Carantouan Greenway’s Nature Reserve is host to over 100 bird species

Dear Editor,

Carantouan Greenway’s Wildwood Nature Reserve served as a host for 105 bird species during the 2017 calendar year. Carantouan’s naturalist visited the reserve on 264 days and reported the observations to Cornell’s E-bird.

The commonest nesting waterfowl were common mergansers, wood ducks and Canada geese with the geese seen in every month of the year. Single or multiple visits did include shovelers, gadwalls, ring-neck, mallards and hooded mergansers.

Great blue herons and green herons are area nesters with occasional fall visits by great herons. The commonest nesting hawk is the microtone feeding red-tail with visits by bald eagles, osprey and sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawk.

Shorebirds were restricted to the killdeer and the spotted sandpiper. 

Ring-billed gulls stopped in on occasion as they nest along the Susquehanna and Chemung rivers. Belted kingfishers were seen in every month of the year. All resident woodpeckers; the red-bellied, downy, hairy northern flicker and pileated were regularly reported with a single fall visit by the yellow-belled sapsucker. 

The probable nesting flycatchers included the eastern wood pewee, the willow flycatcher, least flycatcher, phoebe, great-crested flycatcher and the kingbird. The corvid group including the blue jay and crow were seen every month of the year but the reserve only had a single visit from the expanding population of ravens. 

Insect feeding rough-winged and barn swallows visited in the summer with the common tree swallow a common nester around the pond. The black-capped chickadee, titmouse, and white-breasted nuthatch were seen in every month of the year with irregular visits from the nesting brown creeper. 

The Carolina wren was seen or heard during each month of the year while the house wren was a summer nester. The golden-crowned kinglets were winter visitors with the ruby-crowned a spring and fall migrant. 

The robins dominated thrushes and bluebirds followed by nesting wood thrushes and single visits by veerys and hermit thrushes. The mimics were the hedge-nesting catbirds and brown thrashers with no record of the mockingbird. The nesting warblers include the yellowthroat, the yellow, the American redstart, and the chestnut-sided. There were single or multiple visits by six other warbler species.

The nesting sparrows were the song and swamp with winter visitors including the junco, tree and white-throated sparrows. During migration there were stopovers by the fox and field. Cardinals can be seen all year long and during the summer the cattails and phragmites are homesteads for the red-winged blackbirds.

Sincerely,

Martin Borko

Carantouan Greenway