24 June 2021
In early summer Pittsburgh birders tire of searching among dense leaves so we travel to Clarion County’s recovered strip mines for grassland birds. Yesterday five of us drove 90 minutes to look for open country birds we’ve found there in the past.
Dickcissels (Spiza americana) are back again this year and easy to find singing on the wires at Concord Church Road. These rare nomads were a Life Bird for me in 2012. Read this vintage article, Dickcissels, for the reason why they to come to western Pennsylvania.
At Piney Tract (actually a grassland) we saw Henslow’s sparrows (Centronyx henslowii) …
and heard them …
And we saw a grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum) singing …
… but I could not hear him because I’ve lost the upper frequencies. Can you hear the really loud trill of this grasshopper sparrow?
We also looked for upland sandpipers (Bartramia longicauda) but, alas, they were not there. Seven years ago I saw four of these Magical birds at Mt. Airy.
Interested in exploring the Clarion County’s grasslands? Check out two locations plus photos in this vintage article: In The Scrubby Fields.
(photos by Robert Greene, Jr and Steve Gosser)
It may seem like an odd suggestion, but there is a lot of regrown scrubby grassland around the Pittsburgh Mills Mall up 28 near Cheswick. I had gone to the Dick’s Sporting Goods store there about month ago and there is a huge overgrown field teeming with birds right next to it. Since the mall itself is slowly losing stores the area has become less busy and a lot of birds seem to hang out there now.