S6E17 - Dawn Hike at Deer Lick Run, Part 1

[00:00:27] At sunrise every morning during bird breeding season, habitats everywhere erupt into birdsong.

[00:00:35] This is referred to as the Dawn Chorus and depending on where you live it could be just a few neighborhood backyard birds

[00:00:43] or a deafening cacophony of various species competing to be heard.

[00:00:51] I'm taking advantage of staying at campgrounds that have access to exceptional nature trails

[00:00:57] rather than driving somewhere to record ongoing straight from the tent to the trails that meander up through valleys

[00:01:04] full of eastern hemlock and other Carolinian forest species.

[00:01:10] This will be my last day here in July of 2022, but it will be a very busy one.

[00:01:19] For the next five episodes we'll be exploring this part of Allegheny National Forest

[00:01:24] then making a couple more stops on my journey back home.

[00:01:29] My name is Rob and this is Songbirding.

[00:02:26] So it's early morning and I'm walking one of the trails in Allegheny National Forest.

[00:02:35] It's a trail right from the campsite.

[00:02:42] The sun isn't fully up yet but as you can hear there's a lot of birds here.

[00:03:11] I'm going to winter run doing that really lengthy song.

[00:03:47] Oh, Blackfooted Blue Warbler.

[00:04:05] Blackfooted Green Warbler as well.

[00:04:08] I think there's a pilliated woodpecker in the distance.

[00:04:48] So this is the full force of the Dawn Chorus.

[00:04:52] Blackfooted Green Warbler.

[00:05:05] It's the last day for my trip here.

[00:05:23] But I plan to be back next season in spring.

[00:05:53] And maybe see if we can compare what this sounds like in the spring here.

[00:06:20] So a lot of the background birds are red-eyed virios.

[00:06:42] Another winter run in the foreground here.

[00:06:48] Here's a blue-headed virio.

[00:06:52] Another pilliated woodpecker.

[00:07:22] Another pilliated woodpecker.

[00:07:24] Winter run again.

[00:07:32] This is basically what I heard around my tent as I woke up.

[00:08:35] A lot of virios, mostly blue-headed down at the tents actually.

[00:08:42] I don't know what it is about tent areas.

[00:08:51] This is the second campsite.

[00:08:54] I don't know third campsite actually where I've woken up to mostly blue-headed virios.

[00:09:07] There's a whip.

[00:09:45] Another red-eft again.

[00:09:47] You must really like this trail.

[00:09:50] This is the other trail, but...

[00:09:55] So these trails...

[00:09:57] That's like four nutes this week.

[00:10:05] I'm actually not sure what the whip call is.

[00:10:51] I pulled up Merlin to see if it knew and it doesn't either.

[00:10:54] Could be one of the thrushes.

[00:11:34] There's a brief wheat-a-weedio, which would be actually just the wheat-a-weedio part.

[00:11:39] That would be a Magnolia warbler.

[00:12:19] Some deer taken off.

[00:12:21] I encountered a lot of deer this week and actually more fawns than I've ever seen before.

[00:12:29] There are young deer everywhere.

[00:13:03] Another blue-headed virio.

[00:13:10] Quite quiet though.

[00:13:18] Oh, black for the blue.

[00:13:19] That's black for the blue warbler.

[00:13:22] A beer-beer-bees song.

[00:13:28] So this is a heavily forested spot.

[00:13:43] If the section had been logged before, which maybe it has been, it's been quite some time.

[00:13:55] The trees are very tall here, at least compared to what I'm used to in southern Ontario.

[00:14:04] I can tell that they're an extra 10, maybe 15 feet taller than they would be there for the most part.

[00:14:18] Getting our creek in the distance there.

[00:16:03] Walking along, I believe it's called Deer Lick Creek.

[00:16:10] And it's supposed to flow down from a source that this trail should reach, a pond.

[00:16:29] So I'm going to head towards that.

[00:16:35] Since potentially a different habitat, or we'll get maybe something like a eluth root,

[00:16:44] herons, frogs, things we'd find at a wetland.

[00:16:55] Dark Ijunkku.

[00:16:57] Woke up to quite a bit of those too.

[00:17:06] Dark Ijunkku are really talkative around the campsite.

[00:17:29] It's really interesting, there's still a lot of very wet areas on the trail here, muddy.

[00:17:37] Because it hasn't rained in several days.

[00:17:43] I spoke to a farmer who was really hoping for some rain because it's basically been a drought.

[00:17:48] And if you do walk out in areas that have the forest cleared, it is really, really dry.

[00:18:03] The forest is good at retaining water.

[00:18:24] Keep listening after the credits as I've included some winter ends and other species captured by a stationary recorder I left sitting near the campgrounds during the Dawn Chorus.

[00:19:24] Songbirding, the Allegheny National Forest is a songbirding studios production and was recorded, engineered, narrated and created by me, Rob Porter.

[00:19:35] With cover art and logo design by Lauren Helton and Creative Commons Music from Chase and Shaw.

[00:23:57] Songbirding, the Allegheny National Forest