Yesterday was the State College CBC which I have been looking forward to participating in for weeks now. I covered a lot of territory this year, starting at Bear Meadows and Alan Seeger Natural Areas with Alex and Steve. These higher elevation sites have extensive conifer stands so the hope was to find some less common species such as Ruby-crowned … Read More
Hawk Watching on a Frozen Landscape
It’s been a rough month. Late November and early December are probably the most challenging times to hawk watch on a cold ridge in Pennsylvania. It can be a clear, crisp morning in the valley, but as you turn into that last switchback on the crest of the ridge, there’s a chance you’ll be blasted with the low cloud ceiling of doom and a … Read More
Snake River Raptors
On Sunday, Alex and I had the day off and decided to head to Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, about 10 miles south of the town of Kuna, Idaho. Running along 81 miles of the Snake River, the area is known for high populations of ground squirrels, jack rabbits, and badgers, making the Snake River Canyon and … Read More
Buteos in Nebraska
For spring break, I headed to central Nebraska with several friends to attend a conference hosted by three ornithological societies. We weren’t entirely thrilled to be trading cold Pennsylvania weather for equally cold and snowy Nebraska weather but at least the waterfowl and crane migration was supposed to be a spectacle worth seeing. I didn’t get any photos since I … Read More
More Shiloh Rd Rough-legged Hawks
I stopped by the Shiloh Rd grasslands yesterday and a light morph roughleg was perched right in the interchange, oblivious to all the traffic around it. After a short scan of the extensive grasslands I only came up with one other roughleg, another light morph. This is the smallest number of roughlegs I have seen here in over a month … Read More
Woodward Rough-legged Hawks
This afternoon I headed to the eastern edge of Centre County to look for the Rough-legged Hawks that Joe Verica has been reporting around Woodward. It didn’t take long to find a couple light morphs but the real treat was two dark morph Roughlegs that were sharing a branch for a couple minutes. It’s been pretty incredible how many Roughlegs … Read More
Dark morph Roughie
It’s been a really good year for Rough-legged Hawks so far. I have seen 6 in Centre County and 5 more across Pennsylvania and they are being reported in many locations across the state. While there have been Rough-legged Hawks in the grasslands along 220, most of them have been brief glances or distant views. Most have also been light … Read More
The State College Roughleg
Maybe you remember the adult intermediate-morph Rough-legged Hawk photos that Alex posted earlier this month? There is currently a thread in the North American Birders Forum discussing that bird, with raptor experts Vic Berardi and Jerry Liguori both chiming in on the age/sex/morph of the bird. Here’s what Liguori had to say about Alex’s bird- Since there is a cline … Read More
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