Good birding can be had in national historic parks as well as national military parks and battlefields, such as here at Fort Necessity National Battlefield in Pennsylvania/NPS
It's not difficult to see why many of our national parks offer spectacular birding. Vast expanses of protected natural areas are bound to be good spots for watching birds and other wildlife. The national seashores and lakeshores are even more inviting as birding destinations than some of the 'parks.'
But what about the historic sites and national battlefields?
Places such as Fort Necessity National Battlefield in Pennsylvania certainly weren't created with wildlife in mind, but by their nature make good spots for birding. Fort Necessity is preserved in a manner that reminisces of 1754 as closely as possible, which is a lot more bird friendly than a nearby strip mall or, even worse, a nearby strip mine. Birders have logged at least 78 species at the fort, mostly during spring migration and summer nesting season.
Speaking of first, Fort Laramie National Historic Site has released its 2014 Landbird Monitoring Resource Brief. The briefs are developed through a cooperation of the Northern Great Plains Network Inventory & Monitoring Program and the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory. Fort Laramie, located in southeastern Wyoming, may not seem like ideal birding habitat, but it falls just east of the Rocky Mountains in the range where many eastern and western North American birds' ranges overlap slightly, giving an interesting diversity.
The brief listed 73 species of landbird, prompting park Superintendant Tom Baker to come up with an idea. 'A fun activity for both birders and general park visitors would be to go through the list and identify those species that may have been present during the Fort's active period of 1849-1890, by separating out the non-native species.' Here's a hint to get you started: European Starlings were released in New York City in 1890, the year Fort Laramie ceased operating.
The multi-purpose aspect of historical parks isn't lost on Fort Laramie's superintendent. 'There is a wide variety of interesting natural resource activities to be enjoyed at Fort Laramie,' Baker said, adding that hiking, wildflower photography, and wildlife viewing all join birding as popular activities at the park.
Sometimes an historic park becomes known among birders as a full-fledged birding park. Such is the case with Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park in Georgia. With almost 190 species tallied, Kennesaw Mountain is a frequent destination for Atlanta birders and popular spot during spring migration for traveling birders.
The Cerulean Warbler, a threatened and declining migratory songbird of eastern deciduous forests, is a regular spring visitor at the battlefield. Like many other warbler species, Ceruleans make a perilous crossing of the Gulf of Mexico every April. What's unique about Cerulean Warblers is that they rarely show themselves at typical migrant traps along the northern Gulf Coast like Gulf Islands National Seashore.
Most birds are exhausted from their crossing and typically spend a day or several days recharging along the coast, having dropped from the sky as soon as they saw land. But the Cerulean Warblers seem to make either extremely brief stops or no stop at all until they hit the first hints of the Appalachians. That makes Kennesaw Mountain a migrant trap for Ceruleans where a couple dozen could be seen by a lucky birder with good timing.
The next time you're visiting a national park that commemorates historical events, take a minute to check out the nature. After all, the birds don't care why a green space was preserved, just that it was preserved at all.
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