast for a week in spring, there's an excellent chance you'll see a fallout. There are several places where a fallout may happen three to five times in the course of the spring: the upper Texas coast, various places along the Gulf Coast, and around the great lakes like at Point Pelee in Ontario, and at McGee Marsh in Ohio.

One tree might have a dozen Blackburnian warblers. When the conditions are right, it can be like the cliché about warblers dripping out of the trees in their bright spring plumage. Seeing a 'fallout' of spring migrants is a pretty amazing thing. It's a lot more fun when you imitate the owls yourself (rather than playing a tape of their calls).ģ. In the Southwest, in some of the canyons in Arizona, with a lot of hard work and luck you might see six or seven kinds of owls in a night. But there's something magical about wandering the woods, especially on a calm, warm night in spring when the owls gradually approach and hoot back to you. You have to get past the obstacle that it isn't always easy and you may not see much of anything. Everyone should at some point have a really good owling experience. It's still cold in mid-March, but it's really worth the effort to go there.Ģ. You can easily go out and see half a million cranes along the river, and they are big and loud. One of the great North American spectacles is in mid-March when the Sandhill Cranes are concentrating on the Platte River in Nebraska during their northward migration. The following, taken from an interview, is in his words:ġ. We asked this veritable birding icon to share his picks for the top 10 experiences (in no particular order) that every American birdwatcher should seek at least once in his or her life. If you enjoy it a lot, you are a great birder!' he has written. 'Birdwatching is something that we do for enjoyment, so if you enjoy it, you are already a good birder. Kaufman loves to encourage people to explore nature, and his approach is a democratic one.

His other books include the newly updated Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America and the groundbreaking, first-ever Spanish-language field guide to North America's birds: Guía de campo Kaufman a las aves de norteamerica. He traveled 80,000 miles and later wrote about his adventures in the witty memoir Kingbird Highway: The Story of a Natural Obsession That Got a Little Out of Hand. In 1973, Kenn Kaufman dropped out of high school to hitchhike across North America and see as many birds as possible in one year.

Kingbird highway by kenn kaufman