All, I have an evening walk that I try to do every day and one of the joys of this walk is the presence of thrushes and their songs. For many years, HERMIT THRUSHES were by far the more common thrush. The trail goes through a ravine with hemlock in the ravine and mainly a northern red oak, beech, and sugar maple forest outside the ravine. About a 1/2 mile up the hill you run into a fairly mature oak forest, again mainly northern red oak, with some white oak, many sugar and red maples, beech, some cherry and a few white pine. There is plenty of undergrowth. Conifers are scarce in this upland wood. The upland wood is on one side of the trail and an abandoned Christmas tree plantation is on the other side with balsam and fraser firs, silver fir, and white spruce, all between about 30 and 40 feet tall.
Earlier this June I was surprised and happy to hear so many WOOD THRUSH along this walk with as many as 5 singing males from the ravine to the upland woods and 1 even in the abandoned Christmas tree plantation. The HERMIT THRUSHES were scarce with only 1 singing male found in the ravine at the beginning and none in the uplands which was unlike other years. However, last night I walked this same trail and HERMIT THRUSHES were found in the upland trail with 2 counter singing males (very beautiful I may add) and NO WOOD THRUSHES singing!!!! I could barely make out the call of 1 wood thrush farther down in the Christmas tree plantation. But wood thrushes were not in song at all. The lesson here is that if censusing singing males you have to be careful. One would assume the wood thrush was very common on the trail a week ago with very few hermits and but if you went last evening you would say wood thrush are scarce and hermits are more common! They seem to be sharing similar habitat along this trail but maybe are at different life cycles related to nesting, second broods etc?? Anyway thought I would share this and see if others have noticed this with thrushes especially. I find it interesting on the habitat selection of the thrushes, especially hermit and wood which share our woods in the southern tier. Veeries are present in Broome Co as expected but not in these drier upland habitats on this trail. Cheers, Dave Nicosia -- 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/ --
