There is a Northern Shrike hanging out at Upper Green’s Run at Bald Eagle State Park. It always seems to be perching by the road when I drive past there and I got this video of it the other day. Most of the time when I was watching it, the shrike was doing the characteristic tail bob but it seemed to stop when I started filming.
Read More
For everyone who is really itching for northbound migration to swing into action, there is some good news- the first Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have made it across the Gulf. The folks over at hummingbird.net are accepting sightings of hummingbirds so give their site a look and let them know when you see your first hummingbird. Up here in central Pennsylvania where there is still snow on the ground, the first hummingbirds are still about 2 months away but you can watch their progression northward on the hummingbird.net site. Ruby-throated Hummingbird Map- click to go to hummingbirds.net Make sure to check out hummingbirds.net and report your hummingbird sightings.
Read More
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 and I have to wonder if the big thaw we are experiencing is to blame. It will be interesting to see if more show up when winter returns next week. Looking at eBird it appears at first glance that mid-February is when Rough-legged Hawks start heading north and are reported less in Pennsylvania (Figure 1.).
Read More
It has been three weeks since I have been able to post about my trip here in South Africa. Internet access has been hard to come by and I have also been very busy. For this first post, I would like to mention some birding I did in the Cape Town area of South Africa at the beginning of my trip in January. My first five days here in South Africa were quite hectic. The 16 of us (13 students and 3 professors) officially arrived here on the January 19th, but we have been doing so much moving around that it feels like we are in still in the traveling process and I can’t wait to be settled into a specific location for a while.
Read More
David Sibley has put up a good post on identifying scoters by their silhouette. Why is this a good thing to learn? In David’s own words- The three North American scoters can be distinguished readily by details of the head and bill, but like many birds of open water they are often seen at a great distance in bad light, when details such as bill shape and plumage patterns cannot be ascertained. More subtle (but equally diagnostic) differences in silhouette then become important. I’d recommend heading to his site and seeing if you can tell the three species apart. I find the head shape and bill shape of the three scoters very distinctive, which is excellent for identification because these features are more consistent across age/sex classes than plumage. Check out some of Alex’s photos below to compare the head and bill shapes of Black, Surf and White-winged Scoters.
Read More
One of the most dramatic raptors found in Florida is the White-tailed Kite, Elanus leucaris. It is rare and found locally in south central/south eastern Florida. It is also commonly found from south Texas to California, and is rare along the Gulf Coast and to the north. Recently, its range has been expanding northward and along the Gulf Coast, although it is a non migratory species. From below, adults appear white in flight, with dark carpal patches and dark primaries, and show a long white tail that is slightly notched. From above, adults appear pale gray with a white head, have long pointed and relatively narrow wings, and show a black patch on the leading edge of the wings (which appear as black shoulders on perched individuals).
Read More
On my day off last week, I attended a “sparrow” drive at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park. This event was organized by the park biologist, Paul Miller. Birders and biologists from all over the region joined in, and Sam, Melanie, and Charles, who just started work on Scrub Jays at the bird lab at Archbold Biological Station, working for Shane Pruitt, were able to tag along. A sparrow drive is exactly what it sounds like. A long line of mist nets are set up, acting as a wall that sparrows cannot fly through. After the nets are set up, a line of volunteers walks out into the prairie (or salt marsh, as Alex and I did with Fletcher Smith last summer in Virginia), around the target area to be flushed.
Read More
This morning I chased the reported Trumpeter Swans on Bald Eagle Creek just south of Lock Haven. I almost missed them at first because they were both in the middle of the creek with their head and neck in the water and looked just like snow covered rocks. According to Wayne Laubscher, these are both adult Trumpeter Swans which are probably from the Ontario reintroduction program at Wye Marsh. The swans are for the most part very easy to observe because Creek Road runs right along Bald Eagle Creek. They did occasionally stick to the near bank which would make them hard to see as you are driving past. The swans also seem unwary of human presence and ignored me as they floated downstream close to where I was standing. Google Map of Trumpeter Swan location and Wayne Laubscher’s directions- From Rt.
Read More
After posting the graphs of eBird submissions in Centre County I ran through the View and Explore Data part of eBird and did the same thing for Pennsylvania. The comparison is interesting because it shows that quite a few people across the state have kept detailed lists and entered these historical sightings back at least several decades. If anyone has been keeping detailed lists in Centre County (or really any other county) I would be happy to help you import them into eBird. Any sightings from before the launch of eBird in 2002 are useful as they help to fill in the gaps. eBird numbers by year - Pennsylvania and Centre County The monthly comparison is interesting because in every month, eBirders across Pennsylvania report roughly 100 more bird species than do eBirders in Centre County. I think this would likely be the case for most counties in Pennsylvania.
Read More
Since it was launched in 2002, eBird has been providing birders with an easy way to keep track of their sightings and the satisfaction of knowing that their sightings will be contributing to the knowledge of bird distributions and occurrences. Broad adoption of eBird by birders has been relatively quick with over 100,000 lists submitted from across the country during January. Pennsylvania has typically been high in the rankings of lists submitted per state because of our large and active birding community. I made up a few quick graphs to show eBird use where I bird the most- Centre County. The first graph I made is the number of species reported to eBird during each year starting in 1990.
Read More