Prairie Warbler Bell Cedar

The early morning found me hiking down a wooded pathway to Avalonia's Bell Cedar Swamp refuge in search of, well, primarily I was there to check on the progress of the Mountain Laurel blossoms, but any agenda is entirely flexible. It's probably more fair to say that while I was planning to search for Kalmia latifolia flowers, I would certainly look at anything else en route. So it was that best intentions were derailed by a snatch of formerly prevalent warbler song: a buzzy, ascending trill. Years ago, when I was a distance runner—this was a time when I had good knees—I would hear Prairies all the time calling from the sides of the road. Then, the woods got thicker and the Prairies departed for more open habitats. Bell Cedar, with its fairly dense and mature forests, lacked these pretty warblers, but a couple of years ago, the woods were cut down in places to encourage habitation by New England Cottontail rabbits. Lots of birds—the ones that depend on young forests—also benefit from the bunny cuts. We don't yet have New Englands at Bell Cedar, but we now definitely have Prairie Warblers. These, incidentally, made up for the fact that we also, this year, don't have particularly good Laurels. You can't have everything.