The number and variety of songbirds peak during two periods across the Temperate Zone of eastern North America. From mid April to mid May and from mid September to mid October, we enjoy the largest mix of permanent residents, summer songbirds, seasonal migrants and, at the colder extremes of those intervals, winter songbird residents.
Typical permanent residents include cardinals, blue jays, tufted titmice, chickadees, robins, eastern bluebirds, cedar waxwings, Carolina wrens, white-breasted nuthatches, American goldfinches, eastern meadowlarks, song sparrows and a variety of woodpeckers. Among our common summer residents are house wrens, blue-gray gnatcatchers, ruby-throated hummingbirds, various swallows, chimney swifts, common nighthawks, indigo buntings, northern orioles, gray catbirds, brown thrashers, scarlet and summer tanagers and a host of summer warblers, sparrows and flycatchers. Pure migrants are primarily limited to northern warblers, ruby-crowned kinglets and certain vireo and flycatcher species while dark-eyed juncos, brown creepers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, red-breasted nuthatches, yellow-rumped warblers, golden-crowned kinglets and a number of winter sparrows may be encountered from mid October to mid April.
While the above lists are incomplete, they illustrate the wide variety of songbirds that inhabit or move through our region in the course of a year. Novice birders hoping to maximize their sightings are advised to visit a diversity of habitat (forest, wetlands, meadows) and to plan their excursions for the early morning and late daylight hours, when these birds tend to be most active and conspicuous.
