PPL Environmental Preserves

Look what all there is to see when you spend just a couple hours outside, like Jim Smith did last Saturday. Jim is a consulting naturalist at PPL’s Holtwood and Brunner Island locations. He is also an Audubon member, a board member of the Lancaster County Bird Club, a member of Cornell Lab of Ornithology, American Birding Association, PA Bluebird Society and Pennsylvania Society for Ornithology.

Greetings from Holtwood,
A few hours briefly surveying the [Holtwood Dam, Muddy Run, Wissler Run] areas, under partly sunny skies and 46 degrees, yielded the following raptors and “water birds” :
The Holtwood Dam eagle nest in York Co. showed no signs of activity. One adult bald eagle was on a central tower below the dam. The nest is deep and can only be seen from a good distance, so any eagle low in it would not be observable. Some rock pigeons were flying around the power plant, along with some ring-billed gulls.
Water was very high and pouring over the dam, with the spray making rainbows. I enjoyed watching a flock of about 15 gulls on the water above the dam floating down to the breast, then being catapulted into the air and flying back upriver to rest on the water again. Crossing back into Lanc. Co. via the Norman Wood Bridge I stopped to walk down under the bridge to view the Piney Island eagle nest. An adult was perched on a sycamore branch just above the nest; none visible in the nest. No sign of any peregrine falcons.
Crossing the Muddy Run Pumped Storage reservoir dam, I had canada geese and black ducks along the shoreline on both sides.
Down at Wissler Run Park, not much was happening. A kettle of turkey vultures, with a few black vultures and one bald eagle flew south overhead, one visible rock out on the river held about 20 ring-billed gulls and one greater black-backed.
Returning home along the south side of the reservoir, the eagle nest in the tower in the middle of the reservoir had two bald eagles sitting in it. The best birds of the day there were two groups of pintail ducks, each group, coincidentally, made up of 4 drakes and 2 hens. Also had two ringneck cocks pass across my field of view while checking the pintails.
Along Silver Springs Rd., one eastern bluebird topped a very unproductive day for passerines!
Jim Smith