Birds-Eye View: Birding spot in Virginia rewards its visitors

About 200 miles north of Winston-Salem, on the border of West Virginia, is the little town of Monterey, Va.

Perhaps you've been drawn to of this corner of Virginia by one of their annual traditions, such as the Highland County Maple Festival or the Mountain Mama Road Bike Challenge.

But birders know the little town as a hotspot that is well worth the four-and-a-half-hour drive. Several members of the Audubon Society of Forsyth County made the trip recently. We were rewarded with beautiful scenery and great birding experiences.

Monterey has about 160 residents, so there aren't many lodging options. The Highland Inn was our base. Built in 1904, it's due for some renovations. But it serves good meals, has a delightful house cat, and the second floor veranda overlooking Main Street is a great place to gather in the evening, sip a favorite beverage and recount the marvels of the day's birds.

A visit to Warbler Road

On the drive up, we stopped along Warbler Road. Named for its abundance of songbirds, this is a dirt track off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Peaks of Otter. Cerulean warblers, black-throated blue, black-throated green, chestnut-sided and hooded warblers joined the blue-gray gnatcatchers singing in the treetops. As we followed the road down, we paused to watch a pair of ovenbirds. One fussed at us from the roadside with a caterpillar in its beak, a sure sign that they had a nest nearby. Farther down, we stopped to let a ruffed grouse cross the road with her downy chicks, and we noticed a wood thrush quietly nesting on a branch hanging over the road.

The following day we headed out for Paddy Knob. At 4,477 feet on the West Virginia border, this is one of the highest mountains in northern Virginia. Its forested slopes are home to scarlet tanagers, wild turkeys, Acadian flycatchers, great-crested flycatchers and the always impressive pileated woodpecker. One of the main draws of this excursion is a small meadow near the peak of the knob. The mourning warbler is only rarely seen during migration in our area, but it nests in this part of Virginia.

Another road led us through close-cropped pastures where we found vesper sparrows and horned larks. Later still, bobolinks flitted along the tops of a wheat field and a rare golden-winged warbler sang its characteristic BEE-buzz-buzz-buzz in the patchy weeds nearby. As we scanned the brush in search of the singer, it landed just a few feet away and delivered a tiny insect to a tussock. Two small eggs and a naked hatchling, no more than a day old, were nestled in the finely-woven cup.

On our way home, we stopped at Hidden Valley, a beautiful meadow along the Jackson River in the George Washington National Forest. It was a day of brilliant sunshine and moderate temperatures as we walked the trail that meandered through the meadow. A brisk stream flows through willows that harbor yellow warblers, green herons and wood ducks. Both yellow-billed and black-billed cuckoos called from the adjacent woodlands, while meadowlarks sang in the tall grass. Yellow-breasted chats, common yellowthroats and Eastern kingbirds nest in and around the meadow while ravens soar overhead.

As we motored along the two-lane blacktop headed for home, a group of soaring turkey vultures caught our attention. One bird looked a little different, so we pulled off the road to take a better look. The odd bird turned out to be a young bald eagle, depending on the keen skills of the vultures to help it find a meal. This was a fitting highlight to cap a great weekend of birding in the western Virginia countryside.

■ Bird's-Eye View is a joint column by Ron Morris and Phil Dickinson. Today's column was written by Morris. Morris retired after 24 years as curator at the N.C. Zoo. He has studied birds around the world and is currently the vice president of the Audubon Society of Forsyth County. Dickinson is a legal writer. He has been an active birder for 15 years, and is a past president of the Audubon Society of Forsyth County and chairs the conservation committee. If you have a birding question or story idea, write to Bird's-Eye View in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, N.C. 27101-3159, or send an e-mail to birding@wsjournal.com. Please type "birds" in the subject line.