Philly Phield Trip

On Friday we went to the Villanova and the Philly Zoo before heading to Newark to pick up the last intern, Leo. At Villanova we were shown the chickadee lab where they are studying the hybridization between Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees that is occuring in PA.


At the Zoo we spent a while seeing the sights.

We were also fortunate enough to get a behind the scenes look at the new White Rhino as well as feed some cooperative Hornbills.


We then went to South Street to get some supper and see the sights and ended up eating at Jon's Bar & Grill which is the birthplace of one of the 3 Stooges.


Then we headed off to Newark and picked up Leo with no problem and headed back to HMS, arriving around midnight.

Starting at Hawk Mountain

Yesterday I arrived at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary to begin my 4 month long internship there. The other interns were supposed to arrive at Newark in time to be back to the Sanctuary by 8 but it was around 11pm when they pulled in. The other interns are Laura from Costa Rica, Lale from Turkey, Talal from Palestine and then the last intern who we will pick up in Philly on Friday is Leo from Papua New Guinea.

We got the tour this morning and then headed up to the North Lookout (NLO) where we spent 2 hours waiting for raptors to show up. We saw several Red-tailed Hawks, both vultures, 1 immature Broadwinged Hawk, some unidentified warblers and a Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

Tonight we are going grocery shopping and hopefully other exciting things.

Snowy Egret immature

Snowy Egret immature

After spending a couple hours at the Conejohela Flats, I headed to Wildwood Nature Center with Cameron Rutt to check out the reported Snowy Egret. We easily found the bird and took many pictures of it.

Cape May and Brigantine birding

I spent August 4-7 in New Jersey with Justine, hanging out and birding. I started off Saturday morning at the Dike at Higbee's Beach WMA where I met Pete Dunne and Richard Crossley. Unfortunately there was not much stuff about by the time I got there. I did have some luck with shorebirds around Nummy's Island and Ocean Drive though and got several good pictures.

The next day I spent driving around the wildlife drive at Edwin B. Forsythe where I got nice pictures of a Forster's Tern and several Osprey. I also had good looks at Short-billed and Long-billed Dowitchers, Least, Semipalmated and Western Sandpipers, Semipalmated and Black-bellied Plovers and Whimbrels.

On Monday I went back to Cape May where I birded the Cape May Point State Park where I took this picture of a Great Egret. At Beaver Swamp I saw the lone sandhill crane and then headed back south for the evening hign tide. I drove along Ocean Drive where there was a good number of peeps and then headed up to Nummy's Island where the tide was too high for most birds. I had large flocks of dowitchers and Whimbrels fly over and noticed that Stone Harbor Point was just covered in sandpipers so I drove over there where the highlight was about 12 Piping Plovers.