Flocking to Fresh Water

Lake Champlain Birding Trail

By Ted Levin

On the shoulder of Route 2 just north of Burlington, Vermont, from the causeway between Grand Isle and the mainland, I stood looking south across Lake Champlain, across a legion of fawn-colored marsh grass that rose out of the chop. I was in the midst of driving the Lake Champlain Birding Trail, 300 miles of highway loops that circle the lake and lead to 87 birding sites in Vermont and New York, some cradled in the distant uplands. The scenery was spectacular. To the west, the great mounds of the Adirondacks lorded over the lake; to the east, the long line of the Green Mountains ran north toward Quebec. Fifty yards in front of me, perched on a small buoy, a snowy owl basked in lacustrine splendor, its enormous head slowly turning, taking in the view. The owl was the reason I pulled off the road. The common loon trolling for fish to its south, the several hundred ducks gathered in the lee of a sandbar, and the battery of Bonaparte's gulls hovering overhead were reasons to linger.

The Lake Champlain Birding Trail, the first such trail to cross state lines, showcases the Champlain lowlands, biologically and visually one of the crown jewels of the Northeast. Besides the 110-mile-long lake and its islands, points, peninsulas, sand dunes, and cliffs, the trail on the Vermont side crosses through a mosaic of dairy farms, marshlands, swamps, bogs, and woods, all cut by greater and lesser waterways. Collectively, the region is a magnet for wayfaring birds. In years past I've watched more than 20,000 snow geese settle in to Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area in Addison, Vermont. Once, on the cusp of winter, I flushed six short-eared owls from a copse of cedar, not far from the creek itself. Rafts of a thousand ring-necked ducks or several hundred common goldeneyes are a regular fall occurrence. Every year more than a half-dozen golden eagles cast their shadows over the plains of Lake Champlain. Gyrfalcons and northern hawk owls may stop by. A few years ago a fork-tailed flycatcher attracted birders from across the continent. Even as I write, in fact, I am alerted by e-mail that 60 Bohemian waxwings arrived in Sand Bar State Park, not far from where I saw the snowy owl.

Economically speaking, bird migration has the potential to bridge Vermont's three most popular (and lucrative) tourist attractions—fall foliage, skiing, and summer on the lake. The Green Mountain Audubon Center in Huntington, Vermont—also a site on the trail—has joined state and local agencies and other environmental groups, including The Nature Conservancy, on the trail's steering committee, which hopes to expand the trail into Canada. If so it would become another first—the first international birding route in North America.

On the way home, I stopped off at Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area, nearly 3,000 acres of marshes, fields, and oak woodlands. Above the pullout, designated by a sign bearing a pileated woodpecker (the trail symbol), a thousand snow geese pitched into a field. East of the geese, a rough-legged hawk, intent on small doings, took wing, hovered for a moment, then continued on a trail of its own.

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Lake Champlain Birding Trail
by Ted Levin