February 2013 Meeting

Tue, February 5, 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Blue Spruce County Park
Speaker: Dr. Greg Grove, Penn State University

Description

Come and learn about the Winter Raptor Surveys and their results when Dr. Greg Grove from Penn State presents his findings at this meeting. Winter raptor surveys (WRS) have been conducted annually in Pennsylvania since 2001 to assess and monitor the winter distribution of raptors. All raptors and vultures are recorded during driving routes designed by volunteers. Routes are run once a year between mid- January and mid-February, with results reported by county. In 2012, 200 routes were run, at least one in each county. Results are summarized in detail for the four open-country raptors: Red-tailed Hawk, American Kestrel, Rough-legged Hawk, and Northern Harrier. Age, sex, and color-morph data are also reported.

Dr. Greg Grove lives in Huntingdon County, PA, and works in the DNA analysis lab at Penn State. He and his wife Deb started birding as graduate students at Ohio State University in 1979. After the initial exciting years of learning birds and finding new birds, his interest moved to the dynamics of bird populations and ways of surveying populations. He founded the Stone Mt. Hawk Watch, the Lake Raystown Christmas Bird Count, the Pennsylvania Winter Raptor Survey, and three Breeding Bird Survey routes in Rothrock State Forest. He is past president of the State College Bird Club and the Pennsylvania Society for Ornithology and was a Regional Coordinator during the Breeding Bird Atlas.