Head on over to Rochester’s City Newspaper for my latest piece on bird migration and a local stopover ecology project.
The article opens with a scene from Braddock Bay Bird Observatory in western NY (west of Rochester), so I include some photos below of time I spent watching the banding operation last spring. More on that here.
American Redstart
Magnolia Warbler waiting to be extracted from the net
Banding requires a big heart and delicate fingers. Magnolia Warbler.
Warbling Vireo, I think...
Wilson's Warbler. Handsome devil, as dapper as Sir Topham Hatt.
* Kudos to City Newspaper for choosing to cover this important topic in such depth.
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Just found this…. I live near Buffalo NY…I didn’t hear one wood thrush this summer around the wetland woods behind our house…Michelle
Michelle,
Thanks for writing.
Sounds like you’re probably used to hearing thrushes — any ideas as to why the thrushes are not present?
I’ve only lived here for 5 years but I have heard them every summer. Maybe it was the wet cold summer that kept me inside more, but we also have been undergoing more building and some forested areas were cut down. Are they easily disturbed? –Michelle–
Wood Thrushes are on the Audubon Watchlist because they’ve been losing forested habitat — they breed in the interior as well as the edges of woods. Breeding Bird Survey data from 1966 to 1994 show a population decline of 1.7% per year across the species range.
So yes, the development pressure near your house may have been the reason you didn’t hear the birds–or not. But watch and listen next year, as it may have been a “blip” on the radar screen.
Have you ever considered submitting your bird observations to a citizen science database such as eBird.org? It’s a fantastic way to make scientific sense over time of our casual observations as birders.
Thank you for the info on the wood thrush. I will be on the look-out next year. I participate in Project Feeder Watch. During the spring/summer I do FrogWatch. I haven’t been keeping up with E-bird as there are so many things to watch during the summer… butterflies, dragons and damsels etc. So I am doing my Citizen Science thing..LOL.
Thought you might me interested in this blog post about a deformed black-capped chickadee that I followed last fall. The biologist in Alaska has been documenting these guys and this was the first one reported to her in NY.
Deformed Chickadee
Wow, it’s disturbing to know this deformed beak condition has spread this far over the years. FeederWatch is a great project for winter. I used to manage that program at Cornell.
Your blog is packed with good information. Seems your involved in many cool things.
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