Monday, May 19, 2014

7 Statebirds in WV and 1 More in PA, May 2014


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.

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