Hey everyone, it's Bobby from LycoBirds, and today I wanted to do a quick
mini field trip type video about SGL 252 in southern Lycoming County, Pennsylvania.
So, this will cover about a three mile walk over the course of about two and a half to three hours,
and you can see from the habitat photo, it's mostly some low brush on both sides of the
path and some medium height trees and a good at least two to two and a half miles of that
is similar habitat to this. Or in this section you can see there's a lot less of the of the trees
there and it's more just low brush with scattered taller trees. And the weather
was fairly nice; it was fairly calm winds and temperatures probably in the 60 degree area
for the start and maybe a little warmer than that by the end. And it did clear up quite a bit by the
end you can see that the sun was out and it was it was pretty nice for the the last maybe 45 minutes.
Overall there were some very productive patches, some really big mixed flocks, and then there
were stretches where it was fairly quiet. So, overall there were 16 species of warbler, and
you're not going to get too much better than that in central Pennsylvania, so I was pretty happy
with the outcome we also had a few notable species, which I'll get to in a minute. So,
let's start with some of the birds this is a Lincoln's Sparrow. We can tell that by the buffy
base color to the chest and flanks with the fine streaking, and kind of this buffy malar area and
buffy eye ring. You can see a couple more angles of this bird it was not terribly cooperative
but given that it is September 13, that's a tad bit early for for this area to be
getting Lincoln's Sparrows so this is just on the early edge of the of the migrants.
And here's another one of the notable species. It might be a little tricky to tell exactly what it
is from this angle, but if I switch to this angle you can see it's a vireo, it has that very yellow
or kind of a dark yellowish orangey throat that the color is most concentrated in the throat,
and the dark lores, here. So, this is a Philadelphia Vireo.
And you can see he was involved in a fairly sizable mixed flock -
mostly Red-eyed Vireos - that it was associating with, but it was a pretty active flock, and
they probably moved around for about 10 minutes and very active in the in the trees around us...
so that was that was fun to watch, and you can see this guy catching catching a bug there.
And then this is a flycatcher; you can tell by the upright posture. And you can see the
front here looks very yellowish - pretty much the whole thing. So, this is actually a Yellow-bellied
Flycatcher, and despite the name the yellow belly is not really what you want to be looking at at
all. Any of the related empid species can show a yellow belly, so on this one we will actually
want to be looking at the color of the throat. So it's maybe not the best name for the species
but the field mark you want to look at really is the throat and the level of contrast and color
between the throat and the belly, basically. So you can see on this one, they're basically
the same color and the bird's just overall very yellow, so this is a Yellow-bellied and you can
really see it, here, how yellow the throat is. On a Least Flycatcher, which is probably the
most similar, the throat would be more of a white color and more contrasting
with the belly in particular. You can see kind of the chest area is not always yellow. Often that
will have kind of a dusky color to it, so it's really the the throat color you're looking at.
And then a few warbler shots. So, if you're unsure of what this one is, you can zoom in a little
bit and you can see with this eye ring, kind of the yellow above the lore area, there, and this
very faint necklace... this is a Canada Warbler, and you'll see the adult males will have a much
stronger necklace than this, but a lot of the the females will have a lot fainter necklaces. And
it's always a good time to practice some accipiter identification. So with the long tail
and the short wings you can tell this is either a Cooper's Hawk or a Sharp-shinned Hawk. And
this one, with the very compact proportions, you have kind of the barring here in the flank area,
the wings almost make this s-shaped curve to the trailing edge,
the outer tail feathers are about the same length, often on this species you'll see a little bit of a
notch in the middle - that that's not necessarily always true - and tiny head. So,
this is a Sharp-shinned Hawk and this is actually, I think, the first one I've
seen this fall, so I'm probably a little late for me to be seeing my first one of the fall,
but in any case, here's a another angle, and you can really see the the compact shape of
the Sharp-shinned Hawk. And this warbler is appropriately named Black-and-white Warbler.
This is more of the female-type plumage, so it's a little more white than the adult males are.
And we will conclude with one more warbler species that might be a little bit tricky,
but in this light it actually makes it fairly easy to tell what it is. You can see
kind of this slightly darker color here in the head and neck that wraps around,
and this is actually a Hooded Warbler. So, if you are familiar with the adult male plumage,
it has a much darker hood here, but this is basically just a faint version of that.
So I hope you enjoyed this mini wrap-up field trip for SGL 252, and please give the video a like,
and subscribe to our YouTube channel. And also follow LycoBirds on Facebook for daily
ID quizzes and other bird content. Thanks for watching and I will see you next time.