I caught the atlas addiction bug on June 18, and have been atlasing most mornings since. I keep waiting for the breeding activity to taper down so I can ease up on the atlasing, and today looked like it might be the day. I arrived at Highland Forest east of Tully with heavy overcast and rain falling 15 minutes after I arrived. Why did I waste my time driving all this way, I asked myself. But after the rain passed, I managed to confirm 14 (probably) species - possibly my best day yet - in this wonderful place in a surprisingly low-coverage atlas block. The confirmations include not-easily-found species, like Blackburnian feeding Cowbird, Golden-Crowned Kinglets feeding young, an unexpected male Magnolia Warbler with accompanying fledgling, a silent mottled thrush that my lousy photos showed a reddish tail feather suggesting Hermit Thrush, and maybe a Nashville Warbler - a fledgling which I thought was a Common Yellowthroat initially but my photo shows some reddish feathers on the head -- I will have to post that later for discussion to confirm or refute. I got these along with more usually confirmed species like Common Yellowthroat, Dark-eyes Junco, Blue Jay, Cedar Waxwings, and Red-eyed Vireo - of which I've been seeing many feeding young REVIs lately, in contrast to earlier in the season when all the parent REVIs were feeding cowbirds! And I finished the morning by the parking lot - which is outside the priority block - with a redstart feeding young and a fledgling purple finch making an interesting call hitherto unfamiliar to me. Mon-confirmation highlights include Pine Warbler (red dot), Brown Creeper, and Broad-winged Hawk.
So it's not too late to get out to do some atlasing. Start by looking at the block effort map at https://ebird.org/atlasny/effortmap . Doing a low-coverage block can be more satisfying but atlasing any priority block or any block at all is still useful to the project. You can also find links to useful resources at https://cayugabirdclub.org/resources/breeding-bird-atlas . I'd been meaning to write a primer for the BBA, but have been so busy atlasing I haven't gotten around to it :-). As you can imagine, most of the priority blocks around Ithaca have good coverage or are marked complete. I've been using this as an excuse to explore places further afield, and have discovered some wonderful birding sites within an hour's drive: west beyond Watkins Glen are some state forests (Sugar Hill, Goundry, West Hill), and to the SW Hornby Park and Edwin WMA are gems I didn't know existed. To the southeast around Newark Valley are Alexander Pond, Ketchumville SF and Oakley Corners SF. Towards Syracuse I found a "fledgling alley" at Onondaga Dam, a path between two hedgerows where a variety of birds including fledglings congregated; and today my latest discovery of Highland Forest, which I'm surprised I'd never visited before. The places I've listed are parks that let you bird off-road, but there are opportunities to atlas in other blocks: look for quieter roads, cemeteries are often productive, and many rural schools are surrounded by some habitat. So this weekend I encourage everyone to give atlasing a try. The key is to listen for high-pitched calls that "sound insistent" - which unfortunately may be out of the range of hearing for many people. Fledglings do lots of silly things and it's quite fun to watch! Suan -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
