Trailblazers BSES Birding Club, Winter 2026
- Apr 20
- 3 min read
Even though we had one of the harshest winters in recent history, we still had a ton of birding fun in our winter session of Trailblazers BSES Birding Club! Two snowstorms covered our beloved trail in about a foot of snow, and below-freezing temperatures turned that snow into ice and kept it on the trail for much of the season. Thankfully, we started the club session later than we usually do in the season so by the end of our time together, the snow had melted enough that we could head out onto the trail! Even still, we made sure to make time to enjoy the snow when we could!
Our first day of the session took us out for some blacktop-only birding since the trail was too icy to traverse. This first day was marked with two large groups of passing birds: Approximately 110 Fish Crows and 340 Common Grackles! Both flocks of birds were easy for all to see as they passed by our campus. We also saw a male Sharp-shinned Hawk, which is only the second-ever observation of this species for the BSES Nature Trail in the month of February! We also had great looks of songbirds such as American Robin and Dark-eyed Junco.
Our second day together took us out on yet another blacktop-only excursion since the trail was still frozen over with ice! This was another day that featured great looks at songbirds. We also had a nice view of a White-tailed Deer just off the parking lot. Most exciting though was a flyover trio of American Herring Gulls; birds that were later positively identified by photographs as they passed overhead. This observation of American Herring Gull represents only the third-ever record of the species at BSES; oddly enough, the other two previous records of American Herring Gull are also from the month of February (one individual from February 12th, 2013 and a group of six birds from February 23rd, 2022.) An excellent gull identification by GVHS Birding Club President Ethan Kang!
Our third day was after a fresh snow fall, so we put down the binoculars and donned our snow gear to enjoy the fresh powder on the BSES Nature Trail! Even though birding was not our primary purpose, we did see a Red-tailed Hawk perched in the meadow. The students had a blast building snow sculptures together!
Our fourth session was yet another blacktop-only bird walk; this time due to wet conditions making the trail too muddy! We started in the classroom with a presentation from GVHS Birding Club President Ethan Kang, who taught the students about the wintering species of birds found in our area. After that, we went outside to look for what we learned about! Even though we were banished yet again to the blacktop, we still had great looks at Canada Geese, American Robins, and even Red-winged Blackbird.
Our fifth and final afternoon together for the winter session brought weather that made up for the bitter ice and cold that marked most of this session; we had weather that made us thing spring! Therefore we rushed ourselves out to hike the BSES Nature Trail in its entirety. Spring was in full swing as we were treated to phenomenal looks of American Robins galore, Song Sparrow, American Goldfinch, and Red-bellied Woodpecker. It was awesome to spend our last day of the winter session together birding in short sleeves!
Overall, we ended our winter session with a total of 34 different species of birds! To see more about what birds we observed, check out our eBird Trip Report for the session. Thank you to Ethan and Ryan, our GVHS Trailblazers Guides, for helping out with club this session. Also, thank you to Trailblazers families for your continued support of environmental education here in GV! We are looking forward to a birdy spring session (and three exciting weeks of summer camp!)
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