Susquehanna County Birding Spotlight 2025
Friday Oct 17 to Monday Oct 20, 2025
For our third and final County Spotlight in 2025, we made our first trip to northeast PA and visited the county whose name honors the mighty Susquehanna River. We are privileged to be friends with Evan & Julia Mann who live there and know the right locals to call on to help us invade their home turf.
The county had 258 species of birds and 33,739 checklists on eBird, ranking them 50th and 29th respectively. It holds its own in rankings compared to some other areas only because of some really dedicated birders who love birds and their county. Their population is over 38k and the county has 823 square miles. Not sure how many lakes and ponds it has but we were all impressed by having one, it seemed around every corner.
I was glad, personally, to finally get to visit this county as well as Bradford on the trip as they were the last two counties of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties that I had zero birds in. It was a long time coming and quite rewarding to finally fill in the profile map on eBird.
I was joined by Tracy Mosebey and Jessie Sauder for the travels up Thursday afternoon, not realizing we would skirt thru Bradford (5 birds) on our way to the destination. After checking into my Airbnb at Cranberry Lake, we headed over to visit Michele Morningstar on her amazing property with stunning views. It was fun starting all of our lists from zero while there Thursday evening but we knew they didn’t count officially for the spotlight totals until midnight.
After a nice dinner with Evan, Julia, Tom Norville, and Michele M, we all went our separate ways. In the middle of the night, I thought I heard Great Horned Owls thru my rental walls, got up really early to get the day going and was rewarded with both Great Horned as well as Eastern Screech Owl. Being on the lake also got me Killdeer and Great Blue Heron. Our spotlight was off and running. Jeff Kenney and Angela Romanczuk let me know they got some good owls before the official count and we hoped they would find them again during the 4-day window.
Friday morning, I headed over to Evan’s house to join them for some local birding spots before our first official field trip at 1:00pm. Prior to meeting up with the group, SGL aficionados Jeff and Angela added Pine Siskin, two late Veeries, and a Ruffed Grouse persistently drumming. Tom Norville led us around to water and wetlands in the area. Our caravan of eight cars visited some water spots, then to some private fields where we saw 2 Eastern Meadowlarks and even heard a daylight Barred Owl. Another spot was a private farm where we hit the sparrow jackpot snagging House, Chipping, Vesper, Field, Savannah and Song Sparrows. We also had a Wilson’s Snipe land near our car, saw six Eastern Meadowlarks in a tree, Killdeer, Brown-headed Cowbird, and American Kestrel. Jeff, Angela, and Jessie headed out for some early owling. After dinner some of us went out again and we were able to add Barred Owl and Eastern Screech. Friday night when Joe came to our rental we got to enjoy some coyote calls. We ended day one with 66 species.
Saturday morning, we met at 8:00am for the D&H Rails to Trails hike with Chris Fischer leading the way. A nice sized group met for this 4-mile round trip walk. Several Ruffed Grouse were seen/heard flushed along the trail, which was a lifer for one of our southern PA attendees, Karen Cappeluti. Ring-necked Duck, Fox Sparrow, Purple Finch, Northern Harrier, Peregrine Falcon, Pine Siskin and a pair of Eastern Phoebe were all great finds. Jeff and Angela departed to continue their local SGL tour, which turned up a roosting porcupine. At 1:00pm we met at Betsy Manlove & Nick Bolgiano’s farm for a wonderful tour of hill and dale, complete with refreshments and conversation on the homestead porch.
After the second long walk of the day, several people split off in various directions, no planned dinners, etc. I know I was beat, so Joe and I went back to the rental along with Jessie and Tracy to do some evening/night birding on the lake and just chill. We were pleased to see Green-winged Teal, Wood Duck, and Killdeer. As dusk came and birds were leaving Jessie caught a Wilson’s Snipe flying out of the mud. The day ended with a few bats flying around the lake in the open sky. Day two ended with the spotlight total at 77 species.
Sunday morning, we met at 8:00am at Salt Springs State Park. Joe and I got to the park very early and both had some owls and early chirps here and there. Tony DeSantis led us as we did a bit of birding in the meadow near the main parking lot. We then shifted up on the hill to birding our way along the road. At one spot, chickadees and other birds were making a ruckus in some evergreens. Bird dog Joe went up under and yelled out “Saw whet! No joke!” It didn’t take long for the entire group to get under there and get looks and pics of the little owl. This was an outstanding moment of birding no matter when/where anyone is. It was a lifer for a few, county bird, state bird, year bird, etc. for all of us in some form. As we finished that walk, we got into some nice little flocks of other birds and high flying raptors that were just icing on the cake for the morning.
At 1:00pm we met Justin Mann at the Woodburne Forest Preserve for the last walk for many of us. As we made it down the path towards the water, we started seeing Wood Duck flying around. A flock of blackbirds had a number of Rusty Blackbird in it. We learned that Justin had been a kid birder/nature explorer under his parents wing from a young age, and had many lifers on the Woodburne site, and we also enjoyed gathering under a grove of old growth trees to hear stories of Justin’s research on how Black-and-white Warblers responded to playback–with the birds staying close to playback devices earlier in the spring, but then moving off as breeding season got into full swing. The wind was starting to pick up around lunch and it was forecasted for increasing winds the rest of the day. Day three ended with 78 species.
Monday some locals and one visiting birder visited a number of spots along each side of the river as well as SGL35. Evan led the group and before the rain started they were able to find Palm Warbler, Fish Crow, along with large flocks of robins, waxwings, and juncos.
We finalized the 4th day and the spotlight with 83 species from 167 checklists offering 22 species with pictures and 20 species with audio. These details can be seen from the eBird trip report at this link. https://ebird.org/tripreport/393421
These spotlights are really bringing people from all over the state, we had over 29 birders from at least 12 counties with Tracy M getting the award for coming the farthest, Fulton County. Some joined just for a day, some for 1 walk, some stayed a few nights and some stayed the whole weekend. These are so easy and laid back walks and trips. Some of our attendees even did their own thing at spots of their choosing.
So, this concludes the last spotlight for 2025, we have so much fun getting to new places, seeing old friends, matching faces to names we saw or heard and meeting new birding friends and contacts. We know we bring some tourism funds into the county by lodging, food, gas, groceries, etc. We enjoy seeing new landscapes, water features, hills, mountains, fields, and the like. We are so fortunate to have the birding web on social media and such to pull these spotlights together and we thank everyone who has helped or joined them in the past. We do not charge for these and we don’t require people to be PSO members. We do encourage them to become one as these are the types of things PSO does for their members and the general public.
I have had Evan, Joe, Jessie, Jeff and Tracy review this summary for me, so any mistakes are mine and anything that looks and sounds good can be credited to them. 2026 spotlights will be March in Huntingdon, April in Fayette and October in Potter.|
