Field Trip Report – May 2011
Field Trip Report for Hawthorne Orchard and Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology
Today we learned the meaning of “MUD”.
The Webster Dictionary should explain the word “MUD” as:
1: A slimy sticky mixture of solid material with water; esp: soft wet earth: Please see “Hawthorne Orchard”.
2: To make muddy or turbid. This means… by many birders seeking the fallout of Wood Warblers in Hawthorne Orchard coinciding with a very rainy, wet time of the year.
My e-mail warning people to expect muddy conditions was a gross mis understatement. It was more like mud up to your fanny!
We did have the good fortune to run into Chris Tessaglia-Hymes. Chris works on the Bioaccoustics Research Program as the Field Applications Specialist at Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. He was coming out of the Orchard as we were going in. Chris and his father went back in with us and gave us a personal tour of the Orchard. It was very quiet and we would not have gotten the following without their help.
Red-wing Blackbirds, Yellow Warbler, Common Yellow Throat, Robins, Baltimore Orioles, Song Sparrow, Crow, Catbird, Tennessee Warblers, Wood Thrush, Red-eyed Vireo, King Fisher, Great Crested Flycatchers, Blue Jays, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Blackpolls, House Wren, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Barn Swallows and a King Bird.
Thank you Chris so much for the guided tour and the wealth of information you passed on to us! Also, thank you for putting a stop to the Cornell land developers from turning the orchard into more sports fields thus saving the land as part of the Cornell Plantations.
Off to Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.
It was quiet here also but what birds we did see gave us some good long looks. We observed the following: Canada Geese with young, Red-winged Blackbirds, Tree Swallows, Great Blue Herons on nest with young, Mourning Doves, White-breasted Nuthatch, Robins, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, Warbling Vireos, Red Start, Yellow Warblers, Cat Birds, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, King Fisher, Red Eyed Vireo, Wood Thrush, Veery, Downey Woodpeckers, Pee-Wee, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Great Crested Fly Catcher, and crows.
We left Sapsucker Woods just as the rain began to fall ending one of our most memorable field trips this spring.
Dan Dunn
Naturalists’ Club of Broome County, Field Trip Chairperson
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