This morning Adam Cirone, Bill Heck and I ventured into the last areas of  my
Prothonotary Warbler nest box trail at the Hoover Nature Preserve. I have
nest boxes in three niches at Twin Bridges and we had to play Mountain
Goat/Water Buffalo to get to the 18 nest boxes. I wish I could say that we saved  the
best for last, but the nest boxes really took a hit here. Nine out of
eighteen nest boxes were utterly destroyed. The rate at which fallen trees made
direct hits on the nest boxes made me wonder if Mother Nature was having target
practice. Five of the Nine surviving nest boxes had Prothonotary Warbler nests
in them, although one nest had six unhatched eggs. I would like to hope that
the  other nine nest boxes were used at the same rate, but there wasn't enough
left  of the boxes to even guess. I'm just thankful that this storm was after
the  nesting season and after the birds had already headed for their
wintering  grounds in Central and South America.

As the three of us played FEMA, evaluating the devastation to the trees and
nests boxes, we gathered and removed about 40 gallons of trash and hauled it
out  to the trash cans in the parking area. A gift for the Water Rangers to
pick up.  Along the way both Adam and Bill managed to find a spot to sink knee
deep in  mud. I didn't laugh though as every year I managed to go down like a
frog in a  biology class at least once ( the reason I keep an old U.S. Army
blanket in my  car trunk).

We did some birding as we worked, although our observations were minimal at
Twin Bridges where we saw Wood Ducks, Blue-winged Teal, Semipalmated Plover,
Pileated Woodpecker, Swainson's Thrush and Yellow-rumped Warbler. Later we
made a stop at Hoover Meadows and observed Chimney Swifts, Eastern Wood  Pewee,
Eastern Phoebe, good numbers of Eastern Bluebirds, Gray Catbird,
Yellow-rumped Warbler, Ovenbird, Palm Warbler, Eastern Towhee, Field Sparrow,  Swamp
Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow and a 1st year
Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

This completed the circuit of the nest box trail and the 2008 tally appears
to be 185 Prothonotary Warbler territories. I've begun preparing a spreadsheet
 of their distribution by area which I hope to post soon.

Charlie Bombaci
Hoover Nature Preserve







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