Peoples State Forest Beaver Brook Area Bird Walk – 10/15/22 – Submitted by Sylvia Halkin
It was a lovely autumn day with a blue sky and fog in the valleys on the drive to the park for our 9:30 start time. Our cars quickly filled the little picnic parking area, but Beaver Brook Road was wide enough for roadside parking, so we lined up along one side, and then gathered for a quick round of introductions. I was grateful that at least 4 people among our 19 were experienced HAS field trip leaders, very familiar with the park, or both, and for their bird-finding and ID skills and those of other excellent birders in our group! Many thanks to all my de facto co-leaders! We crossed a little bridge and walked down the road, quickly spotting a flock of White-throated Sparrows foraging under the yellow-leaved arc of a roadside blackberry vine. We lingered, listening to Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, a Downy Woodpecker, and Red- and White-breasted Nuthatches in the trees, with both species of nuthatches and a Tufted Titmouse periodically descending to forage on the road near the sparrows. Were they all collecting fine gravel bits to help their gizzards grind up seeds and tough insects? Or just checking out their fellow newly arrived companions for the upcoming season of safety in numbers as multiple species join up to forage in flocks? Merlin’s Sound ID app let us know we had not just a pair of Red-breasted Nuthatches, but a group spread through the trees around us; their calls continued to be part of the soundscape throughout the morning’s walk. After we identified the birds we could see and hear, we continued up the road; once we left the initial flock, the woods were relatively silent, demonstrating the non-breeding season birding phenomenon of either being surrounded by a mixed-species flock foraging in their species-specific ways, or being in the bird-sparse area between nomadic flocks. The first long boardwalk started about half a mile down the road from the picnic parking area, across from a signposted former junction with the Agnes Bowen Trail. The boardwalk took us over a wet area with sphagnum moss and other low-lying evergreen plants; shrubs and small trees including red-leaved blueberries, red-berried American/winterberry holly, and evergreen mountain laurel grew beside the boardwalk. A Brown Creeper was heard and seen, and a Black-capped Chickadee appeared in a bare treetop. In the woods at the end of the boardwalk, a second Brown Creeper was heard. Soon we came to a second boardwalk, shorter than the first, that ended at a platform over a pond with water lily leaves, a Wood Duck nest box (but no waterfowl present), and shrubs, small trees, and interesting grasses and sedges along the edge. A Northern Cardinal made a brief appearance, a small group of Yellow-rumped Warblers were foraging in the shrubs, an American Goldfinch was heard, and we spent a while watching a large praying mantis slowly making its way through a tangle of plant stems, its forelegs waving in the air and the aqua-green underside of its abdomen bright against the brown of the twigs and the rest of its body. We returned along the road, spotting a Hermit Thrush, a Barred Owl (which flew off toward the first boardwalk), and a Turkey Vulture flying overhead, in addition to hearing and seeing more of the populous Red-breasted Nuthatches, with their Black-capped Chickadee companions. We stopped while Chris Fisher used his PictureThis app to identify the beautiful peachy-orange large-leaved viburnum we kept seeing along the boardwalks and the road: hobblebush, with big flat buds for next year’s growth sticking up between the paired leaves at the branch tips. A small bear crossed the road far ahead of us and moved down the bank, long gone by the time we got there. Yellow-leaved sassafras and young tuliptrees kept our eyes busy as we returned to our cars and bade farewells. Special thanks to Sally Rieger for finding and guiding me along this great walk in the summer, and to Chris Fisher for keeping a count of the birds and reporting them to eBird, as well as helping me to lead this trip.
Bird species seen and/or heard, with approximate numbers of individuals:
1 Turkey Vulture
1 Red-shouldered Hawk
1 Barred Owl
2 Red-bellied Woodpecker
4 Downy Woodpecker
12 Blue Jay
2 American Crow
25 Black-capped Chickadee
10 Tufted Titmouse
18 Red-breasted Nuthatch
7 White-breasted Nuthatch
2 Brown Creeper
1 Hermit Thrush
1 American Goldfinch
3 Dark-eyed Junco
16 White-throated Sparrow
5 Yellow-rumped Warbler
1 Northern Cardinal
