River Walking, Part Two

After we did the Enola Low Grade Line, we decided to do another part of the trail the next day.  Monday evening, actually.  I had heard that a pair of Bald Eagles were nesting close to the trail.  And yeah, they were CLOSE!

I think the sun had actually set at this point, so the photo is a little wonky.  But you get the gist.  

This walk is along the Northwest Lancaster County River Trail.  What's interesting about this trail is that it's not complete.  Different sections of it have come on line over the last decade, and even more will be completed soon.  By the end of this year, we should be able to walk down the street to the River, then go over 10 miles north.  Soon to be even further.  The very long term goal is to connect the trail south to the Enola Low Grade line, of last post's fame.  

Anyway, the rail trail has finally connected up to Shocks Mill Bridge.  This is a rail bridge and is difficult to see from any road.  So the trail really has opened this view up to the public.  The central portion looks different because it was damaged in an ice jam and had to be rebuilt.

We also found the other Eagle, out on a bar in the River.  Very far away, but you can't really mistake one for anything else, at least not in these parts :)

The last thing that was really neat was getting to check out an art project I'd heard about.  Turns out an artist, in conjunction with a local elementary school, has designed a tile mosaic for the long retaining wall at Donegal River Park.  

It's not complete yet, you can see where tiles still need to be placed.  But it's so neat!  The design seems to be the River, connecting various scenes from the countryside.  This is the big arches of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, close to home and lovely.  I'm not sure if the sun is a play on the Rising Sun Hotel building here in town, or whether that's a happy coincidence :)

River Walking, Part One

When we're going for distance in hiking, we tend to stick to flat trails.  Fortunately, there are two big rail trails in our area.  We did a portion of the York County Heritage Rail Trail in April, and now we explored some on the Lancaster side.  

The Enola Low Grade line and the Turkey Hill trail start in the same parking lot.  Neither one of these trails existed as such when we moved to the area, so things have come a lot way!

The Turkey Hill trail is interesting.  It takes you up the river bluffs to the edge of Lancaster County's large landfill facility.  There's a nice overlook out over the Susquehanna River.  What you can't see in this shot is that there are two large wind turbines immediately off to the right.  The islands out into the distance mark the Conojohela Flats, an important area for migratory birds.  

While we were on the Turkey Hill trail, we could hear a bird singing intermittently.  I didn't know what it was, but thought it had a warbler-ish sound to it.  What's really neat is that, once we finished the trail and decided to walk part of the Low Grade Line, we found the bird again.  And I was right, it was a Prairie Warbler!  This is the first of these I have ever seen.  And it came in handy because I was able to recognize one singing the next weekend, during the PAMC.  I would have missed it otherwise!

The part of the Low Grade Line is just beautiful.  The trail follows an old rail bed situated on a bench above the River.  The views from this section are much wider and open than on other parts of the rail trail.  We noticed that a large number of Mennonites were out this lovely Sunday afternoon, and this lady with her bright blue dress caught my eye especially.

This is Mann's Run, as it gets ready to enter the Susquehanna.  And below is a restored rail car, painted to represent a particular scheme that actually was used on these rail lines at one point.  Neat stuff!

We definitely want to come back again, and walk the whole stretch from the parking area to Safe Harbor Dam and back!

A Saturday at Home

After a nice bout of travel, it's sometimes good to have a weekend at home.  This Saturday was cold, but clear, and I had been meaning to get my scope out to see what kind of ducks are on the River.

I proposed to Justin that we walk over to the Wrightsville side of the River, where the open water is.  This involves crossing the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge twice and walking up and down the riverfront, making all three legs of the walk great for bird watching.

On the way over, I noticed a nice flock of birds at the ice/water boundary.  My camera proved these to be Common Goldeneye.  As we reached Wrightsville and walked south to the boat accesses, we saw a juvenile Cooper's Hawk looking for a snack in the neighborhood trees.

At the Lemon Street boat access, a pair of Canvasbacks were close by.  Other ducks seen were Hooded Mergansers, Red-Breasted Mergansers, Ring-Necked Ducks, and lots of Buffleheads.  

Canvasbacks, with their long sloping bills, have an unmistakable profile.  I had heard that up to 50 were on the River here, but these two were the only ones visible.

For a cold day, a lot of the birds seemed to just say, "Forget it, I'm acting like its spring."  Titmice were singing their spring songs, Chickadees were flitting all over, and Fish Crows were calling from high in the trees.

Another bird that's coming north, nevermind the snow, is the American Robin.  There were quite a few cavorting along the shoreline.  I have heard that stoneflies are hatching now, making for something of a bonanza by the waterline.  

As we walked back across the bridge near sunset, I noticed another fairly large flock on the River.  Ahhhh, here were all of the Canvasbacks.  That profile is noticeable even at very long distances!

As we finished our walk, the last rays of the sun illuminated the new 1930s-style bridge lights, and brought a small flock of Canada Geese into silhouette in the far background.  What a lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

New camera

It happens to be in my phone, but still. 

I took advantage of its panoramic mode to capture the River bridges yesterday.  I think it did pretty well!

Whirlwind Labor Day

Soooooooo, I'm studying hard for a big test in November, and that has cut down on my blogging time.  But I am popping in to share some pictures from our Labor Day weekend getaway.

We decided to explore Pennsylvania's northern tier of counties: Tioga, Potter, and McKean, and even a smidge of Warren.  Our first stop was PA's "Grand Canyon," the Pine Creek Gorge.  This is a view from Leonard Harrison State Park.  We hiked the Turkey Path down to the bottom of the gorge, where a nice rail trail runs.

Despite some rain early on, we decided the next day to go ahead and try to see for Kinzua Bridge.  The rain stopped right as we parked!  Kinzua was one of the tallest railroad bridges in the nation, until a tornado destroyed two thirds of it in 2003.  Now you can walk out on the remaining part, where they have installed glass panels in the bridge decking.

I'm really glad we got to see this.  You don't normally encounter destruction on that scale.  Something we read said that when the bridge was rebuilt with steel in the 1900s, the engineers kept the 1800s-era iron bolts that held the bridge to the concrete supports.  It's the bolts that failed.

We camped at a place called Austin Dam Memorial Park.  It's a quirky place completely run by volunteers and I am blown away by how much they have been able to accomplish.  The story of the place is sad.  In 1909, a lumber mill constructed a large dam to power their works.  Two years later, after heavy rain, the dam gave way and destroyed the mill and most of the town of Austin.  At least 78 people died, often whole families.  The park memorializes the disaster and contains the ruined pieces of the dam.  This picture doesn't do justice to their size.

On our way home on Monday, we stopped at Stevenson Dam State Park for one amazing view, and then at Hyner View State Park for another:

Hangliders use Hyner View as a take-off spot, and we were fortunate to get there right before one took the plunge.  The river below is the West Branch of the Susquehanna.

Adorable Alert, Kestrel Edition

In one of life's little serendipitous moments, I ran into a friend Sunday evening, and she invited me to watch kestrel chicks being banded tonight.  It felt like Christmas in not-quite-July :)

These kestrels live on land owned by the county's landfill.  They have had boxes for three or four years, if I remember correctly.  We checked two boxes, one with four chicks and one with five.  The first box of nestlings were very calm.  The second box, man, they had attitude.

This is the bander, collecting the chicks from the nest and putting them into a cardboard box lined with wood chips.  Then, each chick has head and wing measurements taken and is weighed.  Finally, they are carefully fitted with a leg band.

A chick is in the blue bag.  This method keeps them calm and also contained.  We did have a runaway chick - fortunately it only escaped into the back of the truck, and not out into the field.  They can't fly at this point, but they still move pretty quickly!  

When the bander fished the five chicks out of the second box, he told us it was really four and a half.  The fifth chick was very noticeably smaller than its siblings.  But just as outraged at its treatment :)

They were mostly content to sit on the bander's hand and pose for the paparazzi.  Kestrels are a type of falcon, and you can see here that typical falcon beak.  Notched, all the better to tear you apart with!

The second box had a dominant chick that spent a lot of time making alarm calls and kicking its feet anytime a hand went in the box.  I have some video of those shenanigans that I will post next time.

Spring grebes and gulls

We went to East Donegal Township Park today, since it was so warm and sunny.  The park doesn't have a very flashy name, but it's one of my favorite local spots.  It borders the river, there's a big wetland reclamation project, and it's in general a very birdy spot.

Still, I wasn't expecting to see so many ducks today.  Red-necked grebes have been hanging out on the river since January, but I thought they had all moved along.  But the first bird we saw was a red-necked grebe who seemed to be resting in an eddy out of the main current.

What really surprised me, though, was a horned grebe paddling around a small stream that flows into the river.  We watched it for 10-15 minutes.  I'm pretty sure it is missing a leg, although that didn't seem to slow it down or prevent it from grebe-ing.

This guy was unconcerned with our presence, so I took dozens of pictures.  Its red eye was extremely apparent in the late afternoon light.  This bird is transitioning into its adult plumage, but the golden-brown "horns" will grow longer and fill out, creating a really fun hair-do.  This is by far the best looks I've had at a horned grebe.

A lot of other ducks were around, too.  The wetlands area held ring-necked ducks, blue-winged teal, and a pair of wood ducks.  The cornfield ponds had northern shovelers, green-winged teal, american wigeon, and northern pintail.  I don't remember ever having seen that many different types of waterfowl spread out over the different parts of the park.  I am guessing the long-awaited relief from this killer winter is driving lots of ducks that would normally migrate at different times north all together.    

Another  migrant is on the move, too. The likelihood of seeing Bonaparte's gulls was the entire reason we went to the park in the first place. And, fortunately, the river was sprinkled with these small gulls.

A common feeding technique for gulls on the river seems to involve flying upstream, then floating back down on the current, looking for grub.  I estimated about 50 "Bonies" doing this, and found a couple that had nearly completed the transition to breeding plumage.  In breeding plumage, Bonies have a black head.  This is mostly a documentation shot as the gulls were very far away.  But you can get the gist!


 

An evening in town

One of the more charming aspects of life in Columbia is that the Susquehanna River is a 5-minute walk away.  Easy to slip down and see what's going on at the water.  Friday was warm and not rainy or snowy so we made the jaunt.  Plenty of nice atmospheric views across the water into the setting sun.  

Here you can see the old piers that once held a railroad bridge.  These are just north of the Veterans Memorial Bridge that you always see in my river pictures.  The story of both of these bridges, and how they were destroyed and rebuilt several times each is one of our more interesting local history topics.  

Speaking of railroads, the riverfront all along the west side of the Susquehanna carries some serious rail traffic.  They are Norfolk Southern lines here, at least.  Last summer we noticed that the rough gravel between the various sets of tracks seems to attract killdeer.  I am thinking they nest here.  

On the river itself, the usual cast of ring-billed gulls were present, along with plenty of turkey vultures soaring overhead.  This group of mergansers (red-breasted, I believe) was the only waterfowl spotted.  The Columbia side of the river seems to be somewhat less attractive to the ducky types than the Wrightsville side, so I was happy to see anything.

Rednecks down at the river

Red-necked grebes, that is!  With the harsh winter and the freeze-over of the Great Lakes, quite a few of these guys have been hanging out on the river.  Today, a lucky confluence of good weather, lengthier daylight hours, and tolerant grebes helped me get my best pictures to date.

There were probably six or eight grebes stretched out along the half-mile of river I covered.  They are divers, and tend to fish relatively close to shore.  If they catch on that you are interested in them, though, they'll quickly move up or down the current and away from you.

I was able to use some trees for cover, and move closer while the grebes themselves were underwater.  They came quite close, when I wasn't moving around much.

These grebes have a pretty neat hair-do, but it took me a while to get one showing it off properly.  Well, up above, one is just up from a dive and in need of some hair gel. This one had a little more orderly 'do:

The long, heavy yellow-and-black bill helps to distinguish red-necks from other grebes in their winter plumage, although, by this time, most have transitioned at least partly to breeding plumage, evidenced by their red necks.

Spending an hour or so watching these guys ply their trade was a great way to celebrate daylight savings time and the arrival of decent temperatures, finally.

Other species seen/heard:  subadult bald eagle, thousands of ring-billed gulls, four hooded mergansers, hundreds of Canada geese, ten tundra swans, mallards, killdeer, carolina wrens, fish crows, turkey vultures, and starlings. 

The joy of modern means of communication

We already had plans to go check out the river this afternoon, but right about 1:30 I saw that someone had emailed PA Birds about a Glaucous Gull visible from the John Wright boat launch in Wrightsville.  The hunt was on!

Now, I have been down to the river multiple times in the last week or so, and there's usually hundreds if not thousands of gulls present, so I figured I would have to be very lucky to be able to pick out the single slightly different one.  

I was right - we scanned the river and saw many many Herring and Ring-Billed Gulls, and about a dozen Greater Black-Backed.  But no Glaucous.  Another birder arrived, she had seen the email, too.  She also told us that she recognized the cars of the people who first reported the bird.  They had to be in a nearby restaurant, having lunch.  We waited a while for them to emerge, to no avail, so decided to head down to the next boat launch to the south.  

We were just wrapping up there when I got a phone call.  The lunching birders had re-emerged and had found the Glaucous Gull again.  Turns out the lady who we had met told the lunching birders about us, and one of them recognized my name and still had my phone number from a few years ago, when I met her through some peregrine falcon sightings I made in York city.  Whew!

We hopped back up to John Wright and were able to get distant but nice looks.  The Glaucous was hanging out on some rocks with a few Greater Black-Backed Gulls.  Greater Black-Backed Gulls are the largest gulls in the world, and as you can see, the Glaucous is very nearly as large as they are.  Its size alone made it pretty obviously different from the other non-black-backed gulls on the river.  This one is a juvenile, an adult would have a light gray mantle and would lack any black in the wings.

Some good luck and a nice set of coincidences turns out to net me one more life bird for 2014!

Birding the Icepocalypse

The office where I work rarely closes for weather.  But yesterday they did, so I took advantage and scoped out the river again.  While everyone else was dealing with Icepocalypse, I was the lone birder.

I took care to stay out from under the trees.  Plenty of branches had already come down and more were doing so as I watched.  We had anywhere from a quarter to a half inch of ice that fell on trees already covered with snow.  

 But, yes, the birds.  A fellow birder in town posted what she had seen the day before at 3:00 in the afternoon.  Then, the storm lasted most of the night and next morning.  I saw virtually the same birds in the same numbers as she did; I assume the weather kept them grounded.

This is a red-necked grebe, one of a pair that have stayed in the area for a few days now.  I don't think I've seen this species in this county until now.

 Among the ducks, scaup (about 30) and goldeneye (about 50) were the most common.  Bufflehead and canvasbacks were around in smaller numbers.  Here's a group of scaup, with the Columbia River Park as a backdrop.

As I watched the goldeneye (who unfortunately were always as far from shore as possible), I noticed many of them were gyrating.  I knew goldeneye perform courting dances that would break lesser ducks' backs, but I didn't think I'd see them in action.

  
This isn't high quality footage, but good enough for being taken at 100X digital zoom, with only my camera resting on my scope, which was on a tripod, for stabilization.

More from Monday

Believe it or not, I did more than look at birds all day Monday.  Or, to be exact, I noticed some other stuff while I was out looking for birds.  Given the recent weather, ice and snow were an unavoidable secondary theme to the day.

At the Falmouth river access, there were several puddles, except that the water had receded.  All that was left were the icy caps, sunken in and full of interesting cracks and bubbles.

Another interesting aspect to Falmouth is that it's just north of Brunner Island, a coal-fired plant on the banks of the river.  It's actually not far south of Three Mile Island, either, but the view in that direction is obstructed.  

Although it makes complete logistical sense, the amount of industrial and power-producing facilities that use this river amaze me.  Off the top of my head, I can name two hydroelectric dams, one coal-fired power plant, and two nuclear power plants in the stretch that runs between York and Lancaster counties (plus a smidge of Dauphin).  

River crossings

The Veterans Memorial Bridge is easily the neatest thing within 5 minutes of my house.  A dramatic 1930s design paired with piers of even older bridges.  So you'll likely be getting quite a few shots of it here.  

Not really "On the Road" but you may as well be as curious about where you live as you are about other places.  Keeps life interesting.  Plus, I commute over the neighboring bridge, which gives me a good opportunity to scope out current lighting conditions and weather effects every afternoon.

This evening showed a rising fog that made the old bridge appear to be floating, when viewed from the Rt. 30 bridge.  From the shore, lower down, the fog blended into the water and made it seem like the old peers and 1930s bridge were drowning.

The ice of last week is quickly melting, dislodging, and freeing the surface.