Mon@rch’s Nature Blog

Monarch Butterflies

Regal autumn travelers

robed for mediaeval pageantry
in velvet orange and black

Moving in great procession

on tissue wings
from Canada to Monterey, the Sierra Madre

The North American Continent a court for this lepidoptery

By: Maxwell Corydon Wheat, Jr ©

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Group Photo (click to enlarge)

This weekend we held our 3rd annual Allegany State Park Geobash over in the Camp 12 area of the park. Besides the rain . . . . it was a wonderful weekend seeing many new and old geocaching friends again. I also had an opportunity to reunite with an old bird banding buddy from back in the 1990’s who recently started geocaching! Maybe I can talk him into joining us banding this summer??
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Mourning Dove

I received a phone call from my mother the other day about this brown bird who was nesting in her old bird feeder!! She explained how these Blue Jays were bothering the mother but she appeared to be holding her own. I never expected from her description that the bird would turn out to be a Mourning Dove!!!
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Northern Mockingbird

Ya, Ya . . . I am about a week late with this report but it has been a busy few days for me. I have been trying to getting ready for the Allegany State Park Geobash Event that we are having this weekend.

On May 10th 2008 the Cattaraugus County Bird Club headed out for our annual Presque Isle State Park field trip for International Migratory Bird Day. Keep reading →

Red-headed Woodpecker

We had such a wonderful time visiting the Magee Marsh Wildlife Area (aka Crane Creek) with seeing so many great birds and having the opportunity of meeting such great birders. I noticed that the Black Snake Bird Observatory’s Banders Blog reported (Friday 9 May) “We also had the pleasure of a few banders from New York and surrounding states. It is always a pleasure to have visiting researchers see our operation and share ideas and talk shop.” and then said . . . “For the day we had a total of 190 new birds including 30 species and 38 recaptures.” Can you believe they had 20 species of warblers that day??? I knew we should have stayed till they closed up nets! Anyways . . . . I would like to thank Kim Kaufman and the many staff members of the Black Swamp Bird Observatory who helped in making our visit so spectacular.

THANKS!
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American Redstart

And you thought I posted all my good warbler pictures!!! All I can say is that these pictures can tell the rest of the warbler story!
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Common Yellowthroat

Young Naturalist J and I take these trips to the different banding stations for helping us explore how these organizations conduct their studies. Each project is different and they always have a way of showing us something that we had never seen before. The Navarre Marsh Banding Station in Ohio and the Presque Isle Banding Station in Erie PA were no exception and both stations were different in many ways. The truth is that we take these trips to enjoy the many wonderful birds that are not normally caught at our banding station (and for us to capture a few photos)!!
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Bay-breasted Warbler (CHECK)

Friday morning Young Naturalist J and I were invited to join the Black Swamp Bird Observatory’s “Navarre Marsh Migration Monitoring Banding Station” in Oak Harbor, Ohio. Last Sunday when we made the first plans to visit . . . . we never realized that this station was located on a National Wildlife Refuge and the hoops that we needed to go through to visit the banding station. I guess driving behind a Nuclear Power Plant to band birds requires some security issues to contend with. Without a doubt this adventure was well worth the hoopla because I ended up with 10 year birds (1 being a lifer) and Young Naturalist J ended up with 3 lifers on this trip!
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While heading to Crane Creek from Presque Isle State Park . . . . Young Naturalist J and I decided to take an alternative route to the thruway. I felt at one point that we were lost but I am glad we continued the adventure because we found this wonderful series of Purple Martin houses (my brakes screeched and I yelled “Purple Martin” (CHECK). Since the business that had these Martin houses were closed . . . we decided to take a few pictures of their birds!!
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Northern Cardinal carefully being banded

Young Naturalist J and I joined Toni from A Spattering and Linda from Eries Argonaut over at the Presque Isle State Park banding station this morning to see some migrants up close. We had such a wonderful time together and saw many great birds being banded by Sarah S. from PA Audubon (Thanks for letting us join you Sarah)! Below are just a few pictures that we captured at the banding station:
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