Bethlehem - Easton - Hellertown C.B.C. ~ December 29, 2018

Jason Horn, Stephen Kloiber, Jon Mularczyk, and I spent all Saturday morning at the Nazareth Quarry, tallying birds for the Bethlehem Christmas Count. The quarry has become one of the favorite hangouts for wintering Snow Geese. Numbers in the 20,000-30,000 range are almost expected now for the count. Normally, the birds roost there and, within an hour or so after dawn, start taking off to feed in the area's fields. When we walked up to the quarry Saturday morning, the birds were tightly packed and covering almost the entire quarry.

At that time, we figured around 80,000 birds were present. As we scanned the horizon to the east, we could see endless skeins of Snows working their way towards us from the direction of Merrill Creek Reservoir in nearby New Jersey. By around 11 AM, we estimated that the numbers had grown to well over 100,000 birds.

Every once in a while, one of the four Bald Eagles we saw would cruise over the quarry and scare up a good portion of the thousands of birds, causing what looked like a blizzard. A few videos of the eagle-caused chaos can be seen in my Local Notables - 2018 Album. Especially check out the 2:26 video, which isn't the greatest quality, but gives you a good idea of the swirling masses we saw.

One of the big surprises was when an immature Golden Eagle flew over the swarm and briefly landed in a tree on the far side of the quarry. Stephen got a video of the bird taking off from the tree and flying east out of the quarry.

A screenshot of the Golden Eagle from the video taken by Stephen Kloiber.

Among the masses, the guys picked out 2 Ross's Geese, 7 Cackling Geese, a Canvasback, and 2 Redheads. Others present included 6 Lesser Scaup, a Pied-billed Grebe, and 3 Great Blue Herons among the expected numbers of American Black Ducks, Ring-necked Ducks, Buffleheads, Common Mergansers, Ruddy Ducks, and American Coots. Two Peregrine Falcons were routinely seen among the cement mill buildings.

Walking the wooded area with the two ponds, we found an additional Great Blue Heron in addition to 2 Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, 2 Winter Wrens, two Golden-crowned Kinglets, one Ruby-crowned Kinglet, a Hermit Thrush, a Yellow-rumped Warbler, a Fox Sparrow, and 2 Red-winged Blackbirds. Another nice find was an Iceland Gull that was among a group of gulls that circled overhead.

One VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: This quarry is posted and patrolled! Birders are NOT allowed inside the property! The only place that birders can legally observe the quarry is through a chain-link fence along Franklin Street in Nazareth. You can paste the following GPS location into Google Maps to pinpoint the spot: 40.735605, -75.303230 .

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Fourth Merlin sighting from my yard! ~ November 30, 2018

On Friday afternoon, I looked out the window and found the feeders devoid of birds, so I looked up into the neighbor's snag, which occasionally holds a raptor. I was happily surprised to see a Merlin perched there. Amazingly, it was my fourth sighting of Merlin in that same tree! I slowly walked out into the backyard and got some photos of it in the drizzle. Obviously, I'm hoping she never has it cut down.

More photos of this bird and the other three Merlins can be found in my Yard Birds - Palmer Township Album.

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