Feathered Friends
There's snow on the ground, but there are ducks at the lake, so Mary Alice Koeneke and Glenn Koppel of Butler will be out there too, bird watching.
The retired biologists from Butler won't let the wind and the cold prevent them traveling to Moraine State Park several times a week to see which water fowl have dropped by Lake Arthur for a visit.
Both are avid bird watchers. Koeneke started in 1988, and Koppel picked up the hobby in 1971 when he was a student at Edinboro University.
In fact, it was bird watching that brought them together, Koeneke said.
“The reason I got interested in bird watching is I had just moved to upstate New York from San Francisco, and you could see snowy owls from where I lived,” she said.
Koppel said, “I was a biology major and the biology group was taking a field trip to Hawk Mountain in eastern Pa. I went along and it was a lot of fun.”“We just met through the common interest of bird watching,” she said. “I was living in New York, and he was living in Virginia at the time.“I had a friend that lived nearby in Virginia,” she added.They met in 1998 and later moved to Butler when they retired so he could be closer to his mother.Bird watching is one constant that they both can enjoy in the pandemic-battered 2020.Koeneke said, “We can get outside, and it challenges us to identify birds by sight and sound.“It turned out to be a bonus during COVID because we can still do it as a two-person pod,” she said. “We travel to see birds. We have traveled nationally and internationally to see birds.”
“And we are both retired biologists, so it kind of goes along with our science nerd backgrounds,” she said.Koeneke and Koppel belong to multiple bird organizations including the Bartramian Audubon Society.Koeneke said not only will they take part in the Dec. 20 Christmas bird count for the Bartramian Audubon Society covering the northern part of the county, but they will also assist in the Audubon Society's South Butler Christmas Bird Count on Jan. 2.Although, Koeneke said, “This year it is harder because you have to have people in small groups, but we will compile the data.”But for them, one of the their favorite bird-watching spots is Moraine State Park.Koeneke said, “We go to Moraine because it is close by. When we were looking for houses, that drew us to the area, the ability to not have to drive long distances to be able to go birding.“Every chance we get we go there. We haven't been out for a few days, but we are out in all four seasons. It's big and we have a lot of places to go,” she said.
Koppel takes a camera with him to record some of their sightings, but he's quick to point out he's a birding photographer and not a bird photographer. There's an important distinction.Koppel said, “a bird photographer is someone who would sit in a blind eight hours a day to get a picture of one bird. A birding photographer is taking a picture while you are out birding.”“It's a challenge and it is what makes it kind of fun,” said Koppel on photographing birds.And what he's photographing varies, especially now when migrating waterfowl, loons and geese are landing on Lake Arthur.In the winter, they stick to the roads along the north and south shores of the lake. In the spring and summer, they hike the trails.Koeneke said, “There's Muddy Creek Trail, Trout Cove Trail, different places along the drive. We walk parts of the bike path. Anywhere you go, you can find birds here.”
She added you can also find fellow birding enthusiasts. Moraine State Park draws in a lot of birders from Allegheny, Lawrence, Mercer and Venango counties, they said.Here at the tail end of the year, they said there is a great variety of migrating species.Koeneke said, “There are a variety of ducks. We saw tundra swans earlier in the fall. There are bufflehead ducks, migratory species who have moved south from their breeding grounds.“Moraine is where they can feed. When it (Lake Arthur) freezes over, it is really dull.”Koppel said, “The more you go out, the more you see. You get a lot of different things, unusual water fowl that show up occasionally. To me, they are spectacular.”
Occasionally in the winter, loons will drop by, she said, or red-breasted mergansers. There can be horned grebes.She said there is a waterfowl observation area just before the south shore off Route 528 that a lot of people use to watch and photograph the feathered visitors to the lake.Koppel photographs a lot for species documentation and to illustrate articles that Koeneke writes.Although, they visit Moraine just as much in the winter as the other three seasons, Koeneke said her favorite seasons are the spring and fall when the birds are at the height of their migrations.“That's when you get birds coming from the tropics, warblers and fly catchers. The number of species and the varieties increase in the spring, summer and fall,” she said.
Still, Koppel noted, if someone is wanting to try bird-watching for the first time, winter is the best time to get started.Trees have lost their leaves and snow makes it easier to see birds.“In the winter if the water is open, you will have ducks,” said Koppel. “Ducks are large and very colorful, and they are easy to identify.“Drive along the roads on the north shore and the south shore and just look along the water,” he said.Koppel and Koeneke said that in the days before social distancing, the local Audubon Society groups would give bird-watching lessons, but along with much else they are in hiatus.
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