Chestnut-sided Warbler.

Black flies are out. They’ve been out for several days, actually, but only yesterday, warm and greening, did they really make their presence felt at Beech Hill Preserve. A number of times, while scanning the budding hardwood canopies for warblers, I was aware of tiny flying insects alighting on my neck or forehead with a mission of drawing blood and causing an itch that will last for days—or, face it, weeks.

Black-throated Green Warbler.

It’s that itch that causes most people to freak out over black flies. To break out the chemicals. Or, worse, to stay indoors. We’re used to tidy, vermin-free lives in these 21st century days—that is, if we live in first-world country. We use bug spray and rat poison and mosquito-zappers. We kill every snake we see just because some are poisonous. We don’t think twice about shooting coyotes and yet somehow never make a dent in the coyote population. We don’t like risk, don’t like discomfort. We’d rather eat ice cream than run a mile. We might dare to fuck up the climate, but by God we’ve got “climate control.”

It might’ve taken me a while to get here, but I’ve been here now for years. And by “here,” I mean, “Black flies are a blessing, because they mean warblers.” Of course I know what wood-warblers are, and therefore I believe them also a blessing.

They’re the small, jewel-like birds that flit above our earthbound line-of-sight in chase of grubs, caterpillars, and/or (ahem) black flies. They’re bright gold, black and white, splashed with orange, blue and black, or cloaked in a rainbow blend of colors. They’ve got on masks, or toupees, or yellow underwear. And they make otherworldly music: chimes and trills and buzzes and hiccups and random jumbles of notes. Or, rather, not otherworldly: worldly. Very worldly, yet often left unseen.

Get rid of the black flies, and you’ll screw up the lives of some of these little warblers. Get rid of other kinds of “vermin”—rats, coyotes, even Lyme Disease-carrying ticks—and you’re messin’ with Mother Nature. I’d rather not fall ill, of course, but it only takes a little common sense.

Give me discomfort any day. Give me black flies, ticks, mosquitos. Give me mud and muck and slush and hot and cold. I want to live, dammit—not sit on pillows and eat chocolate and daydream of winning the lottery. I want to stand still on a wooded hillside trail while surrounded by singing warblers—Black-throated Green, Northern Parula, Yellow-rumped, American Redstart, Blackpoll, Chestnut-sided, Ovenbird—as I was early this morning, as the sun began to warm the chilly world, and all I could hear was music.

Give me vermin any day—as long as afterward I can take a hot shower.

Beech Hill List
Beginning at 6 a.m., I hiked all trails.

1. Chestnut-sided Warbler**
2. Ovenbird**
3. Blue-headed Vireo (v)
4. Black-and-white Warbler*
5. Black-throated Green Warbler**
6. Eastern Towhee**
7. American Goldfinch**
8. Tufted Titmouse**
9. American Crow*
10. Black-capped Chickadee**
11. American Robin
12. Herring Gull*
13. Veery
14. Common Yellowthroat**
15. Northern Cardinal* (v)
16. Wood Thrush (v)
17. Northern Parula**
18. Gray Catbird
19. Northern Flicker (v)
20. American Woodcock (flushed)
21. Nashville Warbler**
22. Blue Jay**
23. Rose-breasted Grosbeak (v)
24. Song Sparrow**
25. American Redstart†
26. Yellow-rumped Warbler
27. White-throated Sparrow**
28. Blackpoll Warbler† (v)
29. Chipping Sparrow**
30. Canada Goose (v)
31. White-crowned Sparrow†
32. Northern Harrier
33. Savannah Sparrow
34. Brown-headed Cowbird**
35. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (drumming)
36. Mourning Dove* (v)
37. House Finch**
38. Turkey Vulture
39. Hermit Thrush (v)
40. Eastern Phoebe
41. Black-throated Blue Warbler (v)

Elsewhere

42. White-breasted Nuthatch (v)
43. Osprey
44. Rock Pigeon
45. European starling

v = Voice only
*Also elsewhere
**Voice only elsewhere
†First-of-year bird