In mature forest and scrubby areas we'll look for overwintering resident birds, lingering migrants such as Hermit Thrush and special winter visitors such as Evening and Pine Grosbeaks, White-winged and Red Crossbills and Bohemian Waxwings.
This trip will be a leisurely winter walk along rolling trails (approx.1-1/2 miles) featuring some very close looks at our winter passerines!
Laura Erickson will talk about how courtship, mating, and parenting vary wildly among different birds, from the lifelong devotion of American Crows to the dalliances of Eastern Bluebirds, from Bald Eagles’ focus on home improvements to the female Ruby-throated Hummingbird’s Rosie the Riveter’s lifestyle.
We’ll search the Nations Road area, looking for Northern Shrike, hawks, Snow Bunting, and other birds of the fields and farmland in winter.
A driving tour of the farm fields and open lands to the west of Rochester, this trip will search for Snow Buntings, Lapland Longspurs, Northern Shrikes, and hawks in the plains and country roads of western Monroe and Orleans Counties.
Grassland birds show some of the most dramatic population declines in North America as a result of habitat loss and intensive agricultural management. Allan Strong has studied Bobolinks and Savannah Sparrows in the dairy country of Vermont’s Champlain Valley since 2002.
We will look for Long-tailed Ducks, mergansers, scaup and others that may be present. We will then drive over to Summerville and Charlotte to see what is in the river.
Many area birders have been fortunate and delighted to observe Common Redpolls, as well as a sprinkling of other winter finches this season; colorful visitors from the North.
This extensive driving tour of the large natural area to our northeast always turns up some great birds! We’ll look for unusual ducks, late winter birds, and interesting migrants like Fox Sparrows.
We’ll look primarily for our smallest visiting owl, the Northern Saw-whet, which returns to this spot on a yearly basis. Long-eared Owls generally put in an appearance, too, although they’re quite shy and great at hiding.
Alicia Rae Brunner will first talk about her Masters project, in which she studied Swainson's Warbler winter ecology in Jamaica and demonstrated how individuals modified their space use in response to rainfall change throughout the nonbreeding season.
This will be an evening trip for woodcock courtship flight. If you’ve never seen this spectacle, prepare to be amazed: birds call noisily from the ground in grassy fields before spiraling rapidly up high, descending back down in a zigzagging noisy frenzy, only to start the cycle anew. An amazing sight!
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