As I write this, the 109th annual Christmas Bird Count will be starting in roughly 4 hours, 41 minutes, and 19 seconds.  Not that I'm counting down the minutes, or anything like that. 

Say you’re sitting in your living room and a friend calls to tell you that there’s a big parade coming down your street. You would at least go to the window to look out, right? Well—I’m your friend, and I’m calling to let you know that the parade is out there. It’s outside your window right now.

In the March-April 2008 issue of Audubon, Jane Braxton Little profiled Malkolm Boothroyd and his parents, Ken Madsen and Wendy Boothroyd, and their "Bird Year" project. The trio left their home in Whitehorse, Yukon, on the summer solstice (June 21, 2007), heading south on a year-long, fossil-fuel-free pursuit of birds. Since then they have biked south through California, east across Arizona and Texas to Florida, then back along the Gulf Coast to the upper Texas Coast by late April.

All across the northeastern and central U.S., an invasion is under way. This invasion has gone unremarked by the traditional press, but those who pay attention to the real world have noted a huge invasion of tiny birds. Hordes of Red-breasted Nuthatches are creeping southward, possibly pausing in a back yard near you.

Along the south shore of Lake Erie, near my home in northwestern Ohio, the fall migration of warblers has been well under way for the last month.  Most of these tiny insect-eaters migrate south early in fall; by the time fall foliage colors are at their peak, most of the warblers are long gone to the south.

Kim and I have just arrived at the Midwest Birding Symposium, being held this year at Moline, Illinois, on the Mississippi River.  This particular symposium has been held every other year since 1989, moving to various cities around the Midwest.