Once numbering fewer than 200 pairs worldwide, Kirtland’s warblers return each spring from the Bahamas to Garrison Petawawa, this busy military training ground in the Ottawa Valley. “At one point, this was the only place in Canada you could find them.” As he speaks, machine guns crackle in the background, a blunt reminder that we’re not walking through a nature sanctuary or a national park but an army base. “Kirtland’s warblers have backed themselves into a bit of an evolutionary corner,” Matt Cybulski tells me. This scruffy forest is home to one of the rarest songbirds in North America, and we’ve come to see where it nests. The sun has just come out, and behind me, I can hear the footsteps of two wildlife researchers crunching over the undergrowth.
I ’m walking through a stand of jack pines.
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