Category: Birds
Fall Bird Migration
October 4, 2020By Jasmine Lee, Communications Intern
Fall migration, the large-scale movement of birds from their summer breeding homes to their winter grounds is part of an annual cycle that is undertaken by more than half of all the birds in North America. Unfortunately, it is estimated that in the U.S. alone, one billion birds die each year as a result of collisions with glass windows, walls, and other structures, with numbers typically spiking during migration months. At the Schuylkill Center and the Wildlife Clinic, warblers of all kinds, flycatchers, woodcocks, and even hummingbirds are passing through as they make their way…
Manayunk’s Falcons
May 6, 2020[caption id="attachment_271399" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Female peregrine falcon eating[/caption]
Here's a good news story for these COVID-consumed times.
For Philadelphia’s birding community, spring means many things, especially the return of migrating birds to famous haunts like Carpenters Woods in Mt. Airy. To Roxborough’s Judy Stepenaskie, spring means the return of a pair of peregrine falcons – famously the world's fastest animal – to the nesting box tucked into the top of the steeple of St. John the Baptist Church, the tallest stone spire in Manayunk’s skyline.
As Judy has become the de facto adopted godmother of the peregrines that nest there, following them…
Nature Preschool meets our pileated woodpecker
December 26, 2019By Leigh Ashbrook
Editor’s note: one of the largest-- and rarest-- birds in the Schuylkill Center forest is the pileated woodpecker, our largest woodpecker with a wood chipper for a beak. We’ve seen them here this winter, and Nature Preschool has become enchanted by them. One of our teachers, Leigh Ashbrook, also a great birder, teaches about birds in the school, and writes about her students meeting them recently.
Photo: Chris Petrak
Sixteen Nature Preschoolers are meandering along the Widener Trail toward the bird blind, flanked by trees of the second growth forest. Out of the woods on their left…
