The Nemesis Bird » Bird Sightings

Summer surveys

Drew — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 15:03:22 +0000

The summer has been busy so far, with road road surveys across a 20 county region in central Pennsylvania. Highlights have been Henslow’s Sparrows in Bedford County, Red-headed Woodpeckers in Franklin County and Blue Grosbeaks in at least four counties. I also found a male Dickcissel singing from a hayfield in eastern Lancaster County.

Most of the days I have been too busy in the morning to get any pictures of the birds I have been seeing, but I did manage this Savannah Sparrow that perched on the wire at the Mt. Pleasant Road pond in Lebanon County.

In the photo below, a Purple Martin perched on the same wire but I couldn’t manage as good of a shot because of how dark it is and the high amount of backlighting.

Blackpoll Migration thru Lancaster County

Drew — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:03:29 +0000

I felt like I was hearing a lot of Blackpoll Warblers earlier than expected this year so I dug thru some data on eBird and found that they are actually right on time. First reports start coming in the first week of May if you look at the average birds reported per hour over all the years that have been entered into the eBird database.

Click to zoom in on the graph.

It looks like we can expect the big push to come in the first week of June. I wonder if that first little bump is due to the excitement of seeing them for the first time, which wears off after a week or so.

Western Willets at Middle Creek WMA

Drew — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 01:27:31 +0000

Field Birds and a Merlin

Drew — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:58:28 +0000

I drove around Lancaster County farm fields near New Holland and Leola looking for any field birds I could find. Other birders have reported seeing up to 5 Lapland Longspurs in the Horned Lark flocks and there is always the possibilities of Snow Buntings as well.

I missed the more interesting field birds, but did manage to find several large flocks of Horned Larks that were pushed closer to the road and feeding on any bare strip of ground they could find. At one point, a merlin strafed the flock and perched on a post near me. All these photos I took out of my car window, holding the scope by hand.

Interesting Herring Gull

Drew — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:39:01 +0000

Today I spent a few hours searching for interesting gulls near the landfill at Tullytown. Lesser Black-backed Gulls were pretty easy to come by and I also saw a first-winter Iceland and a first-winter Glaucous Gull.

I then came across an interesting gull. It piqued my interest due to the dark area around the eyes, coloration of the bill and what I thought was a longer primary extension.

In the end, the pink legs and light colored iris point to this just being a well marked American Herring Gull. It’s always neat to see the variation that Herring Gulls are capable of. This bird is likely either a 3rd cycle gull or a 4th cycle gull, due to several darker tertials and the darker bill color.

Nest building Gnatcatchers

Drew — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:18:05 +0000

Yesterday at Speedwell Forge Park in northern Lancaster County, PA I came across a pair of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers building a nest and pulling material from the tent catepillars tent. I was able to get pretty close as they flew in and out and got some neat pictures and a video. Enjoy!

Disappointing morning at Marsh Creek State Park

Drew — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:16:25 +0000

I took some time this morning to walk around Marsh Creek’s trails in the hope of finding some warblers and other migrants. To my disappointment, the woods were very quiet with scarcely anything singing other than Gray Catbirds, White-eyed and Red-eyed Vireos. Blue-gray Gnatcatchers have really thinned out and it see like the the ones still here are breeding pairs.

The only warbler that wasn’t on territory were the Yellow-rumped Warblers, which nest in northern PA. Other warblers seen were several Ovenbirds, a Common Yellowthroat, Yellow Warbler and a Prairie Warbler.

Hopefully this weekend brings another big flight of migrants into the area.

Conejohela Flats Avocets

Drew — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:13:53 +0000

After an early morning of looking for warblers, I got an email about two American Avocets that were hanging out on Avocet Point at Conejohela Flats. After several years of checking out the flats regularly, I finally get to see an avocet at Avocet Point, fitting I guess. I didn’t have time to kayak out so I had to be content with viewing it from the boat launch which is about 2500 ft away from the spot where the birds were. Needless to say, with the long distance and heat distortion, I wasn’t able to get very good shots.

Migration schabang

Drew — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:17:25 +0000

Today seemed like the first real good day of spring migration, with a huge influx of new species. On a walk around Lancaster County Central park this morning I found four vireo species and eight warbler species as well as Scarlet Tanager and both Baltimore and Orchard Oriole.

I took this picture lasts year on April 30 at Homewood Preserve in Paradise, PA.

: Image by DaveMaherPhotos via Flickr

The other exciting thing today was the 277 Broad-winged Hawks that were streaming over the house and kettling to the north of me. It’s always neat to see a big group of Broad-winged Hawks, especially from the comfort of your own backyard. In addition to the broadwings, I also spotted two Cooper’s Hawks, an Osprey and two Northern Harriers heading north.

Harris’s Sparrow and Yellow-headed Blackbird

Drew — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:54:01 +0000

I ran over to Creek Rd before work this morning to look for the Yellow-headed Blackbird and to see if the Harris’s Sparrow was still around. Both birds were very cooperative, staying for a while at the weed pile along the road. The Harris’s Sparrow is molting in a lot more black feathers, as you can see if you compare it to Tom Raub’s original photo. The photo is pretty poor quality because it was taken through my binoculars as I was hiding out in my car from the rain.

The Yellow-headed Blackbird hung out at the seed pile with Red-winged Blackbirds and Brown-headed Cowbird. It was in and out while I was at the site, but wasn’t sure where else it was hanging out.