Laura Erickson's For the Birds

This beautiful warbler is dangerously declining over most of its range, but Minnesota is one of its last strongholds. Laura made this blog post to summarize its population decline.. Laura’s favorite places to see breeding Golden-wings are the Sax-Zim Bog; Port Wing, Wisconsin; Hunt Hill Audubon Sanctuary near Sarona, Wisconsin, and a lovely spot in northeastern Wisconsin near Eagle River; she’s also seen them during spring migration at the Black Swamp Bird Observatory in northern Ohio.

To hear the high-frequency songs and calls of this or any other species with high-pitched vocalizations, even with her hearing aids, and to get a direction for them, Laura uses Lang Elliott’s “Hear Birds Again”. The app is free to download, and the website has clear and easy directions to make the fairly inexpensive binaural headphones. To know if the bird is there in the first place, Laura uses the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Merlin app.