State College Bird Club Meeting
March 26, 2026


Presiding: Doug Wentzel

Recording: Peggy Wagoner Saporito

Attendance: 40 in person/24 on zoom

Meeting Format: Hybrid: In-person (Millbrook Marsh Nature Center) and Zoom.


Field Trips and Outreach (Kathy Bechdel)

A handout, that Kathy put together, with a list of upcoming SCBC field trips and other events with partner organizations was available on the side table. More details are available on our website:  https://www.scbirdcl.org.

The next SCBC sponsored trip is to Bald Eagle State Park on March 29. Weekly bird walks sponsored by other groups with SCBC assistance have begun and will continue through April and into May. These include walks at Millbrook Marsh (Tuesdays), Shaver’s Creek (Wednesdays) and Penn State Arboretum (Thursdays).

SCBC will also be present with our table at a number of community events including April 19 – Earth Fest at Millbrook Marsh and May 30 – Frog Fest at Muddy Paws Marsh. Volunteers at the tables are always welcome.


Treasurer’s report:(Karen Kottlowski):

SCBC account balances: checking: $5968.99 and savings: $22580.64.


Announcements/Other Activities:

Shaver’s Creek Birding Cup is just a little more than a month away. Teams can register now. Funds raised this year will be used to support the Hawksview Meadow enhancement project which includes wetland habitat at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center.

This year’s PSO (PA Society of Ornithology) annual meeting and Birding Festival will be held in Blair County, June 19-21 at Blair County Convention Center. Registration will open on April 3. Connor Schmidt and Joe Gyekis have developed a slate of field trips for this event. Spots on the field trips are limited, so sign up early.

Board member elections will be held at the April meeting. Board positions up for election this year include VP of Field Trips, Treasurer, and two Board members-at-large (currently Kathy B., Karen, Jon K. and Bob Fowles respectively). Deb Escalet, the Nominating Committee Chair, requested two other active club members to volunteer for the committee. If interested, email Deb.


Tussey Mountain Hawk Watch

Tom Filip, our official counter, discussed the results of the hawk watch to date. This has been a good season for migrating golden eagles with 198 counted so far which includes the 80 counted on March 8, the highest count ever for this site and second highest in the region. Nick Bolgiano commented that in the past we have had 200+ golden eagles migrating past Tussey when winters have been especially cold and snowy, probably encouraging more eagles to head farther south. He expects that this year will be similar. Lower golden eagle counts in recent years may be a result of milder winters in which fewer eagles migrate south indicating that recent lower numbers are the result of behavior changes and hopefully not population declines.


Birds of Note (Julia Plummer): (Feb 26- Mar 25, 2026; Centre and its contiguous counties)

In the interest of time and since March is a big month for waterfowl migration, Julia gave a quick snapshot of the interesting waterfowl sightings this month.  Lesser black-backed gull was spotted at both Bald Eagle State Park and Raytown Lake. Since mid-March, an eared grebe has been recorded for a number of days at Canoe Creek. Though not in big numbers as are seen in eastern PA, there were 52 snow geese on Lake Perez. The biggest event was the fall out of 2,000 tundra swans on Coyler Lake on March 8.


Annual Photo and Audio Show: hosted by Betsy Manlove and Nick Bolgiano.
A packed house in the Millbrook Marsh classroom and a bigger than normal audience on zoom is a good indication of the popularity of our annual share-a-thon. Our generous participants did not disappoint us.

We enjoyed a delightful evening of bird photographs taken from a wide variety of locations ranging from local backyards and other familiar PA locations to more far-flung places including Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia and Borneo. The 11 photographers described interesting tidbits about each of their 5 photos, to give us a greater appreciation of the wonderful images they shared and of the incredible diversity and beauty of birds that share our planet.

Thanks to photographers: Bob Snyder (presented by Nick B.), Deb Rittlemann, Tina Hay, Brady Thomas, Nick Bolgiano, Ron Crandall and his grandson Noah Hart, Larry Ramsey, Lou Saporito and Loanne Snavely.

To wrap up the evening, Julia Plummer and Joe Gyekis shared several intriguing sound recordings with associated sonagrams. Julia has been experimenting with stereo recordings. She shared calls of 700 snow geese on Coyler Lake, a great blue heron as it flew past and a pair of great horned owls, one of which called loudly from the tree in which the sound recorder was located.  Joe had recordings of some of our common birds making sounds that have never been recorded previously including mimicry in a towhee sounding like a hooded warbler and unknown high pitched and soft sounds of robins, purple finch, chimney swifts and gnatcatcher.

Thanks again to Nick and Betsy for organizing this annual fun event!