I was driving past a park about half an hour before sunrise and decided that my destination was just going to have to wait. I was stopping for a quick walk first. Two and a half hours later ...

The walk started when the sun was still lower than the distant hills to the east. It was light enough to see where I was going, however, and the birds were up and at ’em too. Boy were they ever.

Birds are much more quiet in the fall than in the spring and summer. On this surprisingly mild morning, song sparrows, blue jays, crows, Carolina wrens and black-capped chickadees made their presence known vocally before I even walked across the parking lot. The bird-sound recognition app showed that a blue-headed vireo was in the mix as well, but I didn’t want to officially count that one until I saw it.

As I have written before, I really like the Merlin app for its sound ID function, but it’s not perfect. I was going to submit an eBird report and didn’t want to assume a blue-headed vireo was there just because the app said so.

Later in the walk, I heard a bird that sounded vaguely familiar but could not place it. Merlin identified it as a white-breasted nuthatch. It was a nasal call, but it didn’t sound quite like a nuthatch to me. For the time being, I went with it anyway. When I approached the source of the call, I discovered it was a blue jay as it remained perched in a tree. Blue jays have myriad calls and sounds and this was one I don’t hear too often. It was a reminder to not always trust what the sound ID comes up with.

The early success of the walk invigorated me, and I ended up walking nearly 4 miles through the woods. There were slow stretches of the walk when I didn’t see or hear birds, but there were also several hot spots where great numbers of birds were found.

One such hot spot was a swampy area near a small pond. A winter wren, swamp sparrow, ruby-crowned kinglet and small flock of eastern bluebirds were the highlights. I was drawn away from the swamp by a cacophony I heard in the nearby woods. As I got closer, I realized the noise was the collective calls of dozens and dozens of American robins.

At this point, it was still only a little after 8 o’clock and the birds were still active and noisy. Along the field, I saw more bluebirds and a few yellow-rumped and palm warblers.

Alas, my destination awaited, and I had to head back to the truck. I had found over 30 different species of birds on the early morning walk. Afternoon walks at the same park only days prior yielded only 23 or 24 species.

About 20 yards away from the parking lot, something leaped up onto a branch from the thick brush below. Through my binoculars, I could tell it was a blue-headed vireo. Confirmation at last. Merlin was right this time.