Springtime in NY

Welcome back!

As I proved last summer, I'm not great at keeping up with these things. But I thought I'd try again this summer, as I'll be in a whole new place and doing some entirely new things. In a week and a half, I'll be heading to the Albany Pine Bush Preserve in NY's state capital to do some work with Karner blue butterflies and prairie warblers, to name just a couple.

But before I get to that, I thought I'd share some of the beauty of springtime in my hometown of Greece, NY.

Despite the rainy conditions we've been having over the last week, the warblers seem to have arrived in full force. Without even having to leave my yard, I've seen yellow, yellow-rumped, blackburnian, black-throated blue, black-throated green, mourning, and northern parula.

On the non-warbler sides of things, I've been having the usual chickadees, robins, cardinals, and grackles, as well as white-throated sparrows, hermit thrushes, and at least one VERY persistent eastern phoebe.

I even had a few Canada geese visit my yard yesterday.

And one VERY cute baby bunny, which I suspect is living under our wood pile.

Unfortunately, with all these birds coming through, some tragedies are bound to happen. The back of my house has many large windows, which have been the demise of more than one bird through the years. Luckily, most of them do live to fly away. But last week, a very loud BANG led me to find this poor guy:

A beautiful juvenile Cooper's hawk. He died quickly, but it still saddens me to see such a wonderful bird, and such a young one, meet its end.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to sharing my experiences this summer in a whole new place. All the field sites I've worked at in the past have been extremely remote. As the Albany Pine Bush is right on the outskirts of a major city, it will definitely be a change for me, but a good one I hope.