Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!leah!gmr044
From: gmr044@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregg Recer)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: A trip to the bog
Keywords: boreal species
Message-ID: <3358@leah.Albany.Edu>
Date: 17 Jul 90 16:39:03 GMT
Organization: The University at Albany, Computer Services Center
Lines: 61


As promised, here's a brief run-down of our trip last weekend to the
Adirondacks:

     The main thrust of the trip was our bird-club's annual visit to a
large sphagnum bog in the central Adirondacks.  If you're not familiar
with such habitats, sphagnum bogs are areas where either sphagnum moss
has grown up in low-lying areas as an understory species or has
appeared around the perifery of small, shallow ponds and eventually
grows out in a floating mat over the surface of the pond.  In either
case the sphagnum holds a great deal of water per plant and causes a
decrease in the pH of the saturated soil or pond.  The increased
acidity results in decreased decomposition in the system and so dead
sphagnum and other plants pile up in layers.  This material becomes
compressed and turns into peat.  Eventually a deep layer of peat forms
(can be tens of feet thick) on top of which fairly few plants can
grow.  Aside from the sphagnum, interesting plants include
insectivorous plants -- sundews and pitcher plants -- and various
shrubby plants such as bog laurel, sheep laurel and labrador tea.  The
only tree species typically found in these systems are black spruce
and tamarack both of which grow in stunted forms in bogs.  

     Bogs in upstate NY are places where typical boreal bird species
can be found.  Among this year's finds were yellow-bellied and
olive-sided flycatchers and boreal chickadees.  To our dismay neither
black-backed nor three-toed woodpeckers made an appearance.  The
experience has been that at least one of these two is found on nearly
every trip to this bog.  Another species missed was gray jay.  Other
passerines included red-breasted nuthatch, lincoln's, swamp and
white-throated sparrows, dark-eyed junco, purple finch, common
yellowthroat and several warbler species in the spruce/fir woods
surrounding the bog:  black-throated blue, black-throated green,
magnolia, blackburnian, N.  parula.  The bog also produced several
hairy woodpeckers, an osprey flying over and a listen to a barred owl
calling from the surrounding woods.

     We also spent some time hiking around in the beech/hemlock forest
which is more typical of the Adirondacks.  One species you can't miss
there is red-eyed vireo although you might be hard-pressed to see one.
You can walk down a trail and hear red-eye after red-eye as you pass
from one territory to the next.  They are quite prolific!  In addition
to those mentioned above, other woodland passerines notables included
veery and hermit thrush, winter wren and Am. redstart.

     It was a very pleasant weekend all in all.  In August we're off
to Jamaica Bay to start working on shorebirds.  I can hardly wait!



Gregg



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     "In future you should delete the words crunchy frog and 
     replace them with the legend crunchy raw unboned real
     dead frog!!"  
                 -- Inspector Bradshaw, The Hygiene Division

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