PHOTO PROVIDED This past spring, the Pennsylvania Society of Ornithology awarded Rider Park funds from their 2024 PA Breeding Bird Blitz fundraiser. Rider Park will use the nearly $7,000 award to improve American Woodcock habitats at the park. Photo by Rider Park’s Sara Street.

This past spring, the Pennsylvania Society of Ornithology awarded Rider Park funds from their 2024 PA Breeding Bird Blitz fundraiser. Rider Park will use the nearly $7,000 award to improve American Woodcock habitats at the park. Locals also participated in the 2024 blitz.

“Each year during the June bird breeding season, the Pennsylvania Society of Ornithology, asks teams of birders throughout the state to accumulate the greatest number of species in a 24-hour period. Each team generates sponsors to raise funds to promote conservation activities focused on birds,” said Rider Park manager Sara Street.

The Pennsylvania Society of Ornithology splits all money raised between the three teams. Projects enhance bird habitat as well as promote birding education and monitoring opportunities, she adds.

“Rider Park is a direct recipient of grant funding from this initiative. We plan to enhance the American Woodcock habitat.”

Street was inspired to apply for the grant earlier this spring while walking around the park with Forest Program Manager Scott Parkhill and Forest Program Associate Josh Rittenhouse.

Street shared, “As we walked along the west edge of the meadow at Rider Park, Scott said, ‘This would make great American Woodcock habitat.'”

She highlighted the wet soils, a variety of habitats including forested fencerow, meadow and wild huckleberry shrub area.

“This type of habitat complexity is exactly what American Woodcock love,” she said. “But we need more shrubs and small trees to provide a stem-dense shrubby area that provides cover while being open at the ground level to allow these birds to forage and nest.”

“The entire enhancement project covers 4 acres. Rider Park will need to manage invasive plants, plant hundreds of shrubs and root-suckering trees, think aspen and willow; create and install interpretive signs, provide seasonal American Woodcock interpretive programs and get Lycoming Audubon members and the public to monitor bird species,” said Street.

Williamsport Warblers

As well as applying for a grant, Street and others participated in the 2024 Breeding Bird Blitz.

The local team, known as the Williamsport Warblers, consisted of Street as well as Lycoming Audubon Society members Dan Brauning, Bruce Buckle, Wayne Laubscher and Fred Stiner. For more than 10 hours on June 13, the team traveled to various local sites, including Rider Park, Loyalsock State Forest and Rose Valley Lake, to identify as many birds as possible.

They documented 72 different species of birds.

“The highlights were a mourning warbler with their blue-gray heads and yellow throats and blackburnian warblers with their fiery heads,” said Street.

For now, Street continues her plans for improving birding habitats at Rider Park.

“Next steps for 2024 are to order plants for 2025, order herbicide to spot-treat invasive plants, order fencing materials, begin to work on interpretive sign panels, and prepare planting areas by managing invasive plants. [In the spring of 2025, about April], we will begin planting and erecting deer enclosures. Simultaneously, we will also look for invasive plants to manage,” Street said.

Rider Park staff will repeat this process again in the fall of 2025, and hope to have signs and plants installed by the end of 2025 while continuing maintenance of all installations.

“Subsequent years will also include American Woodcock environmental education programs and focused monitoring dates,” Street said.

Just in time for another legendary Breeding Bird season.