Since early in 2014 my work has required me take several trips to Pittsburgh which is a location I haven’t traveled to in quite some time. Pittsburgh is only about a 90 minute drive from some good birding areas in northern WV, and since I’ve needed to work on my WV state list, of course I’ve squeezed in a bit of WV birding time on these trips. I started 2014 right at the old ABA reportable threshold for WV. And then with a trip in March, I added 8 new waterfowl even though I had just 1 hour of birding time. Then with a late afternoon in April I added 3 more – putting me 11 over the old threshold. My somewhat arbitrary goal is to be 15 over threshold in each state (to stay above that limit hopefully forever), so only 4 more to go. My next trip was in early May quite well timed during passerine migration. So I connected with my Morgantown, WV birding friend Terry Bronson and he developed a plan to help me find some of my possible statebirds. I had a couple hours in the evening and much of the next morning for birding time, so I was hopeful that I could get maybe 2-3 new statebirds.
I met Terry near dinner time of the first
day and he greeted me with his list from that morning – it had been a major
fallout in Morgantown with 8 birds that would have been new for my
statelist. Unfortunately I was 12 hours
too late. But maybe some would stick
around. We went right to Core Arboretum
where Terry had all his birds that morning, and began to retrace his
tracks. The first area was where he had
had a Cape May, several Swainson’s Thrushes, and a Least Flycatcher, but we
dipped on all three. We did have the
first of several Nashville Warblers there though - new statebird #1. We continued to bird the park, finding a
reasonable number of migrant warblers, but still missing all those great birds
Terry had that morning. We eventually
made our way down to the river where Terry had his best bird of the morning – a
Forster’s Tern – a nice bird for WV. We hiked
to the buoy in the river where it had perched that morning, and amazingly it
was still there (#2). I’ve now seen
Forster’s throughout most of the country (see my statebird map below).
A little later we finally found one of the
several Spotted Sandpipers Terry had had along the streambank (#3). We ended the day with another unsuccessful
try for Great Horned Owl (my nemesis bird in WV). So although the 3 new statebirds were already
what I had hoped for during the trip, we still missed 5 birds Terry had earlier
in the day.
We started early the next morning to
ominous skies, and decided to try Core Arboretum again to see if it had been
another good migration night. There were
less birds there than the day before, but there were some migrants so we didn’t
give up hope. Then I noticed a large
bird fly in – it was a Black-billed Cuckoo (#4). WV was the last “hole” in the northeast part
of my statebird map for Black-billed.
And a few minutes later we found a
Swainson’s Thrush (#5) in the same area where Terry had them the day
before. We were still birding the park
when it started to rain, and when a bolt of lightning hit the ground close
nearby we headed back to the safety of the car.
We decided to make our way south to get
away from the rain, and we headed to Pritchett Fort State Park. There were almost no migrants there at all,
but there was a nice collection of breeding species including great looks at
Yellow-throated Warbler.
With just a couple more hours available
before heading back to work, we decided to go to Little Indian Creek WMA, which
is a reclaimed coal mine revegetated in grasses and some small emergent trees. One of the targets Terry was hoping for here
was Palm Warbler, and soon after reaching the park we found our target. I had a brief glimpse of a warbler in the distance
in some grasses flicking its tail, and after a little searching, we found not 1
but 2 western Palm Warblers (#6). WV was
my last eastern state for this species.
As we continued walking through this very
birdy park, we noticed many tent caterpillar nests. And soon we began to see and hear Black-billed
Cuckoos. Several times we watched them
chowing down on big hairy caterpillars.
We conservatively estimated that we saw 3 birds, and along with the 4th
one at the arboretum, that was very likely more Black-billed Cuckoos than I’ve
ever seen in one day. Two different
times we also saw female Prairie Warblers fly into a caterpillar nest, and
gather the silk from the web for nesting material. Very cool.
Our time was almost up so we headed back
toward the car. Although we were
chatting along the way I faintly heard a brief call that sounded like Least
Flycatcher. But this area certainly is
not a typical heavily wooded located for Least Fly. Nonetheless, we stopped to listen, and both
of us heard it call several more times (#7).
That was quite a surprise. My
statebird map for Least Flycatcher shows some big gaps in the southeast, though
otherwise pretty good coverage across the country.
We ended our WV birding with 87 species,
including 19 warblers, and most importantly, 8 new birds for my WV state
list. Way over my hoped for 2 or 3. And with 196, my WV state list is 18 over the
old ABA threshold an in theory secure for a long time to come.
As I was heading back to Pittsburgh I
started to wonder if there might be any migrants I might need for my PA
list. I’ve got a pretty good list for PA
since I lived there for 4 years, but after checking my lists I remembered that I
still needed Nashville Warbler for PA. And
since we heard and saw several in WV, maybe that one might be feasible to try
for in PA. However, the first problem
was that at most I could only squeeze in an hour or two of birding starting at
dawn the next day. Plus, since I had
never birded in Pittsburgh, I’d have to find a good spot for migrants. I looked on the map and found a small
suburban park called Robin Hill Park that seemed nice and was nearby. So I had a plan.
I arrived at Robin Hill Park just after
dawn and was greeted with a singing Hooded Warbler – a nice start. I then noticed some warblers feeding at the
top of an oak tree, and after wading through some Yellow-rumps and
Black-throated Greens I picked out a Nashville Warbler – success! I ended up with 2 other Nashville’s over the
next hour. Now that I’ve seen Nashville
in WV and PA, my statebird map pretty well matches the typical range map for
this species, which is common in much of the country except the heart of the Rockies
and the southeast.
I also got several warblers we didn’t have
in WV, including a Bay-breasted that I didn’t need in PA but did need in
WV. Ugh!
I also got an Orange-crowned, which is a good spring bird in PA though
not a new one for me. That gives me 239
for my PA list.
