Birding with Brandy

Instead of last Monday being our day-off, today Thursday, the 29th of September was our day-off. So no banding took place this morning, which was a pity because as soon as Brandon and I reached the banding area this morning we could see there were a lot of birds moving. First a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker flew past. Then Brandon briefly heard a Blue-winged Warbler singing. In the grass we could see a lot of Chipping and Song Sparrows foraging and in the trees there we plenty of birds around. We saw probably 15+ Scarlet Tanagers in total, foraging.

Scarlet Tanager

 While we walked on we saw 2 Northern Parula's, a few Grosbeaks, a Blackburnian Warbler, an Ovenbird, quite a few Black-throated Green and Magnolia Warblers and a Tennessee Warbler. While we walked back to the car a large group of Chimney Swifts had gathered above the ponds, probably over a hundred birds, impressive! 

One of the two Northern Parula's

The Blackburnian Warbler male. The bird foraged high up in the trees and the light was terrible so all I could get were these recordshots..

We had heard from Drew and Bob about a bog up the ridge in the nearby Linn Runn State Park and as we had a day off we decided to check it out. We drove there, through the wonderful Linn Runn State Park, with tall trees and creeks everywhere (that hold plenty of Louisiana Waterthrushes in summer).

High trees!

The bog

Trees in the bog 

Spruces at the bog, pointing to the east because of the inluence of the wind up the ridge!

Pitcher Plants; carnivorous plants, cool!

We didn't see much at the bog though, so we decided to head out to the Beam Rocks, which is a nice look-out of the ridges of the Forbes State Forest (which is in Laurel State Park, close to Linn Runn)

Beam Rocks

It is getting noticably colder and tomorrow will be even colder! It is very windy at the moment and tomorrow there is a high percent change of rain. So lets hope we're lucky tomorrow and hopefully we will do some good banding at the last day of September!