Had a chance to bird New Michigan State Forest from mid to late morning Today, 6/20/16. This forest is a high elevation boreal-type forest which is quite rare in upstate NY outside the Adirondacks and Catskills. There are areas of dense NORWAY SPRUCES planted by the CCC groups back in the 1930s so much of this forest is dense and fairly mature. There are also areas of RED PINE within a more typical northern hardwoods type forest of SUGAR MAPLE, AMERICAN BEECH, CHERRY and other deciduous trees and scattered native BALSAM FIR and to a lesser extent EASTERN HEMLOCK.
The deep spruce woods are homes to a large population (locally) of BLACKBURNIAN WARBLERS. In addition, you can find SWAINSON'S THRUSH here too along with WHITE-THROATED SPARROWS which again are quite rare outside our bigger mountains. Once thing that puzzled me was the lack of BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLERS and YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLERS. The most common warbler was the OVENBIRD but a close second was the BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER. Do BLACKBURNIANS out-compete BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLERS? Or was the lack of hemlock ravines more a factor here? I also was able to record the beautiful song of the SWAINSON'S THRUSH and append to my e-bird list which can be linked below. In any event, I drove for over 9 miles in this beautiful area and carefully counted as many birds as I could hear. My e-bird list is my best effort at an "exact" count. I was conservative and very careful not to double count. I was amazed that I totaled 69 BLACKBURNIAN WARBLERS in 9 miles and a whopping 86 OVENBIRDS with a total of 50 species. I took just under 3 hours. see e-bird list here.... http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S30317959 Dave Nicosia Johnson City, NY -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
