After spending the morning running after White-winged Crossbills and Rough-legged Hawks around Lancaster with my dad, I arrived home to see an email saying that a Western Grebe had been found earlier and was still being seen near Mechanicsburg, PA. This is a pretty good record for PA and its been a couple years since I saw Western Grebes in Montana so I took off right away.
When I got there, the Western Grebe was swimming a couple hundred feet down the creek from the access, so I got pretty good looks but it wasn’t close enough for great pictures. It was hanging out with a Red-necked Grebe which provided an interesting comparison.
The grebes are hanging out in the Conoduguinet Creek and you can see the exact location in the map below. The owner of the house there is allowing birders to park in her driveway as long as they leave room for her to get in and out. Don’t park along the road.
[umap id="23420" w="512px" h="320px" size="c" alignment="center"]
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Nicely done!
Good job on the photos!
I used to fish in this creek when I lived in Chambersburg.
Man, I hope this bird hangs around for a few days. Colleen and I hope to see it on Wednesday when we head up to MA to visit a couple friends from Messiah College. I was really bummed that we didn’t find the LeConte’s on Friday, and it just added insult to injury to see that it was found today! Grrr! According to Dave DeReamus this would be the first record of Western Grebe for PA.
Good luck, its been pretty easy to find.
As I said, we saw the bird at 7:45AM on Thursday. What a great bird for PA! Also, thanks for the map. I was able to briefly see the Varied Thrush too after about 30-40 min. Unfortunately, Colleen missed it because she went to the car to warm up. I did get one other lifer on the trip up, which was a Black-headed Gull at East Shore Park, CT. Nice crossbill pics.