Category: Trip Report (Page 9 of 18)

By Abby Wolcott

After several days of rain, the skies were clear and a handful of birders arrived at the trail head.  We headed down into the sanctuary.  We noted the lush greenery and before long a wood thrush beckoned us with his mournful, flute-like song.  We homed in on his call and he was cooperative enough to appear with his fetching spotted pot belly.  An assortment of the usual residents made themselves known including cardinals, red bellied woodpeckers, blue jays, chickadees, and tufted titmice.  Our route took us over the Billy Goat Gruff Bridge, and we scanned the trees for warblers and a yellow warbler posted up on a branch in the sunlight making the past days of deluge seems like a distant memory.  Further on, yellow-rumped warblers flitted in the treetops and a pair of phoebes kept ahead of us on the trail with their usual tail wagging and stellar posture.

We looped around admiring the wildflowers and gazed into the vernal pools which were quiet now that the peepers and wood frogs have found their mates.  By the pools, the elusive oven bird called and called and we craned our necks to see this jaunty fellow.  He had the last laugh by staying hidden, but we vowed to return again and seek him out.

Back over the bridge, we took a side trail to the south where trillium gave us quite a show with several color varieties. We admired the wildflowers and listened for spring migrants.  As so often is the case, when we were scanning the treetops, stories were revealed about birding throughout New England and beyond and my own list of places to bird grew with each story.

We trekked up through the pine trees where, appropriately enough, a pine warbler serenaded us. We knew we couldn’t stay out all day so we headed back around the small pond at the beginning of the trail and headed up the hill. With each step we were reminded of how fortunate we were to spend a morning in this preserve of over 80 acres which has been set aside by forward thinking people and cared for by the HAS.

The morning of April 30^th dawned cool, gray and drizzly.  In spite of the gloomy conditions, nine hardy birders convened in the Roaring Brook Nature Center parking lot at 6:30 am to search the forest and fields for migrants and for resident species.  After watching a “people=acclimated” hen turkey eating peanut bits on a picnic table, the group set out along the trail to the songs of a variety of species including house wren, Louisiana waterthrush and chipping sparrow.  The black vulture that comes to the Center every morning to visit the captive vultures was sleeping in today, so our group headed directly to the field edges that are often good for migrants at this time of year.  Along the way, we heard our first ovenbird of the season, and were treated to the song and a decent look at a brown creeper “creeping” up the trunk of an oak.  The field edges provided looks at a variety of species including a male eastern bluebird feeding its mate, and a phoebe looking for insects as it hovered over the field, then returned to its perch flicking its tail.  The songs of black-and-white and black-throated green warblers alerted us to a small warbler wave, but most of the birds proved to be the expected yellow-rumped warblers, one of our earlier warbler arrivals.  Traveling across Bahre Corner Road, we encountered a more sizeable group of warblers, but alas, the birds were high in the trees, and the visibility was so poor that the majority of the birds were nothing more than silhouettes.   We continued along the wooded trails, adding such species as blue-headed vireo, blue-gray gnatcatcher and pine warbler. It is evidently a good year for the Louisiana waterthrush on this property, as we encountered at least a half dozen of these birds loudly singing to stake out territories along Jim Brook and around Werner Pond.  We also enjoyed numerous woodland wildflowers blooming along the trails.  Returning to the Nature Center building, we went inside to shake off the cold and damp, and to add up our checklist for the walk.   One member of our group lingered outside but for a minute to check off the American robin that had, to this point, eluded us.  Total species for the trip was 31, and a full eBird checklist is available.

Jay Kaplan, Trip Leader

An 8 a.m. birding group started out with 13 attending and trickled down to 10 by the end of the 2+ hour walk. We entered Great Pond Preserve from its main entrance, which is located on the south side of Great Pond Road, Glastonbury. The walk covered approximately 1.3 miles. We had a slow start into the preserve. The group stayed put observing birds around the roadside entrance. This area can prove to be one of the birdiest spots, where in fact on our way out we did add our one Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Grey skies and chilly weather kept any warblers at bay and out of sight. It was difficult to observe the birds the first hour of our walk. Better lighting brought about improved looks. The Tree Swallows and Northern rough-winged Swallows as well as an Eastern Phoebe or two put a good show on at the pond near the preserve platform’s lookout.

• Ebird – from Cornell University, phone app as well as website org
• Merlin – from Cornell University, phone app as well as website https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
• Birdnet – separate database/software than Merlin’s, from Cornell University plus other research organizations. Phone app as well as website.  Based on citizen science, more accurate than Merlin.  https://birdnet.cornell.edu/
• Online bird guides such as Audubon, Sibley’s II, iBird, and the Warbler Guide
• Bird, Plant, and other Nature identifying apps:
  • Seek – developed by team with iNaturalist – gives identification answer immediately
  • iNaturalist- Uses a very large database and is a learning app – can be useful for identification but use with caution.  Has a worldwide database, shares photos with other naturalists, engages with others in the field, once something has been confirmed by two others, stores information in a large database.
  • AllTrails – helpful to find your way in the field
  • eButterfly – can be used to identify butterflies
  • Plantnet – for plant identification

Here is a link to the Birding With Your Phone video recording

Video of Presentation

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

Bird and Nature Hike at the Mary Conklin Preserve, Canton.  Sarah Faulkner led a 2-hour leisurely hike for both the Canton Land Trust and the Hartford Audubon Society on September 25th.  Attended by 14 people, we were treated to a sunny, cool and beautiful Sunday morning.  Many attendees were using apps to help with bird identification, such as Merlin and eBird.  Merlin helped us identify the calls of many birds, although not many species were found on this quiet hike. The group made numerous stops to seek birds or identify plants or other items in nature and had a wonderful time. The highlights included a female scarlet tanager, numerous catbirds, and Eastern phoebes. 

Bird and Nature Hike at the Mary Conklin Preserve, Canton. 

Sarah Faulkner led a 2-hour leisurely hike for both the Canton Land Trust and the Hartford Audubon Society on September 25th.  Attended by 14 people, we were treated to a sunny, cool and beautiful Sunday morning.  Many attendees were using apps to help with bird identification, such as Merlin and eBird.  Merlin helped us identify the calls of many birds, although not many species were found on this quiet hike. The group made numerous stops to seek birds or identify plants or other items in nature,and had a wonderful time.  The highlights included a female scarlet tanager, numerous catbirds, and Eastern phoebes.