Kiptopeke an ideal spot for birds of a feather

There are lots of reasons to visit Kiptopeke State Park on Virginia's Eastern Shore. There's ample camping and great fishing in a protected cove on the Chesapeake Bay.

There are miles of hiking and biking trails, some of which end at stunning overlooks. There are empty beaches that offer solitude and serenity and swimming beaches that offer, well, swimming.

All of the above are worthy pursuits at Kiptopeke. But seeing the birds, especially this time of year, is a must. Making the trip to this 536-acre sanctuary for songbirds, shorebirds and raptors without doing even a little birding, is like going to a seafood place and ordering a burger.

Kiptopeke is a popular stopover place for migratory birds on the Atlantic Coast Flyway, and this is one of the best times of the year to take in that spectacle. Even for someone like myself - a true neophyte birder - Kiptopeke offers much to see and learn.

There's so much, in fact, that long before the area was a state park, it was used for bird population studies.

"It's probably the second or third oldest established banding station in North America," said Bob Reilly, who oversees the work of banding birds in the park for scientific research. "It's been in continuous operation since 1963."

The variety of habitat in the park has led to a steady increase in songbirds caught and banded since the 1990s - from 4,000 to 6,000 then to 6,000 to 9,000 now, during the August-to-November season.

I was hoping to see just a fraction of those numbers earlier this week when I went to the park. I brought a field guide (with drawings), a list of birds common to the area and a camera. My goal was to stroll around the park, take pictures of the birds, examine them on the camera and try to identify as many as I could.

I started at the beach south of the fishing pier where, a few yards off shore, five double-crested cormorants swam lazily. Every so often, one would dive and be gone for an impossibly long time. When it surfaced, it would be 100 yards away.

Kiptopeke has a number of raised platforms that begin at the beach edge and take visitors inland. I followed one toward the Baywoods Trail, where Reilly's bird banding operation (set up and funded by the Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory) was in full swing. I walked past the gossamer-thin "mist nets" volunteers set up to catch songbirds and found a tiny yellow warbler trapped but unharmed, awaiting banding.

I flipped through my book to find out what it was. Little did I know the variety of yellow warblers in this part of the world is huge. Maybe it was a Wilson's warbler. Maybe a hooded warbler. I don't think it was a prothonotary warbler. Appropriately, the page in my field guide was titled "Confusing Fall Warblers."

That was a common theme throughout the day. I was in the ballpark on most identifications but often couldn't quite say for sure. Was that an American black duck or a mallard? A surf scoter isn't all that different from a white-winged scoter. I could have sworn I saw an eastern phoebe, but I'm still not sure it wasn't a least flycatcher.

One thing that became apparent as the day wore on was that this was a great way to take in all of Kiptopeke. Seeking out different kinds of birds meant seeking out their different habitats.

I found wax myrtles and some Devil's walkingstick. The scrub brush along the beach brought in different birds than the high pines farther inland. I started out just looking for birds but realized that I was learning a great deal about their homes, too.

Hours after I began, I was on a first-name basis with many of Kiptopeke's avian residents and the park had come to life for me in a way it wouldn't have without a camera, a few reference materials and healthy curiosity.