Trailblazers BSES Birding Club, Spring 2025
- Brian Quindlen
- Jul 2
- 3 min read
The spring session of Trailblazers BSES Birding Club marked the end of our 12th club season! This particular session featured a healthy dose of birding, but precipitation caused a change of plans during two our meetings. We were still treated to a lot of exciting birds! We also had a ton of fun learning and playing together.
We kicked off our first meeting of the spring with a bird walk on the BSES Nature Trail. Right away, we started off with some great activity! It began at the trail entrance with some crunching in the leaves. Ethan quickly spotted a Hermit Thrush, one of our wintering species that has yet to depart in migration towards northern breeding grounds. As we were looking at the Hermit Thrush, we spotted another drab brown bird camouflaged in the trees: an Ovenbird! A member of the warbler family, the Ovenbird has just arrived to our region in migration. They are a bird more often heard than seen in our local forests. This individual perched and preened to give the whole group great views!
Later in the walk, we ran into a group of Yellow-rumped Warblers, another migratory species that only visits our area during migration in spring. We even had an early Red-eyed Vireo; “early” meaning this particular individual had arrived to our area earlier than expected in migration. On behalf of the group, Ethan did his due diligence to ensure this early vireo was a Red-eyed and not something more rare! He was able to snap great photos and a video to confirm:
The second session of the club was the BSES Nature Trail Cleanup! This session, we put down the binoculars and picked up our tools to help beautify our nature trail for both people and animals alike. The big project of the cleanup was creating a path in our pipeline area on the nature trail. In fall 2023, the Trailblazers Buddies Club planted this pipeline area with wildflowers. We lined the trail with logs to keep people on the path, encourage wildflower growth, and protect valuable habitat from being trampled by people!
Our third session took us on a tour of our bluebird boxes around our school campus! We have six bluebird boxes stationed around our school. As a group, we surveyed each box to see if they were being occupied or if we needed to clean them out. In one box, we had a family of Eastern Bluebirds! In another box, we had Tree Swallow eggs. In the rest of the boxes, we either had House Sparrow or House Wren nests that we had to remove. We even brought a step ladder for students to peek into the boxes as we inspected them!
Our fourth session was met with significant precipitation! We decided to keep our binoculars and scopes inside as we paid a visit to the STEAM Room to do some bird feeder watching. This activity gave us great views to help students review our common backyard birds! We were able to study the difference between House Finch and House Sparrow. We also had a pair of Northern Mockingbirds chasing each other around. We even had an Eastern Bluebird drop in for a bite of suet!
Our fifth and final session was met yet again with significant rain (that lasted throughout much of the week!) The students were itching to burn off some energy, so we broke out a Trailblazers favorite: the Migration Game! We went to the gym and played a game that models the challenges and hazards of a bird’s migratory journey.
After our afternoon of fun, we wrapped up our spring session with a thank you to James, our long-time Garnet Valley High School guide who was graduating the next week! James has volunteered his time to help with Trailblazers for the last few years, and prior to that, he was a participant in the club. It’s rare to have a student so dedicated to helping others, and the students showed their appreciation with cards and thank you messages for his years of service. Thank you James - We will miss you, but I know you will take what you’ve learned from Trailblazers to help others on their own journeys one day!
All told, we observed 31 species of birds during the spring session! Not our birdiest session, but we expected that with all the rain we had in May. We still had some great views of some noteworthy birds though! For more on the birds we observed, check out the eBird Trip Report for the session.
Thank you again to James and also to Ethan, both of whom are our GVHS guides, for their help with the club. Also, thank you to Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Papson, our Principal and Assistant Principal of BSES, for their support both the club and our nature trail. Finally, thank you to BSES families for their continued support of Trailblazers!
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