The rainy weather made perfect conditions for some waterfowling here in Center County today, so around 9:45am Anna Fasoli and I headed to Bald Eagle State Park. We were instantly greeted by 14 Tundra Swans, and the largest raft of waterfowl I have seen at BESP. We were able to find 12 species of waterfowl at BESP. All of the photos from today all taken by Anna Fasoli who was birding with me; visit her blog at: http://annafasoli.blogspot.
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On his Notes from Soggy Bottom blog, Bill Pulliam just posted a fascinating visualization of the spread of Eurasian Collared-Doves in the last couple decades. Using data from eBird, he compiled this animation of the range expansion between 1984 and 2010. The expansion is really quite impressive during the last ten years. One important thing to point out about the map, areas of gray indicate that people were submitting reports to eBird, but not reporting any collared-doves. The yellow are areas where no eBird reports were submitted from. Thanks to Bill for taking the time to put this together. Sounds like he is going to make similar maps for other species which will be very interesting.
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Since the weather was so nice (also read: “freezing cold”), Emily Thomas decided to try banding this morning. There was quite a crowd there from the local bird club, but unfortunately we didn’t catch many birds. The species we captured included Northern Cardinals, Dark-eyed Juncos, White-throated Sparrow, and House Finches. Here are some photos from this morning: Northern Cardinal (male)- all photos by Alex Lamoreaux Northern Cardinal (female) Dark-eyed Junco For more photos of the birds we have captured and banded at Sunset Park in State College, please visit this link to one of my photo albums.
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David Sibley has been putting up some interesting posts on bird ranges and migration based on banding recoveries. His latest post looks into the migration patterns of different subspecies of White-crowned Sparrows and questions the occurence of Gamble’s White-crowned Sparrow in the northeast based on information from recoveries. Follow the link below to read his whole post. adult Eastern White-crowned Sparrow White-crowned Sparrow subspecies – Where? by David A. Sibley There are five subspecies of White-crowned Sparrow, and in most parts of North America it is possible to see more than one subspecies during part of the year. Identification of subspecies is covered in the Sibley Guide to Birds and in Dunn et al. 1995. Maps of band recoveries (from the Canadian Atlas of Bird Banding) offer insight into, and raise questions about, two of these identification challenges: separating the two dark-lored subspecies, Mountain West vs.
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Today, I spent 8.5 hours counting migrating raptors at Jo Hayes Vista. Jo Hayes is on the border of Centre County and Huntingdon County, here in PA. It was a very slow day, with only 33 raptors flying past total. The highlight of the day (and also the first raptor I saw this morning) was an adult Golden Eagle at 9:45am. The rest of the day was less exciting with 29 Red-tailed Hawks flying past and 2 Cooper’s Hawks. Complete list and numbers are below the photos. Adult Golden Eagle that flew past at 9:45am; it was a little far away.
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male White-winged Crossbill I saw this on the Birdchat listserv several years ago and enjoyed it. And boy, are they true. 1) The older we get, the colder it feels while birding. Global warming is counterbalanced by personal cooling. 2) The possibility of seeing a Gyrfalcon is inversely proportional to the listing need. 3) Red Crossbills never land. Never. As in nada. 4) “It was just here 10 minutes ago.” (Note also spring, summer & fall birding rules.) 5) Boreal Chickadees respond to pishing. Once a decade. 6) Golden-crowned Kinglets have three distinct calls. Except when Brown Creepers are also in the area. 7) Cardinals will sing in the winter. Period. This is not an event, but a ruse. 8) Walk the snowy winter trail. Miss the bird. Walk back on the winter trail. Miss the bird again. Warm up the car, see the (potential) bird fly by, binoculars fog.
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I had already spent a good portion of my morning looking through the sparse waterfowl at Bald Eagle State Park and was planning on spending some quality time at Jo Hayes Vista, looking for Golden Eagles and Northern Goshawks. This was not to be. Soon after I left Bald Eagle State Park today I got a text saying that Joe Verica had found an Eared Grebe at Bald Eagle. Eared Grebe I managed to convince Justine to go along with me, so with her bundled up and her nose in a book I made my second trek to Bald Eagle today. The grebe was happily associating with a flock of Ring-necked Ducks when I got to the park, but when they took off, it seemed just as content swimming with the coot flock.
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On Friday, we caught three Dark-eyed Juncos in one net check. As you can see from the photo of the three together, they exhibited a range of feather colors on their backs. Ranging rusty brown to slate gray, the back color of our ‘Slate-colored’ eastern subspecies are the easiest way to determine the gender and age of the juncos. The bird on the left that looks like it was dipped in hot chocolate mix was determined to be a hatch year female by the bander, while the two birds on the right that have a smaller amount of brown are after hatch year females. female Dark-eyed Juncos- from left to right hatch year, adult, and another adult. Photo by Alex Lamoreaux.
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The last several times I was at Bald Eagle State Park there was a large flock of American Coots foraging, diving and rough-housing around one of the better vantage points looking across the lake. I think it is amusing to watch them jump out of the water before they dive under and then pop back out. I took this video early in the morning when the lake was too fogged over to see any other waterfowl, such as the Black Scoters that had been present the previous evening.
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This morning I ran over to Bald Eagle State Park to look for any waterfowl put down by all the rain we had received. I had read on the PABirds listserv of other good sightings in the western part of the state, most notably a Black-legged Kittiwake at Yellow Creek State Park. I didn’t find anything rare, but I did manage to pick up five new county birds, bringing me to 198 for the year. New county birds were Barred Owl, Greater Scaup, Lesser Scaup, Northern Shoveler and American Tree Sparrow. There was a good number of Ruddy Ducks there, and from the Lower Green’s Boat Launch, I picked out a Black Scoter hiding among them. Ring-necked Duck at Middle Creek WMA © Drew Weber The weather looks like it is about to change, hopefully bringing us larger numbers of waterfowl.
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