Birding Pine Creek Gorge

We did our little bird walk along the Darling Run stretch of the Pine Creek Rails-to-Trails this morning. The day was very, very chilly with a starting temperature at 8:30 AM of 25 degrees and ending temperature at 10:30 of just 35 degrees. That latter temperature is misleading, however, as the sun doesn’t penetrate the bottom of the gorge on which the trail is located until after 10 o’clock.

last year on the same date, April 3rd, we had 28 species. This year...not so many. Just 18 different species were seen and the numbers of individuals were down as well. We did have a quite a few Kinglets flitting through the shrubbery. (I only had positive ID on 6, but there were more.) And a small group of Brown Creepers were also present. This little guys are usually difficult to spot but not this time as they danced up and fluttered down from trees right in front of us.

The eagle’s nest is occupied and one of the adults’ heads was clearly visible. The other adult was not seen and neither were any sign of chicks. A DNCR maintenance crew traveling the trail stopped and told us there were reports of two other nests much further down the Grand Canyon at which the eaglets had hatched. Oh, well. It’s almost like fishing: “Should have been here yesterday.” Or “They’re really biting over on ______ “ [some other river or lake thirty miles from where you are].

Anyway, here’s the report from today’s walk:
Location: Pine Creek/Darling Run
Observation date: 4/3/08
Notes: Very cold 25 degrees at start up to 35 when we ended. Sunny and clear but in the deep gorge very shaded. Pine Creek was running high and fast.
Number of species: 18

Canada Goose 5
Wood Duck 4
Mallard 1
Hooded Merganser 5
Common Merganser (North American) 12
Turkey Vulture 2
Bald Eagle 1
Mourning Dove 1
Belted Kingfisher 1
Eastern Phoebe 1
Blue Jay 1
American Crow 6
Black-capped Chickadee 1
Brown Creeper 5
Golden-crowned Kinglet 6
American Robin 7
Song Sparrow 8
Red-winged Blackbird 1

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)