Top 5 Birds of the Appalachian Trail

You don’t have to be a birder to start recognizing birds on the Appalachian Trail.

Spend enough time walking through the woods and eventually certain sounds become part of the trail itself. You might have absolutely no idea what kind of bird you’re hearing at first. After a few hundred miles, though, you start recognizing them.

Some wake you up. Some provide the soundtrack to thousands of miles of hardwood forest. And one might even tell a northbound thru-hiker that the end is getting close.

These aren’t necessarily the five rarest or most impressive birds found along the Appalachian Trail. They’re five birds that help tell the story of hiking it.

5. Eastern Towhee

The sound of spring on the Appalachian Trail.

“Drink your tea!”

Once someone tells you that’s what an Eastern Towhee sounds like, it’s almost impossible to unhear it.

Towhees spend a lot of time down low, scratching around in leaf litter and hiding in the dense vegetation along the trail. That means hikers are often introduced to them by sound long before they actually figure out what they’re looking for.

For northbound thru-hikers leaving Georgia in late winter or early spring, bird calls also become part of watching the seasons change around you.

The trees begin leafing out. Wildflowers start appearing. Mornings get louder. After weeks of brown forests and cold nights, spring starts catching up with you.

The Eastern Towhee is part of that soundtrack.

4. Golden-winged Warbler

A little bird with a big conservation story.

The Golden-winged Warbler is one of our personal favorites. It’s also a bird that Appalachian Trail hikers may learn about without ever actually seeing one.

Golden-winged Warblers depend on a particular type of young forest and shrubland habitat that has become increasingly uncommon. Along portions of the Appalachian Trail, hikers pass through areas where conservation organizations are actively working to protect and restore that habitat.

That means you may encounter signs explaining why an area looks the way it does, why vegetation is being managed, or why certain habitat is being protected.

Keep your eyes open and you might eventually see the bird all that work is trying to help.

They’re unmistakable once you know what you’re looking for: gray body, yellow wing patches and a striking black-and-yellow face.

And a shoutout is deserved here to organizations like the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy and everyone else doing the less glamorous work of protecting the landscapes these birds need.

The Appalachian Trail isn’t just a footpath.

It’s habitat.

3. Wood Thrush

The soundtrack of the Appalachian forest.

There’s a good chance you’ve heard a Wood Thrush even if you have absolutely no idea what a Wood Thrush is.

Their song has an almost flute-like quality that echoes through eastern hardwood forests. It’s one of those sounds that seems like it belongs in the woods rather than coming from a single bird. Actually seeing one can be a different story.

Wood Thrushes spend a lot of time around the forest floor and understory. Along the AT, you’ll sometimes get surprisingly close to one tucked into mountain laurel or rhododendron before it finally decides you’ve gotten close enough and flies away.

They’re not particularly flashy. Brown back. Spotted chest. Fairly ordinary-looking bird. But that’s almost what makes the Wood Thrush perfect for this list. It’s not here because hikers are constantly stopping to photograph it. It’s here because its song quietly becomes part of thousands of miles of walking through the Appalachian forest.

2. Common Loon

The sound that tells you the end is getting close.

For a northbound thru-hiker, the Common Loon means something completely different.

You spend months walking north. Georgia becomes North Carolina. North Carolina becomes Tennessee. Virginia seems to last forever. Eventually you cross the Mason-Dixon Line, pass through the Mid-Atlantic and finally reach New England.  Then one evening you hear something across the water.

A loon.

The haunting call of a Common Loon drifting across a lake is one of the unmistakable sounds of the North Woods. And after walking roughly 2,000 miles to get there, it means more than identifying another bird.

It means you’re getting close.

New Hampshire and Maine feel different from much of the trail that came before them, and the loon is part of that transition. It’s an audible reminder that the landscape has changed and Katahdin isn’t some impossibly distant destination anymore.  There aren’t many bird calls capable of making a thru-hiker emotional. This might be one of them.

1. Eastern Whip-poor-will

The bird every thru-hiker has a story about.

There really couldn’t be another number one. The Whip-poor-will is the unofficial sleep deprivation machine of the Appalachian Trail. You usually don’t see it. You hear it.

WHIP-POOR-WILL.

WHIP-POOR-WILL.

WHIP-POOR-WILL.

Again. And again. And again. It’s midnight. You’re exhausted. You’ve hiked all day. You’ve finally crawled into your sleeping bag.

WHIP-POOR-WILL.

At some point you begin negotiating with the bird. Then threatening it. Then questioning how something with such a small body can possess the stamina necessary to yell the same three syllables for what appears to be the remainder of your natural life.

Quarry Gap Shelter in Pennsylvania is particularly notorious for Whip-poor-will encounters. Read through the shelter comments on FarOut and you’ll find hikers discussing the local nighttime entertainment. They’re also a familiar sound throughout other portions of the Appalachian Mountains, including the Smokies.

It’s one of those bizarrely specific shared experiences that connects generations of thru-hikers. Mention being kept awake by a Whip-poor-will around a group of former AT hikers and somebody will immediately have a story.

That’s why it gets number one. Not because it’s the rarest bird on the Appalachian Trail. Not because it’s the prettiest.

Because it’s part of the experience.

You Start Listening Differently

One of the interesting things about spending months outside is that the woods slowly stop sounding like generic woods.

At the beginning, you hear birds. Eventually you hear a Towhee. A Wood Thrush. A Whip-poor-will. Then months later, somewhere in New England, you hear a loon across the water. You don’t have to become a birder. You just spend enough time out there that the trail starts teaching you what’s around you. And sometimes it teaches you at two o’clock in the morning.

WHIP-POOR-WILL.

WHIP-POOR-WILL.

WHIP-POOR-WILL.

 

 

About the artist: 

Sara “Socks” Kruglinski is a long-distance hiker and artist behind Sockstomistic. A 2018 Pacific Crest Trail thru-hiker and contributor to Treeline Review, her work combines a love of wildlife, hiking, and playful illustration inspired by time spent outside.