State College Bird Club Meeting
February 26, 2025


Presiding: Doug Wentzel

Recording: Peggy Wagoner Saporito
 
Attendance: 20 in person/35 on zoom

Meeting Format: Hybrid: In-person (Millbrook Marsh Nature Center) and Zoom.

Thanks again to Mandy Maguffey and Millbrook Marsh for allowing us to use their lovely community room as our meeting space.

Treasurer’s report:(Karen Kottlowski):

SCBC account balances: checking: $4386.02 and savings: $5579.45.

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

The slate of six field trips coming this spring are listed on our website (www.scbirdcl.org). Kathy also sent an email on Feb 26 listing these trips for a quick reference. She is also working on 2 additional field trips during the summer with Jon Kauffman.

Joe Gyekis reminded everyone that there will be an Arboretum walk tomorrow morning, Wednesday, Feb 27 at 8 AM.

The Tuesday weekly bird walks led by SCBC members will be held at Millbrook Marsh beginning April 1 through May 6 from 8-9:30 AM.

Announcements/Other Activities:

Thanks to the work of Jasmine Fields (State College Sustainability coordinator), Coty Ehrenhaus, Joe Gyekis and others, State College is now officially designated as a “Bird Town” through an Audubon initiative to promote bird friendly practices, organize educational activities and build partnership with local conservation groups.

Thank you to Kathy Bechdel and Karen Kottlowski for their participation in “State College Reads”. The February theme was Animal Adventures.

Other outreach activities in which SCBC members can be involved, include the State College Earth Day celebration at which SCBC will have a table.

SCBC is partnering with Millbrook Marsh Nature Center during the Birds and Bagels event at the end of March.

If interested in helping with any of these events, contact Doug Wentzel.

Doug thanked Bob Fowles for his work to maintain our website and reminded us of the interesting topics sent by email from the listserv and including:
•    Nick Bolgiano’s photos of the spectacular Columbian birds from his recent trip.
•    Joanna Taylor’s reminder to clean out bluebird nest boxes because bluebirds are   beginning to select nesting sites now.
•    Daily updates from Tussey Mountain hawk watch.
•    Shared memories of Dorothy Bordner a long time and prominent SCBC member who recently passed.

Doug also pointed out that tonight’s presentation is the first where our speaker was on zoom and we had both an in-person and zoom audience. All went smoothly, thanks to Brady’s technical skills.

Tussey Mountain Hawk Watch

Jon Kauffman discussed the joint support of SCBC and Shaver’s Creek for the hawk counter during each spring migration season. He introduced this year’s counter, Adam Bradley.  Adam described in detail the highlights of his first week on the job including a total of 24 golden eagles seen so far. During each day on the mountain, Adam will be using the app, Trektellen, which provides updates to HawkCount.org website every few hours. Anyone who would like to check in real time how the day’s flight is going can check the updates at: https://www.trektellen.org/site/info/4394. He encouraged bird club members to visit him on the mountain and to help spot migrating raptors. He reminded us that peak golden eagle migration usually occurs during the first three weeks of March, especially on good south wind days.

Notable Bird Sightings (Greg Grove): (Jan 23- Feb 26, 2025; Centre and its contiguous counties)

Interesting waterfowl in the area included Ross’s and greater white-fronted geese mixed in with flocks of snow geese in Union County as well as 3 trumpeter swans that have been hanging out behind the Comfort Inn in Huntingdon. Greg reminded us to be on the look out for tundra swans that will be showing up in our area. Others of note included white-winged scoter and long-tailed duck.

There have been a couple of Sandhill cranes near Bellefonte. Greg also alerted us to reports of 1500 dead Sandhill cranes in southern Indiana, suspected causalities of highly pathogenic bird flu. If you find a dead bird, do not handle it, but report it to the PA Game Commission.

Wilson’s snipe and pied-billed grebes have been reported. Be on the lookout for red-necked grebes that may be moving into our area because their normal wintering area, Lake Erie, is completely frozen over.

More than usual numbers (when compared to the past 5-10 years) of rough-legged hawks have been reported this winter. The short-eared owls at Metz Road near Mifflintown are still here. Merlins and peregrine falcons have been reported around towns such as State College, but only one report of northern shrike during the past month.

Lots of reports of ruby-crowned kinglets and hermit thrushes have been submitted, such that they are almost not considered rare winter birds now. Of the warblers, a few yellow-rumped and pine have been seen during the past month.

Thanks to Joe Gyekis, big numbers (in the thousands) of robins have been reported over the last month in State College.

It has been a good year for reports of purple finches, but very few pine siskins and redpolls. Large flocks of goldfinches are being seen now and some snow buntings.
The first fox sparrow was reported three days ago. The highly unusual Bullocks oriole in Juniata County is still around and a few rusty blackbirds have recently been recorded.

Speaker: Carl Engstrom: “Understanding Landscape and Habitat Associations for an Imperiled Songbird.”

Carl Engstrom, a State College native, grew up with a love of birding fostered by his parents and the greater central Pennsylvania birding community. He attended Penn State graduating with a major in Biology and a minor in Wildlife and Fisheries Science. Carl has also assisted with numerous avian research projects. For this presentation, Carl described his recent research focused on understanding Cerulean Warbler breeding habitat selection in Ohio as part of his Master of Science degree at The Ohio State University.

Cerulean warblers (CERW) are among the bird species that have suffered serious population declines since 1970. They are long distant migrants, spending winters in Central and South America and breeding in the northeastern portion of the US. Fortunately, since around the year 2000, their decline appears to have leveled off, though some areas have seen steep declines and a few areas have seen population increases.

The breeding habitat favored by CERW is large intact mature forest patches that include trees of different ages and heights, including tree-fall gaps, which create a diverse canopy structure. They appear to favor steep mesic (moderately moist) slopes. This sloping landscape contributes to the creation of a diverse canopy. CERW also show a preference for white oaks.

Although central PA and southeast West Virginia have large forest tracts, these areas were clear-cut logged in the past and now contain evenly aged trees which fail to create the diverse canopy favored by CERW. Additionally, fire suppression in these forests have favored shade tolerant maples to the detriment of shade-intolerant oaks.

In Ohio, there has been an increase in forested areas since 1940 as farmland was abandoned, providing additional potential habitat. Carl’s study was focused on three State Forests in southeastern Ohio which he designated as the northern region (Vinton and Zaleski SF’s) with rolling hills and southern region (Shawnee SF) near the Kentucky border with steeper topography and deeper valleys.

To estimate populations, Carl conducted 207-point surveys, listening for CERW calls and songs twice during the 2023 and ’24 breeding seasons. He also determined a large variety of landscape and vegetation variables which he used to analyze CERW preferences in his study areas.

Carl found that CERW preferred steeper slopes with denser understory cover which provides post-fledgling habitat for young birds. Interestingly, there was a negative relationship between mid-story cover, with lower populations of CERW in areas with higher mid-story cover.

His findings reflected regional landscape differences with more CERW in Carl’s southern study area where slopes are steeper as compared to the more gentle landscape in his northern study area.

Since CERW are selective for specific forest structure and species composition, forestry management could create favorable conditions to increase CERW breeding. Management could include selective harvest to create tree-fall gaps and reduction of shade to promote oak regeneration.

Carl ended his presentation with an interesting comparison between southern Ohio and PA forests that he noted during his time conducting this research. Among the bird communities, Ohio has no ravens and ruffed grouse are nearly extirpated from the state, but they do have chuck-will’s-widows, summer tanagers, yellow-throated and Kentucky warblers, all species that are rare to nonexistent in PA. Southern Ohio does not have a stable black bear population but bobcats are plentiful. Vegetation includes sourwood, buckeye and pawpaw, typically not seen in PA, but they have no hemlocks or rhododendron as we have here.