March

It has already begun, this march to spring. I have heard the first killdeer. It squealed at Baby Dog and me this morning as we walked across the stone parking lot at Roundtop. The birds nest among the stones, and by April tiny balls of miniature killdeer fluff will be scurrying, almost invisible, around the lot. It is too soon, today, for nesting to begin just yet, but I think the birds are beginning to stake out their territory.

A friend is already reporting he is sick of the abbreviation FOY, which in electronic birding lingo means first of year. Birders reporting a new species seen in the current year frequently report the species is a FOY for them. March is the time when summer species begin to arrive. The killdeer was a FOY for me. I’m pretty sure I’ve already heard a FOY red-winged blackbird, but when I stopped to listen the call didn’t repeat so I didn’t record it.

This morning the light has improved with the clearing sky. The gloomy overcast is lifting. This winter has seen far too many low clouds and overcast skies for my liking. In years past I would have said they were untypical of winter days in this area, but the past several years have seen many like them, so perhaps gloomy overcast winter skies are no longer untypical. I hope these are only a momentary trend and not yet another sign of climate change.

February is over already, and though the last few days of the month were above normal in temperature, the month still finished out a full degree below average—below the average of the last 30 years, that is. If you discount the official “normal” espoused by weathermen and look at February temperatures over a longer time, 2013 is slightly above normal. The 1961-1999 average for February was 31 degrees, and adding in all the records I could find for Harrisburg, which are consistent back into the 1930’s before the data I found started missing some years, the average for February should be about 30.94. So this year’s average of 32 degrees is still above all that, if below the official “normal” of 33.

 

Babies

Yesterday was the day the babies of the mountain were out in force.  First, I saw these 7 Canada goslings, whose mother eyed me very suspiciously.  I don't know where dad was.  He's usually right there too.  Even a few of the babies are starting to develop that same suspicous look.

The second baby I found was the tiny killdeer.  Baby killdeer look so much like their parents that unless they are standing next to the parents, it's not always easy to see how small they are.  in this case, junior circled my car while mom screamed plaintively from the sidelines, trying to lure me away from baby.  Baby seemed a lot less worried than mom. Perhaps baby was testing his independence just a bit.

Early March

This morning when I took this photo, the sky was overcast and the sun was just starting to peek between the trees and rise above the horizon. The first blush of the day’s colors begins to tint the clouds. Few birds were yet stirring, and despite the time of year, the landscape still looks wintry and cold.

It was a surprise, then, when I first heard and then saw the season’s first killdeer, screaming and circling over the stone parking lot, which is bare of snow only because it has been plowed. March 5 is by no means my earliest record for killdeer. I’ve had them as early as the second week of February. But those sightings were not in years when I had the kind of snow cover you see in today’s photo.

Killdeer are frequently spotted through much of the winter in the southern part of my county or sometimes along the edge of the county where the Susquehanna River runs. Pennsylvania sits in what the range maps consider the summer-breeding range for the species. I am on the southern edge of that range, though, with everything to the south considered the year-round range for killdeer. As York County, where I live, is also along the southern border of Pennsylvania, it’s no surprise that killdeer can sometimes be found here throughout a mild winter. Killdeer don’t read fieldguides, of course, so they don’t pay much attention to range maps.

Still, finding a killdeer in January would be a good bird and worthy of note then, if not in any other month. And, Roundtop Mountain isn’t along the Susquehanna or one of the large lakes in the southern part of the county where such a sighting might be possible. The mountain hasn’t ever qualified as a good winter habitat for killdeer, even if you might find them nearby elsewhere. Even so, none of the birders I know would consider killdeer to be a harbinger of spring, but I think today I will. Happy Friday.

New Arrivals

Weather extremes and oddities continue on the mountain this weekend, though by now, I’m starting to think that "oddities" are the new normal. Ice has now given was to temperatures 30 degrees above normal, though that won’t last past noon today.

This morning’s warm weather has brought with it the year’s very first spring arrival. The fog is so dense right now I can see little up on the mountain, so today’s new arrival was heard only. The killdeer have arrived again! I heard several of them, at least 2-3. Obviously, they can’t have been far away if one morning’s warmth is enough for them to appear on the mountain. So perhaps calling them a "spring" arrival isn’t entirely accurate. They likely spend the winter hanging out along a nearby river, and today’s warmth and mud was enough for them to show up and see if their beloved stoned parking lots are still here. Last year my first record of them in the new year was on February 27.

Because of the morning’s high temperatures, in a way, I can also say I have a second new arrival--mud. Mud is everywhere right now. A layer of mud even coats the top of the rapidly retreating ice, making many areas very, very slippery. Tonight, the temperatures are to drop back to a more typical range for February, and if the muddy icy isn’t gone by then, it will be every slipperier than it is now. Dog and Baby Dog skid and slide on the muddy ice, and both normally have better traction than I do. I’m wearing "tire chains" on my boots and can get around fairly well. I much prefer snow to either mud or ice, though in the scheme of things, I think I prefer mud just a little bit to the ice.

I had to take this morning’s photo down off the mountain this morning, as up where I live it was too foggy for a photo. Sometimes foggy looks mysterious or arty, but sometimes fog is too dense for that. This morning was one of those times.

Snow in the Air

This morning snow is in the air. I can smell it, though I haven’t yet seen it. The air is raw, the kind of chill that penetrates, no matter how many layers of warm clothing I’m wearing. I don’t expect it will amount to much—a few flakes, a thin frosting on the ground at the most.

This scent of snow isn’t enough for the feeder birds to act like sharks in a feeding frenzy. On days when snow is going to amount to something, the birds hover around the feeder all day, emptying it ask quickly as I fill it. Sometimes they don’t even bother to fly when I approach with more seed. Today, they are acting normal, so I only give them the usual amount before heading off to work.

The temperature here has been steadily dropping since it began a descent on October 28, now 12 days ago. After the record-breaking heat last month, it’s taken that long, but now I am running about 10 degrees below normal on average. Oddly, the real difference hasn’t been in the nighttime low temperature, but in the day’s high temperature, which barely climbs 7 or 8 degrees above the nighttime low. Usually, the day is 15 degrees or so higher than the night temperature.

Perhaps it is because the warm weather hung around so long, but this morning I heard a killdeer in one of Roundtop’s parking lots. During the summer, close to a dozen haunt the dirt parking lots and pond edges. This morning I heard one call, expecting it to be the last time this year I hear its sound, but then I heard a second return the call. Today ties my latest record for this species at Roundtop. If I hear them tomorrow, I will have broken my 15 year string of records. Will this dusting of snow send them south overnight? Or not? Only tomorrow will tell.

Note: The photo was taken last weekend of what was the last sunny day of the week.

Good Morning!

I found this killdeer this morning in a parking lot at Ski Roundtop. Now that skiing is over for the year, the killdeer have moved in. This one looks as though it's eyeing up those stones as a potential nesting site. It wouldn't be the first time these birds have nested in the stones at the edge of this parking lot.

Yesterday, my morning of hawkwatching was a productive one. I saw harrier, sharp-shinned hawk, Cooper’s hawk and red-tailed hawk. It’s a bit early for broadwings, but it won’t be long before they show up.

I’ve become a lazy hawkwatcher. I used to race to Hawk Mountain, a 1.5 hour drive, then race the mile up the hill to the North Lookout. But no matter how much I raced, it was still 2 hours from leaving the cabin until I was officially looking for hawks. Now, I’m lucky if I have 2 hours total on a given day to watch hawks, and I’m not going to spend that driving. So I just go to one of the upper parking lots at Ski Roundtop where I have a good view of the open sky to the south and where the added altitude raises me at least several hundred feet above the valley floor. It’s not the world’s best hawkwatching site, but it can be pretty good and has the advantage of being close.

I had just driven back into the cabin from my hawkwatching when I saw a small bird flitting in the top of one of the beech trees at the end of the driveway. My first thought was that it might be a blue-gray gnatcatcher, an early bug-eating migrant. I raised my binoculars and quickly discovered something else. It was a golden-crowned kinglet instead—another early bug-eating migrant.

I started to walk slowly towards the end of the driveway, hoping for a closer view of this bird. This is a species that I don’t see every year at Roundtop, though they are likely around. These little birds are easy to miss, and since I have to work away from the cabin during the day to keep the roof over my head, I am likely simply not always here when they are.

But yesterday I was home. So as I was walking towards the first bird, I saw another little flit in a tree to my left. Another golden-crowned kinglet! I stopped and started scanning all the trees in this section of the woods, and I found a total of 6 golden-crowned kinglets. It’s likely there were even several more. I can be sure of 6 separate birds, so that’s my official number.

Spring has arrived!