By Ken Mammarella
Contributing Writer

“The crown jewel of Delaware birding is Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge,” according to Mike Moore, president of the Delaware Ornithological Society and a birder since age 11. “It attracts people from all over the US, if not the world.”

The refuge is just 20 miles as the crow flies from Middletown, and the MOT area itself has multiple worthwhile destinations for people interested in watching birds, listening to birds and lengthening their life lists of birds that they have observed. Delaware, for such a small state, has a surprisingly high number of birds that have been spotted there.

Here’s the context: 429 species are on the official list of birds spotted in Delaware, as kept by the society on its website, www.dosbirds.org. That’s a significant portion of the 900 or so species for North America, he said.

Delaware has so many because it has a wide variety of habitats, including open beaches, saltwater marshes, freshwater marshes, the wooded hills of the piedmont in northern New Castle County, the sandy pine forests of lower Delaware and the tall deciduous forests in between. Many species also like to migrate along Delaware’s coastline, part of a route called the Atlantic Flyway.

One of the hotspots for birding in MOT is Charles Price Memorial Park, a municipal park on the southwestern edge of Middletown. “Every birder who’s trying to see as many birds in a year will visit Charles Price Park once or twice,” Moore said, acknowledging that parts are landscaped (picnic areas, playground, dog park), but they’re surrounded by meadows that many birds enjoy. Grasshopper sparrows, eastern meadowlarks, bobolinks and dickissels are among the birds he’s spotted there.

He said that other productive birding areas in MOT include Blackbird State Forest, just south of Townsend; the Port Penn area; the Ashton Tract, which is part of the Augustine Wildlife Area; and Thousand-Acre Marsh, just south of Delaware City. One special species found at the marsh is the sandhill crane, a very noisy bird. “Kind of amazing that a western bird has moved east,” he said.

‘All-around fun’

John Skibicki picked up birding 11 years ago, starting with feeders and nest boxes in his home, near Middletown. “I wanted to see more birds,” he said, noting that his life list has now hit 330, including 282 in Delaware. “It’s nature, relaxation, enjoying the weather, seeing the birds, all-around fun.”

His favorite MOT spot for birding is the Augustine Wildlife Area, following by the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal and Blackbird State Forest.

Christopher Rowe is also fond of the Augustine Wildlife Area, where a trail through the woods leads to an observation deck overlooking the marsh – very quickly hitting two different environments. He also likes Charles Price Park.

Since becoming a birder in 2008, Rowe has added 334 birds in Delaware on his life list (275, he figures, within five miles of his house, near Port Penn), and 610 in the U.S. He started birding after his now-wife Erin Rowe started volunteering at Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research. They followed their avian interests with feeders and a lot of native plants for their landscaping. “You get hooked on different types of birds,” he said. “And not all birds are feeder birds.”

The region’s “vibrant and active birding scene” inspired the American Birding Association in 2013 to move its North American headquarters from Colorado to Delaware City. The office closed in 2023, after remote work that started during the pandemic became a permanent practice.

Life lists

A website called birda.org offers four reasons that birders keep life lists:

• The lists help birders “track prioritize what they need to look out for and where they need to go.”

• They allow birders to “reminisce about their birdwatching adventures.”

• “Birders are social creatures that love to share information so a life list can also be used as a basis for birders to debate identifications, discuss specific species as well as share location-based information.”

• They “show off their experience and dedication to their hobby.”

Birding lists also matter in the Bird-a-thon, the Delaware Ornithological Society’s signature fundraiser. Over 10 days ending each Mother’s Day, teams pick 24 hours in a row to spot as many species as possible – 100 to 120 is common, and one team hit 174 – and sponsors are invited to make donations for every species spotted.

Over 18 years, the Bird-a-thon has raised more than $800,000, buying almost 3,000 acres of critical habitat, Moore said. The initial focus was on the Mispillion Harbor downstate, to protect red knots, shorebirds who migrates 9,000 miles twice a year, in one of the world’s longest migrations.

The society has also purchased and protected several tracts near Port Penn and Augustine Creek.

The society “is more than just a bird club,” he said. In addition to those conservation efforts, it also supports citizen science (such as hawk watches at the Ashland Nature Center and Cape Henlopen), joins in the Christmas bird count (which began in 1900 as an alternative to hunting birds during holiday gatherings) and every month runs field trips for grades one-12. The society conducts about 50 field trips a year, and it meets monthly, September-May, at the Ashland Nature Center.

Skibicki said that birding is a great hobby. “It’s scalable on the skill level and the time level,” he said. “You can go birding 10 minutes once a month, or all day all week.”