SCOTT SHALAWAY A birding obsession comes up empty

If you read this column regularly, you probably enjoy seeing birds in your backyard. You may not consider yourself a birder or even a birdwatcher, but you appreciate the sights and sounds wild birds provide. Though my dictionary doesn't distinguish between the two terms, I do. In my mind, a birdwatcher is more casual about the pastime and concentrates on the backyard.
A "birder" tends to be more obsessed. He devotes most of his spare time to watching birds and often plans vacations and even business trips around birding hot spots. And most birders keep a "life list" -- a list of all the species seen since the obsession began.
I consider myself both a birdwatcher and a birder. In my 20s and 30s I was more birder. I competed with friends on bird counts and "big days" (24-hour competitions to see who could record the most species). But raising a family changes one's priorities. Parents must also focus on the passions of their children and spouses. So my days of wild goose chases are few and far between.
But every now and then the obsession creeps back into my life. This is the tale of one such episode.
Warbler territory
During the last week of April, West Virginia hosted the first annual New River Neotropical Birding Festival, and I was an invited speaker. I jumped at the chance, because it would put me in Swainson's warbler country just as these elusive birds were returning to the northern limits of their breeding grounds.
Swainson's is the only eastern warbler I've never seen, so this was my big chance. Dave Pollard, the organizer of the Festival, promised to get me to Swainson's habitat, but he did his best to dampen my optimism about seeing the bird.
"I can almost guarantee you'll hear the bird, but it's tough to see," he warned. "It hides itself well in the dense rhododendron thickets."
"If I hear it," I replied, "I'll see it." More cocky words were never spoken.
At first light the day after my presentations, a group assembled at the Fern Creek parking area, not far from the New River Gorge Canyon Rim Visitor's Center. Swainson's had been heard there the day before.
As I drove to the meeting place, I listened to a recording of the Swainson's song -- a series of loud, slurred whistles with an emphatic ending.
Upon arriving at the parking area, the first sound I heard was a series of loud slurred whistles with an emphatic ending. Getting a bird had never been so easy. The group listened intently for 10 minutes as the Swainson's warbler sang every 20 to 30 seconds. It was about 30 yards away in a rhododendron thicket.
We then moved on to bird other areas of the Gorge. I was thrilled to have heard a new bird, but disappointed that I hadn't seen it. And for me to count a new bird on my life list, I've got to see it well enough to identify it by sight. (This is my personal rule. I am, after all, a birdwatcher.)
This small, drab brown bird with a rusty cap and dark eyeline was proving as elusive as I'd been promised.
Later in the morning I left the group and returned to the Fern Creek parking lot. The bird was still singing from the same spot we had heard it hours earlier. I walked quietly a short distance toward the sound until I reached the creek. The bird couldn't have been more than 15 yards away, but it was undetectable in the dense rhodies.
Pished and squeaked
I sat and listened for 15 minutes while the bird sang, but never moved. I pished and squeaked and pulled in a cardinal, an ovenbird, a worm-eating warbler, and several black-throated green warblers. The ovenbird perched nervously on a branch not 10 feet away.
Finally, after more than an hour, I caught a glimpse of a small dark bird dart through the thicket. My heart quickened, then sank. It was just another ovenbird.
I never did see a Swainson's warbler. But I'll never forget how close I came. And I've already penciled, "Swainson's, New River Gorge," onto my 2004 calendar.
sshalaway @aol.com