Spring Birds Arrive in the Eastern Forest

BirdNote^®

Spring Birds Arrive in the Eastern Forest

Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote.
[Carolina Wren singing]
Morning dew sparkles on the leaves of an Eastern hardwood forest. It’s May, and the chorus of spring bird song is nearing its peak. [Carolina Wren featured, Eastern Wood-Pewee in background]
The rich notes of a Carolina Wren carry through the understory.  A year-round resident, it’s been singing since the end of winter. [Carolina Wren]
A Chestnut-sided Warbler joins in [Chestnut-sided Warbler song]. It has returned from winter in Costa Rica, to the same patch of woods in which it nested last year. [Scarlet Tanager song]
Now we hear a Scarlet Tanager. [Scarlet Tanager song] This striking long- distance migrant completed its journey from Bolivia in early May.
[Ovenbird song]…
… there are the resounding notes of an Ovenbird, letting us know it has returned safely from Belize, after a long flight across the Gulf of Mexico. [Ovenbird song]
 And the whistled notes of an Eastern Wood-Pewee are unmistakable. [Eastern Wood-Pewee song] How different these woods must look to the pewee, after a winter in the lowland forest of Peru. [Eastern Wood-Pewee song]
By late May, the last of the migrants has arrived from the tropics. All have journeyed across the continents bringing us the gift of their songs.  [Reprise of songs]
I’m Mary McCann.
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Sounds of the birds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Song of the Eastern Wood-Pewee recorded by G.A.Keller; Scarlet Tanager by G.A.Keller: Ovenbird by R.C. Stein; Carolina Wren by T.A. Parker III; Chestnut-sided Warbler W.W.H. Gunn.  Ambient drawn from Ovenbird track and from boreal forest Maine, G.F. Budney.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2013 Tune In to Nature.org          May 2013/2021     Narrator: Mary McCann

ID# SotB-easternforest-01-2011-05-11