Each spring as we gear up for the migration, we like to run favorite posts from years past that celebrate the best time of year for birders. Here’s an article from last May about a magical spot along the Eastern U.S. migration route.
Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal
The first to appear is an American Redstart, with streaks of orange splashed across its breast and wings. Seconds later, a Prothonotary warbler skitters along the lower branches, sporting the brightest yellow coat imaginable. Finally, a Blackburnian warbler arrives high in the canopy, its plumage the colors of a sunset.
By now, nearly 30 birders are gathering along the boardwalk at northern Ohio’s Magee Marsh, straining at the railing to take in one of the best moments of the morning. Joan Grissing, who has been narrating as each bird appears, finally shouts out: “Oh wow. We’re having some fun now.”
This preserve that sits on the edge of Lake Erie is an unsurpassed mecca for birders. It’s billed as the world’s warbler capital for the numbers of these small, colorful, world-traveling songbirds that make brief appearances each spring. And on this morning in May, the marsh is delivering in dazzling fashion.
For most of the year, many of the warbler species are hard to find. They’re spread out across the hemisphere, often deep in the woods and marshes when they’re not on their twice-a-year, thousand-mile journeys.
But for a few weeks spanning parts of April and May, a combination of geography, migration timing and weather turn this stretch of the lake’s coast into a bustling public intersection for birds. It becomes a place where these wondrous species and their admirers can meet, often just a few feet apart, since the birds are so busy feeding they’re mostly unbothered by the people that surround them.
“It’s amazing,” says Joan, a retired middle school teacher who has already visited the marsh four times this season from her home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “You can sometimes see five or six warblers in the same tree. There’s just nothing like it.”
There are other famous springtime birding hotspots, from High Island in Texas to places along the Great Lakes. But Magee Marsh, within driving distance of Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto, stands apart for its crowds, especially in the days before, during and after the Biggest Week in Birding festival in mid May.
A boardwalk that winds for a mile just in from the lake can get as jammed as a rush-hour subway car. Birders, lugging binoculars, cameras, telescopic lenses, tripods, and scopes, jostle for positions wherever birds appear.
The crowds at Magee turn what’s typically a solitary pursuit into a group sport. With hundreds of eyes watching the woods and wetlands at the same time, you hear a constant stream of shouts and guidance as birds show up. “Black-throated Green to the left, now moving up to the right.” “Prothonotary — just dropped down.” “Yellow Warbler right in front. Now in the open!”
During the holiday season each year, we republished the most popular posts from the past 12 months. We thought this story, on the delights of a storied spring migration stopover, would be a nice way to offset the winter weather gripping most of the country. Watch this space the next several weeks for our favorite stories from 2025.
Much of the land for migration stopovers in the Americas has been converted for homes, farms and businesses, and there’s plenty of development in northern Ohio as well. But a string of preserves has survived on either side of Magee Marsh, which is why the birds are here. In addition, a series of islands are scattered across Lake Erie near Magee, just where the birds cross over into their breeding grounds spread across Canada.
Warblers, of course, aren’t the only birds that show up here. We saw everything from vireos to kinglets, cardinals to owls. Several Bald Eagles nest in trees that tower above the marsh. But warblers are the target of most of the visitors because nearly 40 of the roughly 55 North American species will pass through here each spring. Here are just a few of the warblers we saw during our visit in early May:
You can find a wealth of information online about Magee Marsh and the nearby wildlife refuges. But for a deep look at the marsh, its birds and history, the best source is a free downloadable booklet written by W. H. Majoros, a professor at Duke University who has spent decades visiting the region.
After his first visit to the marsh years ago, he says in the book’s introduction, he felt like a “changed” man. “I’d found my birding paradise. Everything I had hoped for. I vowed to come back every year, to witness and document the magnificent spectacle of the songbird migration along the shore of Lake Erie.
“Magee is a special place. The few years I’ve been unable to make the trip, my life has felt incomplete. The birder in me is most at home at Magee.”
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