Northern Shoveler – LIFE IN THE LOWER SUSQUEHANNA RIVER WATERSHED

February 28, 2024February 29, 2024

Waterfowl on a Rainy Day

Though soggy, windy, and rainy, it happened to be a delightfully mild day to search for migrating waterfowl in the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed. Here’s a look at what we found temporarily grounded by the poor flight conditions…

It’s prime time for northbound Northern Pintails.

This raft of distant waterfowl appears to include mostly American Wigeons and Ring-necked Ducks.

A much more cooperative drake Ring-necked Duck.

A couple of American Black Ducks take a break during an afternoon shower.

A pair of Northern Shovelers in the rain.

And a pair of blissful Common Mergansers.

March 25, 2022March 26, 2022

An Encore of the Susquehanna Seawatch

In late March and early April, a rainy night and fog at daybreak can lead to an ideal morning for spotting migratory waterfowl and seabirds during their layover on the lower Susquehanna. Visibility was just good enough to spot these birds at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, most of them feeding at midriver.

A pair of American Wigeons head upriver.

A small flock of northbound Buffleheads.

Lesser Scaup, eight of the more than 100 seen along Front Street in Harrisburg at the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence. Note how the white bar on the wing’s secondaries becomes diffused and dusky in the primaries.

More Scaup, the lead bird with bright white extending through the secondaries into the primaries is possibly a Greater Scaup (Aythya marila).

Long-tailed Ducks, formerly known as Oldsquaw, are a diving duck that winters on the Great Lakes and on bays along the Atlantic Coast. They nest on freshwater ponds and lakes in the tundra of Canada and Alaska.

This pair of Hooded Mergansers may be nesting in a tree cavity nearby.

Peregrine Falcon Takes a Common Grackle — The local Peregrine Falcon grabbed a passing Common Grackle…

Bonaparte's Gulls — …prompting the more than 100 Bonaparte’s Gulls in the vicinity to quickly depart and fly upstream.

Birds of Conewago Falls in the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed: Northern Flicker — It pays to keep an eye on the trees along the shoreline too. Migrants like this Northern Flicker are beginning to come through in numbers.

January 16, 2021January 17, 2021

Snow Geese Arriving

With plenty of open water on the main lake and no snow cover on the fields where they graze, Snow Geese have begun arriving at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in Lancaster/Lebanon Counties. As long as our mild winter weather continues, more can be expected to begin moving inland from coastal areas to prepare for their spring migration and a return to arctic breeding grounds.

You probably need a break from being indoors all month, so why not get out and have a look?

Hundreds of high-flying Snow Geese descended onto the main lake at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area this afternoon.

Snow Geese and a few Ring-necked Ducks as seen from the Willow Point observation area at Middle Creek this afternoon.

The sound of calling Tundra Swans is music to the ears on an otherwise quiet winter day.

Dozens of Common Mergansers are at Middle Creek W.M.A. right now.

Look carefully and you might see American Black Ducks among the waterfowl in the refuge’s impoundments.

Northern Shovelers have been at Middle Creek since late fall. If they can continue to access the muddy bottom of the refuge’s lake for food, they’ll stay until the spring migration.

Check those flocks of Canada Geese carefully, sometimes you’ll find something different among them,…

…like this noticeably smaller bird, probably either a Lesser Canada Goose (Branta canadensis parvipes) or a Richardson’s Cackling Goose (Branta hutchinsii hutchinsii).

Don’t just sit there—don your coat, grab a pair of binoculars, and get out and have a gander!

November 28, 2020November 30, 2020

City Life: Gulls, Dabbling Ducks, and More

So you aren’t particularly interested in a stroll through the Pennsylvania woods during the gasoline and gunpowder gang’s second-biggest holiday of the year—the annual sacrifice-of-the-White-tailed-Deity ritual. I get it. Two weeks and nothing to do. Well, why not try a hike through the city instead? I’m not kidding. You might be surprised at what you see. Here are some photographs taken today during several strolls in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

First stop was City Island in the Susquehanna River—accessible from downtown Harrisburg or the river’s west shore by way of the Market Street Bridge.

From the middle of the Susquehanna River, City Island offers a spectacular view of the downtown Harrisburg skyline. In summer, it’s the capital city’s playground. During the colder months, it’s a great place to take a quiet walk and find unusual birds.

This Bald Eagle was in mature trees along the river shoreline near the Harrisburg Senator’s baseball stadium.

Ring-billed Gulls gather on the “cement beach” at the north end of City Island.

One of a dozen or so Herring Gulls seen from the island’s north end. This particular bird is a juvenile.

A Ring-billed Gull and some petite Bonaparte’s Gulls. Really good birders will tell you to always check through flocks of these smaller gulls carefully. It turns out they’re onto something. Look closely at the gull to the right.

A bright red bill and more of a crescent shape to the black spot behind the eye, that’s an adult Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) in winter plumage, a rare bird on the Susquehanna. Black-headed Gulls have colonized North America from Europe, breeding in Iceland, southernmost Greenland, and rarely Newfoundland.

Okay, City Island was worth the effort. Next stop is Wildwood Park, located along Industrial Road just north of the Pennsylvania Farm Show complex and the Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) campus. There are six miles of trails surrounding mile-long Wildwood Lake within this marvelous Dauphin County Parks Department property.

A flock of Killdeer at the south end of Wildwood Lake. From November through February, a walk along the south and west sides of the impoundment can be a photographer’s dream. The light is suitable in the morning, then just keeps getting better as the day wears on.

Is this probable Carolina/Black-capped Chickadee hybrid a resident at Wildwood or just a visitor from a few miles to the north? Currently, pure Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) nest in the mountains well to the north of Harrisburg, and pure Carolina Chickadees nest south of the city. Harrisburg possibly remains within the intergrade/hybrid zone, an area where the ranges of the two species overlap, but probably not for long. During recent decades, this zone has been creeping north, at times by as much as a half mile or more each year. So if the capital city isn’t Carolina Chickadee territory yet, it soon will be.

Another chickadee likely to be a hybrid, this one with some white in the greater wing coverts like a Black-capped, but with a call even more rapid than that of the typical Carolina, the species known for uttering the faster “chick-a-dee-dee-dee”. It sounded wired, like it had visited a Starbucks all morning.

In the lower Susquehanna valley, Carolina Chickadees have already replaced hybrids and pure Black-capped Chickadees as nesting birds in the Piedmont hills south of Harrisburg and the Great Valley. This Carolina Chickadee was photographed recently in the Furnace Hills at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in northern Lancaster County. The transition there was probably complete by the end of the twentieth century. Note the characteristic overall grayish appearance of the wings and the neat lower border of the black bib on this bird,

For comparison, a bird presumed to be a pure Black-capped Chickadee photographed earlier this month in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. This fall, “Black-caps”, like many other northern perching birds, are moving south to invade the lower elevations and milder climes of the Piedmont and Atlantic Coastal Plain Provinces. Note the extensive areas of white in the wings, the long tail, the buffy flanks, and the jagged edge of the black bib.

Along Wildwood Lake’s west shore, an adult male Sharp-shinned Hawk was soon attracted to the commotion created by bantering chickadees and other songbirds.

Yellow during the first year, the eyes of the Sharp-shinned Hawk get redder as the bird ages.

Also along the west border of Wildwood Lake, temperatures were warm enough to inspire Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta) to seek a sun bath atop logs in the flooded portions of the abandoned Pennsylvania Canal.

And now, without further ado, it’s time for the waterfowl of Wildwood Lake—in order of their occurrence.

A pair of Wood Ducks (hen left, drake right) with American Black Ducks and Canada Geese.

A pair of American Wigeons (Mareca americana).

You just knew there had to be a booby prize, a “Blue Suede” (a.k.a. Blue Swede), a domestic variety of Mallard.

It’s a Green-winged Teal (Anas crecca) sampler. Clockwise from left: a juvenile male, a female, and an adult male.

A drake and two hen Green-winged Teal. Isn’t that great light by late afternoon?

See, you don’t have to cloak yourself in bright orange ceremonial garments just to go for a hike. Go put on your walking shoes and a warm coat, grab your binoculars and/or camera, and have a look at wildlife in a city near you. You never know what you might find.

SOURCES

Taylor, Scott A., Thomas A. White, Wesley M. Hochachka, Valentina Ferretti, Robert L. Curry, and Irby Lovette. 2014. “Climate-Mediated Movement of an Avian Hybrid Zone”. Current Biology. 24:6 pp.671-676.

March 21, 2018September 4, 2019

It is the First Full Day of Spring…Isn’t It?

You remember the signs of an early spring, don’t you? It was a mild, almost balmy, February. The earliest of the spring migrants such as robins and blackbirds were moving north through the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed. The snow had melted and ice on the river had passed. Everyone was outdoors once again. At last, winter was over and only the warmer months lie ahead…beginning with March.

Common Grackles are often the first perching birds to begin moving north through the lower Susquehanna valley in spring. They often winter in large roving flocks of mixed blackbird species on the nearby Atlantic Coastal Plain Province. These flocks sometimes wander the farmlands of the lower Piedmont Province near the river, but rarely stray north of the 40th parallel before February.

Ah yes, March, the cold windy month of March. We remember February fondly, but this March has startled us out of our vernal daydreams to wrestle with the reality of the season. And if you’re anywhere near the Mid-Atlantic states on this first full day of spring, you know that a long winter’s nap and visions of sugar peas would be time better spent than a stroll outdoors. Presently it’s dusk, and the snow from the 4th “Nor’easter” in a month is a foot deep and still falling.

In honor of “The Spring That Was”, here then is a sampling of some of the migratory waterfowl that have found their way to the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed during March. Some are probably lingering and feeding for a while. All will move along to their breeding grounds within a couple of weeks, regardless of the weather.