State College Bird Club Meeting
October 23, 2024


Presiding: Doug Wentzel

Recording: Peggy Wagoner Saporito

Attendance: 28 in-person and 10 on zoom

Meeting Format: In-person at Millbrook Marsh and Zoom

Treasurer’s report: (Karen Kottlowski):

SCBC balance in the checking account is $4371.02 and savings account is $5578.65. This is membership season, for instructions to pay dues, check our website: https://www.scbirdcl.org/joinbirdclub.html

Earlier this month an audit committee of Ron Crandall, Susan Smith and Julia Plummer reviewed and approved the
treasurer’s accounting during the past year.

Bird Club Field Trips: (Kathy Bechdel - VP of Field Trips)

We have one more field trip scheduled for Nov. 17 at Bald Eagle State Park. (details on our website: www.scbirdcl.org).

Our field trip to Wildwood Park north of Harrisburg occurred on Saturday October 19. Eight of our members and four members of Appalachian Audubon enjoyed a lovely morning, birding woods and wetlands led by Appalachian Audubon member Rick Price. During the four hours we encountered 36 species including especially close-up views of a green heron hunting and feeding on small fish in an old canal. This was our first out-of-area field trip for SCBC in at least a decade. Thanks Kathy for organizing this.

Kathy will be developing the spring field trip schedule. Ideas are welcome, contact Kathy.
 
Announcements/Other Activities:

The Old Crow Wetland/Rutter’s truck stop saga is drawing to a close. An important public meeting of the Smithfield Supervisors on Nov 7 (5:30 pm, Smithfield Township building) will determine the outcome. For more details check the Coalition to Save Old Crow and look for an announcement through our listserv to join the meeting in support of the wetland.

Thanks again to Mandy Maguffy for allowing us to hold our meeting in the Don Hamer Community Room in the recently renovated Millbrook Marsh Nature Center building. The official public grand opening celebration of the new building will occur tomorrow evening, Oct 24, 6:00 pm.

The final Tuesday MMNC autumn bird walk series was led this week by SCBC members Alexa Sarussi and Susan Smith. Thanks to all members who led walks and anyone interested in leading is encouraged to participate in future bird walks.

Jon Kauffman and Nick Bolgiano will soon announce who they have selected as the official hawk watcher for the spring Tussey Mt. hawk watch.

PA Bluebird Society Centre County coordinator, Joann Taylor, reminds everyone with nest boxes to submit their 2024 nest box results by October 31.

Brady reminded us that due to the Thanksgiving holiday, next month’s meeting will be on November 20 at Millbrook Marsh Nature Center when Stephen Feldstein will discuss Birding in South Korea.

Outreach

Coty Ehrenhaus, Brady Thomas, Kathy Bechdel and Jon Kauffman are our newly formed outreach team. Coty shared news about SCBC social media presence that she and Brady have been recently working on and will continue to manage. They will use these platforms to reach both members and non-members, sharing our love for birds and the work and activities of the club.

Coty reactivated the Facebook page. We have 700 followers. Coty updates the page a couple of times per week with news of SCBC activities and highlights from listserv emails. If there is any information you would like Coty to share, or if you have beautiful photos you want to show please contact Coty. Likewise, if for any reason you would prefer Coty not to share on FB the information you share with the listserv, please let Coty know.

Brady Thomas set up an Instagram account, and following Joe Gyekis' advice, Brady and Coty also started a YouTube account where they can upload the speakers' talks, among other things.

The handle for these three social media platforms is "Statecollegebirdclub". Please, follow us and share with your friends.

Notable Bird Sightings (Joe Gyekis): (Sept. 26 – Oct 23, 2024; Centre and its contiguous counties)

The especially rare birds that visited our area over the past month included red-necked phalaropes, the returning rufous hummingbird near Spring Mills and wood stork seen at Jacks Mountain hawk watch.

Joe suggested that, similar to the Lycoming bird club meetings, perhaps we could try something new and open up the floor during this segment of our meeting so that participants can share some of their interesting or memorable sightings from the past month. These could include interesting behaviors observed, birds seen in unusual habitats, rare or surprising yard bird species, etc.

Observations described by participants at this meeting included the return of purple finches and massive flocks of grackles filling the sky around Canoe Creek State Park.

Nick Bolgiano described how unusually large numbers of broad-winged hawks past both Jacks (1500 BW) and Stone (400 BW) mountain hawk watches in October compared to past years. The 10 days of continuously cloudy/foggy drizzly weather at the end of September no doubt interrupted their migration that normally occurs through our area in September.

Joe Whitehead mentioned the new (un-releasable) raptors that are now housed at the Shavers Creek Klingsberg Aviary as wildlife ambassadors for education. Two rough-legged hawks, one light and one dark phase, have been formally announced to the public. The recent acquisition of a goshawk has not yet been publicly announced giving the bird an opportunity to acclamation to its new environment and role in life.

Speaker: Anne Johnson: “Birds Biting Bad Bugs: Birds as Predators of the Invasive Spotted Lanternfly”
(This entire presentation can be viewed at:)
https://psu.zoom.us/rec/share/K-e3YXGo5heO2XVF4dfaA9cQgVul08aqcSvIwkhnLblMiLjehnC9oD6SYs68nFcy.yCDePFMlrLjIyQ8g?startTime=1729725476000

Anne, who just finished her PhD at Penn State described her research looking at bird predation of invasive spotted lanternfly (SLF). These large plant hopper relatives of cicadas were accidentally introduced from southeast Asia into Berks Co. PA in 2014 and have already moved into parts of 17 states. They feed on a lot of different plants, both woody and herbaceous, but are especially damaging to grapes. Local vineyards have reported losses of $8,600/acre annually on older well-established vines and $30,000/acre in younger vines which were killed outright by SLF feeding and required complete replacement.

Like Monarch butterflies that sequester toxins from the milkweed they consume, SLF also store toxins in their tissues. Both monarchs and SLF have brightly contrasting coloration which helps predators learn to avoid these insects as potential food sources because of the ill effects predators suffer after the first time they taste the insect.

Anne’s research helped to verify that the widespread invasive species, tree of heaven, also introduced from southeast Asia, is in fact the preferred food source that provides toxins to SLF. Tree of heaven, introduced into the US in the 1700’s as an ornamental, contains quassinoid and indole alkaloid toxins, the same toxins found in SLF.

For Anne’s research she enlisted help from citizen scientist via a facebook page “Birds Biting Bad Bugs” where she asked for observations of SLF being eaten by all sorts of predators. She received 1300 unique responses which she analyzed to help determine which predators were eating SLF, their reactions to this prey source and what life stages of SLF were being consumed.

A little over 50% of the observed predation was by arthropods. Spiders represented the majority of reported predation followed by praying mantis then bees and wasps.

Birds represented the next largest group of predators. Chickens were the most frequently reported group eating SLF, likely due to observer bias since people have more direct interactions with domestic chickens than with wild birds. Among wild bird groups observed, predation by the cardinal family (mainly cardinals and some tanagers and grosbeaks) was most reported followed by mimidae, mainly catbirds, and finally corvids, both blue jays and crows. Few instances of mammalian predation were observed with chipmunks as the primary predator.

Birds were observed to experience less illness than expected. Both birds and insects were often seen removing SLF wings before eating the bodies of adults. Wings contain toxins, so this behavior may help limit the amount of toxin intake. Mammals on the other hand were frequently seen getting sick after eating entire SLF adults.

Early instars of SLF which feed primarily on non-toxic herbaceous plants tend to have less accumulation of toxins than later instars and adults which feed on tree of heaven when this tree species is available. There is some evidence that adults pass some toxins onto their offspring.

When tree of heaven is not available to feed on, SLF may have lower levels of toxin and be more palatable to predators. To test this Anne reared groups of SLF each on different food sources, (tree of heaven, maple, and walnut) to see if the tree species on which SLF fed effected palatability and wild birds’ ability to accept SLF as a food source. One experiment involved offering these SLF to nesting house wren and the other involved providing suet laced with these reared SLF to ‘feeder birds’.

Birds more readily consumed SLF reared on tree species other than tree of heaven. Removing tree of heaven from the landscape could increase predation by birds which could help limit SLF populations. Encouraging and supporting birds in your landscape by providing native habitat and avoiding use of pesticides will not only benefit birds but also the arthropods that also prey on SLF.

Anne emphasized the importance of avoiding outward-facing sticky bands around tree trunks used to capture SLF. These can entangle birds. She instead discussed inward-facing sticky bands and circle traps as effective alternatives. Contact Anne with questions: or facebook.com/birdsbitingbadbugs.