Knowingly seeing an individual bird that has been previously encountered is a special treat in the world of birding. Most birders would probably agree that the fascinating life cycles of these wild creatures are among the greatest draws that keep people invested in the hobby. It is a truly remarkable privilege to witness multiple chapters in the stories of specific … Read More
Rough day for catbirds
Throughout the northeast lots of Gray Catbirds are migrating south on a daily basis. It is also peak falcon migration right now. You can probably guess that this combination isn’t going to fair too well for some catbirds…sure enough, today at the Cape Henlopen Hawkwatch we had a Merlin fly in after crossing Delaware Bay, drop down into the brush near the hawkwatch, and … Read More
Monday Morning Blues
My friend Mark Mizak found a kayak that he wanted to buy online, but it was in New Jersey. Mark is heading south to Florida for the rest of the winter before heading back to Montana to work as a wildlands fire-fighter. He offered to take Josh Lefever and I along to get his new boat on a day-trip to … Read More
Phoebe and White-throats – PSU Fall Banding
October 8th was our most recent day of bird banding in the PSU Arboretum, and we were able to capture 41 individual birds of 10 species. White-throated Sparrows finally officially took over as our most common bird, with 17 captured today. Gray Catbirds, which were the most commonly-caught species prior to the 8th dropped down into 2nd place, with a … Read More
Blackpoll Warbler! – PSU Fall Banding
When I woke up this morning, it was 36 degrees in State College. I knew Big Hollow (where our banding station is) would be very cold and that it would be a while before the sun could get down into the hollow and warm things up a bit. We started off the first few net checks with catbirds, towhees, and … Read More
Slow Summer Birding…..
The past few weeks birding has been pretty slow here in central Pennsylvania. Most of the breeding warbler species have stopped singing and are busy tending to their young and fall migration is just barely getting underway. It gets very hot by nine or ten in the morning and then activity stops altogether until around 8:30pm. Really the only thing … Read More
Bird Banding Highlights – March and early April 2012
So far this season, we have had six days of bird banding in the PSU Arboretum’s Big Hollow property. Nick Kerlin is our official bird bander as well as the State College Bird Club president. The biggest change this season from previous seasons is that we have a new banding area – instead of sitting on the ground surrounded by … Read More
Banding at the Bald Eagle Birding Festival
Today I spent the day banding with Emily at the Bald Eagle State Park Birding Festival. We set up at 7am for the dedicated few who made it to the park at such an early hour and then decided to keep the nets open for the day because the festival activities mostly started at 4pm. We ended up with over … Read More
Banding mimids- Gray Catbird and Brown Thrasher
We finally got a chance to do some banding at the Arboretum at Penn State this week, first for the Ornithology Lab on Thursday and again on Friday for anyone who wanted to come. On Thursday we caught a Gray Catbird, my first of the year, but we had to leave early and I missed a Brown Thrasher. On Friday, … Read More