This morning Nate Fronk and I decided to check out the flock of Horned Larks on Williams Rd. for Snow Buntings and Lapland Longspurs. We found the flock and started scanning for species other than larks. Nate spotted a Snow Bunting through his scope, so I decided to take a look and confirmed. Now, two days ago we observed a larger flock of Horned Larks in the same area and found a Lapland Longspur. Well, I think Nate and I were looking at two different birds because I saw a Snow Bunting and he saw a Lapland Longspur. I initially thought what I saw was a Snow Bunting and to think of it, we were looking in opposite directions when we were scanning the flock two days ago. We were unable to find the longspur again, but it was nice to finally add Snow Bunting to our Centre County list. I decided to delete my observation on eBird of the Lapland Longspur as well as remove it from my year and life lists.
We decided to call the morning quits after field birding because we had class for an hour. After class we decided to search a set of different fields. We observed a flock of roughly 20 Horned Larks off of N. Nixon Rd. and a lone Wild Turkey in a near field. We also observed three White-crowned Sparrows foraging next to the road along Nixon Rd.
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| White-crowned Sparrows along Nixon Rd. (1/13/2011) |
After we got done observing the flock of larks, we decided to look for the Rough-legged Hawk that has been reported for the past couple of months off between Rt. 220 and Rt. 150. We did not see it off Rt. 220, but were surprised with a nice male Northern Harrier. We took Rt. 150 back towards State College and immediately spotted the Rough-legged Hawk.
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| Rough-legged Hawk off Rt. 150 (1/13/2011) |
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| Rough-legged Hawk off Rt. 150 (1/13/2011) |
At the end of the day, I added four new species to my big year list as well as my Centre County list. Species include Snow Bunting, Wild Turkey, White-crowned Sparrow, and Rough-legged Hawk. My big year list now total 57 species and my Centre County list totals 55 species.
Nice pics Tim! Thats a beautiful RLHA. Its definitely an adult dark morph, and that particular look for the adults is much more commonly shown on males. Im super jealous, I would love to get pics of that bird.
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