TUPELO – On a quiet street in Tupelo’s Old Town neighborhood, Margaret Gratz can step onto her back porch, lift a pair of binoculars and be transported across continents.
A flash of red might resolve into a scarlet tanager just arrived from South America. A high call from the woods could be from a barred owl cranking up for the night. In winter, a small brown bird scratching under the shrubs might be a hermit thrush, fresh from the northern forests. And on some mornings, if she looks up at just the right moment, a bald eagle may be soaring high above her head.
The remarkable thing, Gratz said, is none of this requires a passport, a plane ticket or even a long drive.
“You can sit by your own window,” she said, “and see the world.”
Gratz grew up in Nettleton. As a little girl, she learned to match illustrations to the living creatures outside. Today, she knows to see large numbers of prothonotary warblers – the only cavity-nesting warbler east of the Mississippi River – you can visit the ancient cypress swamps at Sky Lake near Belzoni. But she has also seen them in her own yard.
“If you want to birdwatch in Mississippi, you don’t have to travel far,” Gratz said.
In fact, they’re coming to you.
Her feeders help. She relies mostly on black oil sunflower seed and suet, which attract woodpeckers, nuthatches and a host of other species. When snow blankets the hilltop where she lives, activity can surge. During one winter stretch, she counted more than 20 species in a single week without leaving home.
Feeding birds, she notes, does no harm when done responsibly. Clean feeders and fresh seed can supplement natural food sources, especially during harsh weather.
Each summer, Mississippi kites return to Tupelo’s Front, Madison and Green streets – sleek, gray predators slicing through humid air in pursuit of insects. In past years, northern harriers skimmed low over an open field near her home in winter. Red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks are regulars. So are three species of owls: great horned, barred and screech.
“I’ve had bald eagles soaring above my house,” she said.
Birdwatching requires little more than curiosity. A good pair of binoculars and a field guide you can hold in your hand are enough. Gratz recommends the latest guide by David Sibley, though she acknowledges the convenience of smartphone apps. Technology can help with identification, but it can also distract.
“We live in a heads-down society,” she said. “You can walk outside with an eagle soaring above and never see it.”
To be a birdwatcher is to generally look up.
The hobby has deep roots in the South. John James Audubon painted many of his famed bird portraits in Natchez and St. Francisville, Louisiana. Before him, the Scottish naturalist Alexander Wilson traveled portions of the Natchez Trace, documenting species in a young nation that once included the now-extinct Carolina parakeet – a bird that flashed through North Mississippi trees.
That sense of continuity – of migration patterns older than towns and highways – is part of the appeal.
“You become more perceptive about the natural order of things,” Gratz said. “Nature has its own order, and we’re part of that.”
Migration, she added, is both humbling and inspiring. Tiny hummingbirds winter in the tropics and return each spring to the same neighborhoods. Shorebirds traverse hemispheres. Even the common backyard cardinal participates in a larger rhythm of seasons and survival.
For children, birdwatching can spark lifelong fascination. For adults confined at home by weather or circumstance, it can offer solace and connection.
For all, it can be an endless scavenger hunt: there is always one bird you’ve never seen.
“I don’t think you ever get tired of it,” Gratz said.
In a world crisscrossed by highways and hemmed in by development, she believes Northeast Mississippi remains a remarkable place for nature lovers to be.
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