A field notebook · New Hampshire
You'll see a chickadee
a thousand times
before your first Bicknell's Thrush.
This is a notebook of the birds of the Granite State, kept along one line — from the ones at your feeder tomorrow to the ones people plan a year around. Real species, real hotspots, and a migration map that moves with the calendar.
Purple Finch — state bird since 1957, and quietly losing its own feeders to the House Finch.
II · Right now
What's flying
It's September. On the ground in New Hampshire right now, roughly in order of what's most worth chasing:
Broad-winged Hawk kettles
peak right nowA ten-day window, roughly the 10th to the 20th of September. On the right afternoon they stack up over Pack Monadnock in the hundreds and pour off the ridge southwest — a thousand-plus days happen most years.
Hawk migration on the ridges
peak right nowSeptember through November, wind out of the northwest behind a front. Broad-wings first, then the accipiters and falcons, then Red-tails and the odd Golden Eagle into November. NH Audubon staffs the count platforms every day of the season.
Warbler waves
peak right nowSpring peaks the second and third weeks of May. Fall is longer and messier — late August into early October, biggest the morning after a cold front drops birds onto the coast. Yellow-rumps bookend both ends, in numbers, when everything else has thinned out.
Boreal residents up north
Year-round, if you can get to them — the spruce bogs and logging roads from Errol to Pittsburg. Late winter and early spring is easiest: Black-backed Woodpeckers drum, Spruce Grouse walk the road edges, Boreal Chickadees call in that slow, wheezy voice.
From the site's seasonal calendar, built on NH Audubon observatory counts, HawkCount and eBird timing. For confirmed reports in the last two weeks, see the rare bird alert below.
Rare Bird Alert
Checking eBird…
What the season should be turning up — worth knowing before you go:
- Spruce Grouse — Range edge, tiny population, and remote habitat.recent NH records ↗
- Black-backed Woodpecker — Habitat specialist at its range edge.recent NH records ↗
- Boreal Chickadee — Range edge and habitat fidelity.recent NH records ↗
- Common Nighthawk — Scarce and declining breeder; a reliable, concentrated migrant in late August.recent NH records ↗
- American Pipit — Two different problems.recent NH records ↗
Live data from eBird, Cornell Lab of Ornithology — notable-observations feed for New Hampshire, used under the eBird API Terms of Use. Unreviewed reports are marked; treat them as leads, not records.
III · The spine of the whole thing
Common to rare is a gradient, not a wall
Every bird on the site sits somewhere on this line. It isn't a badge — it's a mix of how many there are, how predictable they are, and how much of the state (and the calendar, and the weather) you have to line up to stand in front of one.
At your feeder tomorrow
Out most days if you look
Regular, if you know the week
A planned trip and some luck
Three hours and still might miss it
IV · Ways in
Three ways to use this
- 01
Common Birds
20 species you can reasonably expect — feeder birds, dooryard birds, the ones worth knowing cold so the odd one stands out. ID marks, the call, where and when.
- 02
Rare & Notable
10 birds at the edge of something — the southern limit of a boreal range, an alpine island on Mount Washington, a salt marsh going under. What makes each one hard, and what it takes.
- 03
The Migration Map
A drawn map of the state and a slider for the year. Move the month and watch the ridges, the coast and the North Country light up — then tap a hotspot for what's there that week, live from eBird.
V · From the journal