New Year's Day
in which the Plummer's Hollow 200 gets off on the right track
[Here are my first and second checklists of 2023 if you want to follow along.]
Balcony Birds
At a few minutes before 7 AM I haul the lounge chair to its regular spot. For this Big Year kick-off the target is 16 species, starting with a Common Raven. Fully caffeinated, I settle in for an hourlong ritual that’s about ten months old. My viewscape, from my 9 AM to my 4 PM, is a parking lot, a lot of wires, some buildings, tall trees along the creek and river, I-99, a bit of railroad, and a nice swath of Bald Eagle Mt left of noon and Brush Mountain right of noon, with Tyrone Gap in front of me. Most of town is invisible behind me; I’m on a second-floor balcony of an old brick apartment house downtown, 100 feet from where Tyrone began in 1850.
A breeze from the WSW at three mph, gusting to seven; temperature 38 degrees and partly cloudy. Unseasonably warm; having endured temps below zero a scant ten days ago, it feels like winter has already come and gone. At my one o’clock, the confluence of Bald Eagle Creek and the Little Juniata River is turbid and muddy with meltwater.
Instead of a raven, 2023’s first species is an American Robin at 7:01 off to the left in town somewhere. It’s singing, here in the middle of the winter, possibly disoriented by the 24/7 lights at Sheetz’s. A nice bird to ring in the New Year, indeed!
The First Part of Dawn
Because it’s Sunday AND a major holiday, I am looking forward to several such barely audible detections today. On workdays, vehicle noise on the interstate 200 yards in front of me blots out the delicate calls from nearby Brush Mountain and the weedy patches downriver, but today, it’s as silent as any Tyrone dawn can be. Now all we need is a quiet space in the flow of Norfolk Southern trains—and thankfully, one hasn’t passed in about half an hour.
A Dark-eyed Junco starts ticking at 7:03, and then a distant raven from somewhere to the left, not the one I was expecting. Three minutes later, a single Mourning Dove rockets overhead, heading south toward Thomastown instead of east over the mountain. Rhythms have changed since the last time I sat out, two days ago: wrong raven, and what happened to the other dove, and why did this one change direction?
At 7:09, the raven who was kicking things off two days ago begins to give its plaintive cry from its night roost over by the interstate underpass. It calls around ten times but never makes an appearance: instead of flying north past my balcony, it moves out of sight down the railroad tracks somewhere, its cries eventually giving way to more familiar croaks.
Five minutes later, a Carolina Wren begins to call incessantly, but quite distant, downriver. There are several around, but these days, none sleeps nearby, so it can be quite a tricky species to hear. That’s one of the things I love about this ritual: it keeps my ear-brain connection well tuned.
Dive-bomb at 7:16AM! Our neighborhood Cooper’s Hawk rushes overhead and disappears into the trees along Bald Eagle Creek—an absence of over two weeks when I suppose it was finding happier hunting elsewhere.
Another hidden one a few minutes later: a wispy call from a White-throated Sparrow along the creek bank brush somewhere. This is a species that tends to sing all winter up in the dawn woods, but not down here at town’s edge. I normally would not have heard it at all, but this day is resolving itself into one of the quietest I’ve experienced. And the weather is looking glorious!
Morning Commute
At 7:20, 19 Rock Pigeons kick off the morning commute. The tight group circles a few times over the east end of town, then hurries through the Gap to some unseen food source in Sinking Valley. The pigeon commute has to be this location’s most predictable event—not only rain or shine, but clear or fog, and even in temperatures of -2 with a howling wind, they make the trip.
The robin is singing again, a bit closer. Now the Black-capped Chickadee and White-breasted Nuthatch have woken up. These two are part of a group that forage up and down the last hundred meters of the creek and a stretch of the River.
At 7:24 AM, Tyrone’s signature winter bird, the European Starling, makes its presence known. Without Chimney Swifts or swallows to contend with, starlings largely have the run of the local winter sky, and they make the most of it. Singles, pairs, and groups show up for the next forty minutes in an indecipherable cacophony, flying everywhere, landing in favorite perches like the great big sycamore at my one o’clock. I think a few sleep in town, but the rest commute over Brush Mountain from the valley somewhere.
The air is filled with starlings, and more commuting pigeons. Three House Finches at 7:30 kick off yet another journey to breakfast as they head of town, while eight American Robins straggle over going east, making “tseep” calls. Either their numbers have dwindled and the flocks of hundreds moved on, having consumed all the wild grapes, or they prefer to sleep up in Plummer’s Hollow.
I had just a couple Mallard go over first thing (down from dozens last week), but these eight ducks speeding east from the valley at 7:38 are something else. They resolve themselves into male Common Mergansers! Not an everyday sight, but certainly the first unexpected species for 2023 (a ninth male follows 26 minutes later).
Peak Dawn
Things are beginning to kick into high gear: the first American Crow way high up, and as the nuthatch calls incessantly, a Pileated Woodpecker swoops across the Gap: common on the mountain, they are only an occasional sight over town. Every couple minutes, another pigeon flock takes off, with joiners from different roosts around town. Then the House Sparrows start up their racket: only recently have they started to fly around in flocks, looking like House Finches; for months, only a handful kept down in the sidewalk shrubs, the main town group somewhere else.
On a normal day, the Downy Woodpecker that calls from a tree by the creek at 7:42 would be the last new species, around #16. But not today—something is different, the weather, the quiet. I’m going to hang out a bit longer.
House Sparrows, House Finches, starlings, pigeons, and a few more robins are up and about. Not one to disappoint, the local immature Bald Eagle sails over, but not from west to east downriver as it’s been doing recently. Today, it floats over the creek heading south, then up the Little J.
At 7:54, a lone Tufted Titmouse sings “peter-peter-peter” ahead of a commotion up-creek as 26-or-so House Finches explode out of the trees and start to spiral around with some of the other species. I can only surmise that the Cooper’s Hawk, which stays hidden, has begun its daily campaign of terror.
The sun’s getting ready to hit at 7:56, spelling a wind-down in bird activity as the slower feeding rhythms of the day take over. Two American Goldfinches go over—they’ve gotten scarce these days—and a Blue Jay calls, now a late riser. At 8:01 the starlings move from the I-99 light posts they love to sit on and gather by the dozens in the tops of the trees to catch the first rays. Finally, a train goes by.
I’m blinded at 8:03, time to call it quits as an invisible Northern Cardinal begins to tick. I figure what the heck and stretch my legs for a few minutes, adding the last species, a Song Sparrow, at 8:14 AM. A very successful beginning of the Plummer’s Hollow 200 with 24 species! I’ve not had a sit with as many species since November. Only the local heron didn’t show, and I suppose with the river so high, it’s moved temporarily to other haunts.
Having never birded this corner of the hotspot in January before, the House Sparrows are a new species for the bar charts, and the mergansers are a first for this month.
Duck Walk
Later, I head out for my New Year’s hike, first to a hidden pond to see if any of it is unfrozen—if so, there is always the hope of a non-Mallard duck. Thanks to the muskrats, a small bit is being kept ice-free and there are four pairs of Mallards, but nothing else, yet.
A Winter Wren calls vociferously from a few feet away as the garbage train approaches, and 77 Canada Geese, the local flock, go over.
Hollow Circuit
The lower Plummer’s Hollow Road, at the approximate latitude of northern Greenland, is frozen solid, so I strand the car in our icy lot, strap on my spiky boot-chains, and head up.
It’s too late in the morning for much activity, but I circle the hotspot nevertheless, hitting First Field, the Spruce Grove, Far Field, and the most tangly woods. Woodpeckers are oddly silent, but as the day warms past fifty, I spot a pair of Black Vultures to the north, another unexpected species this early in the year. Two separate mixed field-and-edge passerine flocks yield typically high numbers of juncos and White-throated Sparrows, with some nine American Tree Sparrows mixed in, making their delicate tinkling calls; even a couple holdover Field Sparrows pop into view. Birds like Song Sparrows and cardinals, barely perceptible during my balcony sit, are everywhere up here. Best of all, an Eastern Towhee has moved into the deep tangle at the southwestern edge of First Field, where (hopefully) it will stay for the rest of the winter.
Hairy Woodpecker, Brown Creeper, Eastern Bluebird, Red-tailed Hawk—after six miles on foot, I’m heading back to our apartment, one bag of Christmas Cookies richer, courtesy of a New Year’s howdy to Mom. One final surprise for the day: Dave texts me from somewhere on Laurel Ridge on the east side of Plummer’s Hollow. He just flushed a Ruffed Grouse! Exciting news indeed, as our grouse populations crashed a few years back from West Nile virus. Now, each detection is news-worthy. I didn’t think we’d get one this early, but it brings us to 35 species to start the year.
One hundred and sixty-five species to go! More immediately, I’d like to top 50 this month and if we’re lucky, get one of those northern specialties I mentioned the other day. My January challenge is 56 species, but the vultures and mergansers weren’t even on that list. I need to do a sunrise sit up by the Spruce Grove, but with a busy week ahead I think I’ll wait until the road is ice-free so I can drive up rather than trudge the two miles.
I had two black vultures in State College on the 26th, on the way to the airport.
The road might be ice-free by the end of the week. There are almost no stretches where at least one track isn’t melted through.