Wonder when they're coming?

If you saw Winged Migration you know the incredible journeys birds take, driven by unseen forces and traveling along ancient, unmarked routes. Some of the most remarkable birds in North America (like the Whooping Crane) pass through Oklahoma — some of them stay during the summer months to breed and raise young, others spend the winter months here. What birds come here… and when are they here? Well, the Oklahoma Bird Records Committee of the Oklahoma Ornithological Society has a marvelous “Date Guide” that draws upon the knowledge of a lot of very serious birders and is a handy reference for migration dates. But what if you don’t have the Date Guide… what if you’re coming in from out of state? How about having the info online? Made sense to me but it took several months to convince the OOS to publish their info on the Internet.

Long story short: I created a database with all of Oklahoma’s bird species and designed a searchable interface with Active Server Pages to be used by the Oklahoma Ornithological Society. It’s been available on their site, and linked from the servers I use, since February but I’ve been too busy to modify the system so I could include it on my BackyardBirdCam site. I made “room” for it when I redesigned my site in July and included it in the stack of navigation links. And today I finally made it happen!

So visit the Migration Data area and find out more about the birds of Oklahoma. Enter, for example, Sparrow and you’ll get a list of all the sparrows. Take a look at the Harris’s Sparrow report (photo above) and you’ll find out when to expect this marvelous bird in your area. By the way, they migrate to Oklahoma from Hudson’s Bay near the Arctic Circle. Their wintering range is rather limited and birders come from all over just to see the Harris’s Sparrow — and they hang out in our backyards.