Bay-breasted warbler, 13 May 2026 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Cape May warbler, 13 May 2026 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Common yellowthroat (female), 15 May 2026 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Chestnut-sided warbler, 13 May 2026 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Magnolia warbler, 13 May 2026 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Nashville warbler, 13 May 2026 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Northern parula, 13 May 2026 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
16 May 2026
The second week of May is always wonderful for warblers, especially along Lake Erie’s southern shore at Magee Marsh, Ohio and Presque Isle, Pennsylvania. Shown above are just a few warbler highlights from Presque Isle this week.
Black-necked stilts (Himantopus mexicanus) are delicate-looking shorebirds that, according to official range maps, are absent in eastern North America other than the Atlantic coast. However, they are so raucous that it’s hard not to notice them at Howard Marsh in Curtice, Ohio.
Black-necked stilts at Howard Marsh, Ohio, 6 May 2026 (photo by Charity Kheshgi) (Lesser yellowlegs in the background)
The stilts first showed up in northwestern Ohio in 2004 and have returned annually for more than 20 years. Since they were already in the area, they immediately found Howard Marsh Metropark as soon as it was completed in 2018.
Their official range map says they aren’t here, but eBird sightings for the past 10 years say otherwise.
At the end of March I watched a female checking out the thickets near this concrete path while her mate watched from the river’s edge. Their paired searching is typical of the female mallard’s nest site selection process so I paused to watch.
Duck Hollow, old boat launch at the Mon River, 28 March 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
The female checked various bushes and walked up the bank (behind this view). Eventually she realized that too many people, including me, use the path so she rejected the spot and rejoined her mate in the river.
There’s a lot more to mallard nest site selection and building than we realize. This information paraphrased from Birds of the World is useful when you’re watching mallard behavior:
Mallards begin searching for a nest site within a few days of selecting their breeding home range (territory). The search is generally 5–10 days after the first “Persistent Quacking” by the female. (I’ve noticed that no one is quacking now!)
The female selects the nest site, usually on the ground in an upland area near water. For maximum concealment she places the nest under overhanging cover or in dense vegetation. In urban settings this might be underneath ornamental bushes, in woodpiles, in planters, hidden near docks, etc.
The pair does their best to make sure the area is safe from predators. “Experimental evidence suggests that mallards and several other dabbling ducks may be able to assess mammalian predator abundance and hence predation risk when selecting a nest-site by detecting (smelling!) these animals’ urine.”
The female makes the nest by forming a shallow depression or bowl on the ground in moist earth (‘digging the scrape’). She does not carry material to the nest but rather uses what she can reach and pull toward her with bill while sitting on nest.
During the laying phase, she improves the nest by lining the bowl with vegetation and plant litter from nearby. She also pulls and bends tall vegetation over to conceal herself and nest. After incubation begins, she plucks down from her breast to line the nest and cover the eggs when she takes a break from incubation.
This urban mallard chose a flower box for her nest and was probably surprised so suddenly that she didn’t cover her eggs.
When I stopped by Duck Hollow on Tuesday 7 April there were only 6 mallards present. All but one of the ladies were missing. They are all on hidden nests.
Tonight’s weather looks encouraging for bird migration over southwestern Pennsylvania. BirdCast’s forecast map shows them streaming from Texas to upstate New York along the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys. Oh boy! We’ll see new birds tomorrow.
The expected woodland migrants are the same species as last week, but with one addition. Fox sparrows and golden-crowned kinglets are on their last big push through the area, the warblers are here to breed, and the blue-headed vireo is not expected yet but has already arrived in Pittsburgh’s East End.
Fox sparrow (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Golden-crowned kinglet (photo by Steve Gosser)
Louisiana warbler (photo by Steve Gosser)
Yellow-throated warbler (photo by Steve Gosser)
Blue-headed vireo (photo from Wikimedia)
Other expected migrants include horned grebes and 7 duck species — lesser scaup, ring-necked duck, hooded merganser, red-breasted merganser, blue-winged teal and bufflehead. This year most of the ducks are passing through without stopping, so I felt lucky to see a pair of buffleheads at Duck Hollow yesterday.
Bufflehead pair (photo by Bobby Greene, photographed in 2011)
On April Fool’s Day 2008 the BBC published a tongue-in-cheek video about the “discovery” of a flock of flying penguins who migrate to the rainforests of South America.
Notice how the background documentary-type music sucks you in to make it more believable. This has gotta be real, right? The music says it is. 😉
Simultaneously the BBC also published The Making of Penguins April Fool that shows how the spoof was made using top notch production techniques and the latest special effects of 2008. They recorded the narrator on green screen, created physical models of penguins in flight, and used animation to bring them to life on the screen.
To our 2026 eyes it all looks so old. It was only 18 years ago but for this type of video it is ancient history. Nowadays it would be generated by AI.
Bird Bonus Fact:
In the “Making of” video they say they modeled the fictitious flying penguins on a similar bird that actually does fly. The common murre (Uria aalge), called a common guillemot in Eurasia, lives on northern oceans in the sub-Arctic and low-Arctic zones. I have seen them nesting in Newfoundland. Their body shape and lifestyle make them the Penguin of the North.
Here’s a short flight video with a tufted puffin in the mix.
The Mon River is so high that there is no “mud bar” at the mouth of Nine Mile Run, 28 March 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
30 March 2026
Five of us gathered at Duck Hollow yesterday morning when it was cold and cloudy. Waterfowl activity was low because the river was so high. The mud bar (not a sandbar) was still submerged.
We hoped to find the blue-winged teal that was there on Saturday but no luck. Instead we saw the usual suspects, mallards and Canada geese, and a beautiful male wood duck and three common mergansers.
We bundled up and looked for birds, 29 March 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
Thankfully the clouds broke up, the sun came out, and songbird activity picked up. A single northern rough-winged swallow gave us a Rare Bird Alert though it was “too early” by only a few days.
Red-winged blackbird males competed for the best territories before the females arrive.
Red-winged blackbird displaying his red wings, 29 March 2026 (photo by CJ Showers)
One red-wing kept the area safe from raptors by chasing off an immature red-tailed hawk.
Red-winged blackbird attacking immature red-tailed hawk at Duck Hollow, 29 March 2026 (photo by David Bennett)
What bird did we spend the most time on? This drab brown female. Couldn’t see her back. The light was so weird that it made her face look yellow and her beak thin. Eventually we walked close enough to cancel the effects of odd light. Her drabness, conical beak, and beady eye = female brown-headed cowbird. We saw two male cowbirds displaying elsewhere.
Featureless mystery bird … except for her beak, Duck Hollow, 29 March 2026 (photo by David Bennett)
Most surprising observation: We saw more cardinals than robins.
Snow goose migration is a huge spectacle in February and March along the Illinois River from Havana north to Peoria. Numbers have grown as the migratory population concentrates at Emiquon and Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuges.
Here’s the count of just one flock on the lake at Chautauqua NWR on 27 Feb 2026 at 12:24pm. This does not include all the other flocks feeding in the fields and resting at Emiquon.
500,000 Snow Goose (Anser caerulescens). Huge and loud flock – Winks’ Estimate – he counted by 10k then got to 100k and then 5x that. Still a likely underestimate because many were coming in and not many leaving.
There was a time when I used to go to Pennsylvania’s Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area every spring to see the snow goose spectacle when 100,000 snow geese would rise from the lake all at once. At its peak Middle Creek Wildlife counted 200,000 snow geese in February 2018.
But lately the count there has been going down. This year’s peak was 65,000 snow geese around February 24-25. Middle Creek’s migratory population has decreased for several reasons, one of which is intentional.
Intentional hunting to reduce the snow goose population. In 2009 the count of snow geese in the Atlantic Flyway was 750,000 to 1,000,000 birds and their overpopulation was damaging their food supply on the breeding grounds. US Fish & Wildlife instituted a hunt in the migratory areas, including Pennsylvania, to reduce the snow goose population to 500,000 birds.
Overpopulation: Degraded food supply on the breeding grounds may be reducing gosling numbers.
Avian flu has been killing a lot of snow geese (read more here).
At this point it looks like the snow goose total in the Atlantic Flyway has reached 500,000. If so, the hunt will stop.
Snow goose numbers ebb and flow. A low count in PA isn’t bad when there are 10 times that number in Illinois.
On the weather front, half the week was too wet to enjoy so I only went out when the sun was shining. Warmer at the end of the week than the beginning. On 1 March walked at Herrs Island.
Herr’s Island back channel of the Allegheny River, 1 March 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
Way across the (finally thawed!) Allegheny River I saw a grebe-shaped water bird with a white face and chest and a black head. Even though these digiscoped photos are lousy, they confirm a horned grebe (Podiceps auritus) in non-breeding plumage.
Documentation photos of horned grebe at Allegheny River, 1 March 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
Never abundant in Pittsburgh, most horned grebes breed in western Canada but a few stay in our area all winter if there’s open water. Here’s what they look like in a good photo by Steve Gosser.
Horned grebes, 15 Feb 2014 (photo by Steve Gosser)
Yesterday in Schenley Park we discovered that the Panther Hollow Bridge rehab project is temporarily in a VERY LOUD phase. Here are just 10 seconds of it.
Panther Hollow Bridge rehab project was VERY LOUD on 6 March 2026 (video by Kate St. John)
My guess at what’s happening: Inside the draped portion of the bridge I *think* they’re blasting off the peeling paint and rust. On the bridge deck there are two loud sucking machines that maintain negative air pressure.
Because of the noise there were almost no birds at this end of the park. We found them at the Bartlett end along with other signs of spring.
The buds look fat on this yellow buckeye (Aesculus flava).
Yellow buckeye buds in Schenley Park, 6 March 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) buds are already opening.
Cornelian cherry buds opening in Schenley Park, 6 March 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
The weather is warm today (77°F) but will return to near freezing on Wednesday night. Spring is moving forward in fits and starts.
On Wednesday I wrote about a Kingfisher Sweep of all six species in Costa Rica but that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to kingfishers. Worldwide there are 117 species and all but six of them are native to Asia, Africa and Australia.
The kingfisher family (Alcedinidae) is in the order Coraciiformes along with bee-eaters, todies, motmots, rollers and ground-rollers, all of whom share this behavior: They beat their prey against a hard surface to kill or stun it, to break it up a bit and, in the case of bee-eaters, to remove stingers.
Watch three members of the kingfisher family beating up their dinner.
The common kingfisher (Alcedo atthis), pictured at top, is native to Eurasia and the north edge of Africa. Though his head, neck and beak make him look large, he is only slightly larger than a house sparrow.
Another clip from the River Kelvin in Glasgow. This was an epic struggle between Kingfisher and, I think, an eel elver. Lasted several minutes; we think he won but he flew off to the other side of the river to finish the job. Starts full speed, then goes slow-mo, no sound. #birdspic.twitter.com/G9Zhc0WncP
The pied kingfisher (Ceryle rudis) is about the size of a blue jay. He lives in Africa and Asia.
Pied kingfisher, male (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
This pied kingfisher was whacking a fish at St. Lucia park, KwaZulu-Natal [South Africa]. I left the entire video uncut to demonstrate how long it was at this. It flew off after a few minutes and kept hitting the fish against another rock.
The laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), twice the size of our belted kingfisher, is one of 5 kookaburra species found in Australia and Indonesia. Watch him subdue a beetle.
Though there are about 118 species of kingfishers worldwide, most of them are native to Africa and Asia. There are only six kingfisher species in the western hemisphere and we saw all of them on a single day at Caño Negro Wildlife Refuge in Costa Rica, 23 January 2026. Here’s who’s in the Kingfisher Sweep.
Largest of the six, ringed kingfishers range from southern Texas to South America. They are solitary except during the breeding season when they nest in holes in river banks like their close relatives the belted kingfisher. Size: male 254–330g, female 274–325g.
Second largest on the list and familiar throughout North America, the belted kingfisher winters as far south the Caribbean coast of South America. He’s the sixth species, but only in winter. Size: 140-170 g
Third largest on the list, the Amazon kingfisher is “a resident of lakeshores and large-slow flowing rivers from northern Mexico south to central Argentina,” according to Birds of the World. Size: male 98–121 g, female 125–140 g
American pygmy kingfishers are tiny! Except for their huge beaks they are half the size of a house sparrow. Size: male 10–16g, female 12–16g (House sparrow is 27-29g)
To give you an idea of his size, here’s my cellphone photo of one perched on a small branch above the water. Can’t find him? Click on the image to see a circle around him.
American pygmy kingfisher perched on a small branch over water, 23 Jan 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
Not large, but fourth largest on the list, “the green-and-rufous kingfisher is found around streams and rivers, from southeast Nicaragua south through the rest of Central America and across much of the northern two-thirds of South America, south as far as eastern Paraguay.” — Birds of the WorldSize: male 40–60g, female 53–62g
Bay-breasted warbler, 13 May 2026 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
