Neotropical migrants slowly arriving

Since the last time I wrote, which was maybe a week ago, several more neotropical migrants have showed up here. Still, it seems slow to me and a little late. The northern parulas seem to have arrived in good numbers. I heard a prairie warbler once, a migrant I'm sure. Prairie warblers are almost misnamed, because they are more of a shrub/brush species than an openland species. The last two mornings we have heard the lovely song of the wood thrush. For about 4 days I've heard the black throated green warbler. I heard a yellow throated warbler once, in addition to the ones I already reported had arrived in previous posts. Still no tanagers, no black and white or tennessee warblers. No catbirds, no chats, no yellowthroats. I'm sure they will arrive shortly.

Bad storms, late freezes, droughts, and forests

In the last few days, the region where I live, the very southeastern tip of Illinois, suffered from a deadly outbreak of tornados. It was a scary evening, but we didn't have those kind of winds right at our place. When such winds tear through forests, they do a lot of damage.

This last spring, our region had a very hard, very late freeze that covered over halfway down through Alabama, up through Southern Illinois, east to the coast, and west to Arkansas and Oklahoma. This was after the trees had fully leafed out, especially from the Ohio River south. This freeze totally defoliated the deciduous trees in this area. I wrote about this on this blog after driving though it last April. No one really knows what the widespread, long term effects of this are on the ecosystem.

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ADP appeals Forest Service logging and drilling project

The Allegheny Defense Project appealed a U.S. Forest Service proposal that it says threatens one of the Allegheny National Forest’s only wilderness trout streams. According to ADP, the South Branch Kinzua Creek Project threatens the South Branch Kinzua Creek watershed because it would result in nearly 2,000 acres of logging. The conservation group also says the Forest Service plans to provide stone material to oil and gas companies at no cost for private oil and gas road construction.

“South Branch Kinzua Creek is a special and unique watershed,” said Megan Rulli, outreach coordinator for the ADP. “It is one of the only Wilderness Trout Streams in the Allegheny National Forest and the watershed contains parts of two unroaded areas that provide critical habitat for wildlife. The Forest Service proposal, however, will significantly alter the South Branch Kinzua Creek watershed just so it can cut more trees and allow oil companies to construct more roads and drill more oil and gas wells.”

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