I’ve always appreciated the seasonality of birding. When you’re paying close attention to the goings-on in the world outside your windows, the annual cycle of nature is conspicuous and easy to track. This visible, reliable schedule has been a major boon throughout the pandemic, which has caused weeks and months to blur together and warp all perception of time. The … Read More
Churchill Photo Highlights
It was a cold, northerly summer for yours truly this year. Fortunately, that summer was in one of the bird world’s great locations – Churchill, Manitoba. I spent two months ~25 miles outside the town of Churchill at the edge of the tundra along the coast of Hudson Bay conducting research on high latitude nesting of Savannah sparrows and Yellow … Read More
Greater White-fronted X Snow Goose hybrid – Lancaster, PA
Yesterday evening while driving north along PA896, I noticed Snow Geese landing in a field near the road. As I drove past, I saw that it was a ‘small flock’ of only about 400 Snow Geese, so I hesitated a few moments about whether or not I should stop and scan through them for anything besides Snows. I decided to … Read More
New York Townsend’s Solitaire Plus More
This past Wednesday, Garrett MacDonald, Andrew Dreelin, and I birded in Madison County, New York. Specifically, we decided to chase some Evening Grosbeaks tending to a feeder near the town of Sheds, as well as a continuing Townsend’s Solitaire in Erieville. My classes didn’t start until 12:20 PM on Wednesday, so we were able to have enough time to try and get … Read More
Lititz CBC 2012
Tomorrow I am headed on a trip through MD, DE, and NJ so today was my last full day of birding in Pennsylvania for the year. 2012 has been a great year of birding for me in the state, with my highest state year list ever – 292 species. I guess I should have tried a little harder and tried … Read More
Cape May Trip – Part 2
This post is part of a series of posts about my recent birding trip to Cape May, which began at this link. As the tide began to rise, we knew it was time to head over to the southern point of Brigantine Island to see the shorebird flock that we heard had been roosting there recently. We arrived around 2:40pm … Read More
Unsuccessful Search for the Mountain Bluebird
This morning Chris Markiewicz and I drove over to Middle Creek WMA to search for the Mountain Bluebird that was found there a few days ago. This would have been a new PA state bird for me but unfortunately we did not see it. We left around 10:00am and there were still birders around searching for the bluebird. If I … Read More
Golden-crowned Sparrow and Orange-crowned Warbler – Chesapeake Farms, MD
After chasing (and finding!) the Northern Wheatear this morning, Klye Aldinger, Ian Gardner, and I drove about an hour farther south to try and find the Golden-crowned Sparrow. This is a west coast species that is very rarely seen in the East. I was really doubting we would see it. It seemed like it wasnt very reliable and all birders HAD to stay … Read More
Return of the Waterfowl
Ducks, geese, grebes and loons are coming back which is exciting as it is one of the groups of birds that I am largely missing from my Centre County bird list, having moved to the area too late to catch them on their northbound migration in the spring. I just added both Red-necked Grebe and Black Scoter to my county … Read More