A unique birdwatching experience awaits along Old Miners Road in NW New Jersey, where you can view rare birds while you drive, hike, or boat.

Cerulean warbler. Yellow-throated vireo. Scarlet tanager. Indigo bunting. The names are as colorful as the birds. If you’re a birdwatcher who wants to experience the thrill of dozens of brilliantly colored migrating birds in one place, you need to head to Old Mine Road in the northwestern corner of New Jersey.

Birders familiar with New Jersey may suggest heading to Cape May, located at the southern tip of the state as it’s a better-known spot to see a variety of birds flying north in the spring or south in the fall, but the lesser-known Old Mine Road is where you should really go to see the birds that breed in New Jersey and sing nonstop to defend their territories.

Old Mine Road’s southern end starts in Worthington State Forest, a few miles from the state’s section of the Appalachian Trail, and runs into the adjacent Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. If you enjoy hiking, boating, and beaches, the area offers plenty of opportunities in addition to birdwatching. The trails include some with steep inclines and one that connects to the Appalachian Trail, and the Delaware River is great for canoes and tubes.

Name That Tune: Birdwatchers’ Edition

Starting in late April, the birds that wintered in South America fly north, and the area turns into a bird paradise as one of the prime breeding areas along the eastern flyway. Male passerines, or perching songbirds, flock en masse to unpopulated, higher elevations to breed. Once they pick their territory and attract a mate, they sing nearly nonstop to alert other males that the space is taken.

The result of so many different types of breeding birds in one area is a cacophony of song that can be overwhelming. The challenge is to ignore the birdsong you know and focus on each individual song to figure out what other birds are in the area. For “birders,” this game never gets old.

“There is no other place I would like to bird during the passerine nesting season than Old Mine Road,” says Pete Bacinski, recently retired program director for New Jersey Audubon’s All Things Bird.

Whether you birdwatch from the comfort of your car or while hiking on or off the road, as Bacinski does when he leads groups of eager birders, you can easily see and hear more than 50 bird species, including birds you won’t see or hear in your neighborhood park.

Old Mine Road: A Unique Birding Experience

What makes Old Mine Road unique? Start with its location in the Kittatinny Mountains, where you leave one of the busiest east-west highways in the U.S. and travel five miles per hour on a one-lane road. Bird song fills the air around you as you wait for the old traffic light to turn green, and the singing intensifies as the road widens and you travel along the scenic 40-mile stretch high above the Delaware River.

You should definitely expect to be fascinated by the blend of sounds. It’s okay to pull over to let impatient, non-birding drivers pass as you stop to listen to the Baltimore orioles, wood thrushes, cedar waxwings, ovenbirds, and yellow-throated vireos, which all breed in this area.

The road was built by the Dutch around 1650 to connect what became the town of Kingston, New York, on the Hudson River with the Pahaquarry copper mines a little over 100 miles away, but you’ll see few signs of that now. A plan to build a dam in the late 1960s prompted the federal government to take over the land and clear out the homeowners. The dam was never built, and the only things in the area now are the birds, insects, and the occasional bear, snapping turtle, and raccoon.

So Many Birds, So Little Time

The sheer number of birds also makes the area unique. You won’t hear just one yellow-throated vireo, more like a dozen or more. You may see an assortment of shorebirds, or hear what Bacinski calls the “Empid Grand Slam,” the four Empidonax flycatchers that look alike and are best identified by their song: Acadian, least, willow, and alder. The skulking Kentucky warbler and the near-endangered golden-winged warbler may pop in for a visit, too. Expect the unexpected.

If there is a prize sought by birdwatchers, it’s the cerulean warbler, which spends its time in the highest parts of the tallest deciduous trees. The male is sky blue, the female is yellow-green, and its song is described by Cornell Lab of Ornithology as buzzy notes ending in a higher pitched trill, somewhat like “zee zee zee zizizizi eeet.”

“The males do love to sing persistently, and if you are really lucky, one may dive down to a low perch and grace you with a rare look,” Bacinski says. He estimates there are at least 20 pairs of these warblers breeding along Old Mine Road, which is extraordinary because the cerulean “has been in steep decline throughout its U.S. range in recent years,” he says. Getting a look at one is a big deal in the birding world, and that is more likely to happen along Old Mine Road than almost anywhere else.

If you want to add as many birds as possible to your birding list while enjoying challenging hikes, lazy canoe rides, and relaxing drives through the woods, visit northwest New Jersey. Be sure to share all your best birdwatching photos with us on Instagram.