|
|
Return to Big Day List |
PA Big Day Details |
| Date | Jun 02, 2007 | ||||||
| Number | 133 | ||||||
| # Seen by All | 132 | ||||||
| Area | State | ||||||
| Time | 0130 to 2030 | ||||||
|
|||||||
| 338 Miles by car, 4.5 miles by foot. Visiting: Quakertown Swamp, Owl Creek,Wild Creek & Penn Forest, Long Pond, Tobyhanna SP, Promised Land SP, Delaware Water Gap NRA, Lehigh Valley, John Heinz NWR. Species of note: Least Bittern (R), Semipalmated Plover (L,S), Northern Saw-whet Owl (R,S), Golden-winged Warbler (R,S), Mourning Warbler (R,S). On Saturday, 2 June, Billy Weber and I (Mike Tanis) enjoyed a thrilling Big Day of birding in eastern Pennsylvania. We sensed that things were going well when we started off with three Golden-winged Warblers at Hatchery Road in Carbon County. When we cleaned up the Pocono specialties at Tobyhanna State Park,we knew things were going well. But the cherry on the top was finding an unscouted Winter Wren at Promised Land SP,which eliminated a time-consuming heat-of-the-afternoon walk to the only other known WinterWren on our route. Billy deserves virtually all of the credit for planning this route, which was based on a day of birding that he and his father did a few days prior. Originally I felt that Ricketts Glen SP would have been an excellent starting place for a Big Day in June. But this route was far more compact, and allowed for a lot more birding and less morning driving than a start from Luzerne County. Although we still missed several breeding birds that we had no excuse missing, we won’t dwell on the negatives after such a day! Highlights: - Our first two woodpeckers were Pileated and sapsucker; our fourth was Red-headed Woodpecker. Ultimately we squeaked out a couple of Downies at Tinicum at the end of the day, but lacking a Hairy, we failed to sweep the woodpeckers. We got: Four wrens, including Marsh and Winter wrens; both nuthatches, although for probably the first time in our lives we resorted in desperation to playing the iPod for White-breasted; all 26 warbler species that we expected, including Canada, Nashville, Yellow-rumped, chat, Mourning, Cerulean (seen well for once), and the aforementioned Golden-winged group (we didn’t have a scouted Kentucky Warbler which was accordingly missed); and Vesper & Savannah sparrows, Horned Lark, Bobolink, Meadowlark. The only holdout of the grassland species was Grasshopper Sparrow, which we missed at two scouted locations. Eight flycatcher species boosted the list; Willow Flycatchers were heard at several locations from the north to the south of our route. For the first time ever in several nighttime visits over a few years, I heard a rail (Virginia) at Quakertown Swamp; we also had Least Bittern cooing in the marsh there. Screech-owl and Whip-poor-will were present at Owl Creek. Surely the highlight of our day was receiving a response from a saw-whet! Bald Eagle, Peregrine, kestrel, Broad-winged, Red-tailed, Red-shouldered, and Osprey filled out a good list of birds of prey. It was disappointing and a little surprising to find no accipiters at all.We got five swallows,missing Purple Martin for a sweep. The only serious gaps in our list were shorebirds (only three recorded: Killdeer, Semipalmated Plover, Spotted Sandpiper) and gulls (only Ring-billed). Our next June attempt will certainly have to include a boat trip to the Conejohela Flats on the Susquehanna River. But it was just a fantastic day of birding, in which most of the “expected” birds showed up just where we were looking for them. | |||||||