May 27, what a day! First to visit a part of the Vineyard I hadn’t birded in, and next to be called to verify that there was an American white pelican sitting on a dock in Chilmark Pond! Pete Gilmore of Hopps Farm Road in West Tisbury, has birded with Seven Gates resident David Tobias off-Island.

The monitoring of Vineyard fish hawks, or ospreys, is an ongoing project. Although osprey comings and goings have been recorded since 1913 on-Island, the study of the osprey population did not start until the 1970s by Gus Ben David. Osprey nests had been documented in Lambert’s Cove, Chappaquiddick and on the Takemmy Trail (the road between West Tisbury and Edgartown) in the 1950s. Then came the 1960s and the uncontrolled use of the pesticide DDT. The Vineyard’s osprey population dropped to two or three pair.

It was early May and the migrating birds, Felix Neck Bird-a-thon and our garden were calling us home to the Vineyard. We thought we were headed home from Big Bend, Texas, however the bird buggy (and we) had a different idea. How could we not bird the famous Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park, the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge or South Padre Island while we were in West Texas?

We had left Arizona and were in a campsite at a campground near the Rio Grande River in Big Bend National Park, Tex. In preparation for our trek the following day, we played the recording of the colima warbler over and over again while preparing dinner. We knew we would only find this rare warbler if we heard it first.

The Cochise County of Arizona is a bird watcher’s dream. Located in the southeastern section of Arizona, it has a great mix of national parks, Forest Service property, state parks, Arizona Game and Fish property, BLM (Bureau of Land Management) holdings and the famous Nature Conservancy’s Ramsey Canyon property.

Three cheers for local knowledge! Although Arizona is a birder’s paradise, it is a challenge to find birds you want to see even if there is a guide to show you the way. So we rediscovered the importance of chatting with birders in the areas where we hoped to observe birds we had never seen before.