Sterling Forest was eerily quiet yesterday. I've never seen the place that empty, of birds and people. I still ended up seeing 55 species, including 14 warbler species ,(I've never been so disappointed with such a high count). There was one golden-wing at the base of the hill, heading north on the power line trail at the end of Ironwood Dr. Further north, up the hill was a Brewster's warbler singing his little heart out. In fact, I saw more Brewster's warblers yesterday than I did golden-wings, one on the power line trail and one on the rifle range trail on the east side of Long Meadow Rd. And what's really amazing is that I'm fairly certain those are the exact same Brewster's I saw, in those exact same spots, singing the same unusual songs, the last time I was there, 2 YEARS AGO!
The other thing that struck me was that the golden-wings are going to be in trouble there and for once the culprits aren't humans. It's the beavers. They've dammed up the stream that runs through the swamp at the bottom of the hill on the east side of the power line trail (as you head north), creating an enormous pond and inundating a large tract of golden-wing nesting habitat. Beaver ponds that drowned warbler habitat at the rifle range and Blue Lake have been recently drained and the tussock sedge that the warblers nest in has regrown, but the beavers cut down so many trees and drowned so many others. The golden-wings (in Sterling Forest at least) like their nests to be in swamp forest not open swamp so I don't know if they are going to be able to move back in. It's hard times for everyone these days. C. Klein -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
