From quiet walks through Frick Park and day hikes in the Laurel Highlands to trips far afield to site-specific species, the birders of Southwestern Pennsylvania are constantly on the lookout for their next find.<\/p>\n
According to sightings collected by hobbyists on the internet database eBird, more than 300 species have been spotted in the Pittsburgh area. From majestic waterfowl to flighty sparrows to brightly colored cardinals, there\u2019s plenty of diversity in the local avian population.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always like to emphasize the wildlife in our backyard, and I preach that you don\u2019t have to travel to exotic locations to see wildlife. It\u2019s around you. It\u2019s a matter of learning to observe it,\u201d said Mike Faix, an educator and photographer for the National Aviary on Pittsburgh\u2019s North Side.<\/p>\n
What is needed to get started with birding? According to the Audubon Society, all you have to do is look around or listen. The next step is to use resources such as books or online databases to identify birds that you see or hear, and many birdwatchers choose to keep photographs or lists of their own finds.<\/p>\n
Justin Kolakowski got into birding almost by accident after a friend invited him on a walk through Riverview Park on the North Side in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe invited us out to just walk around and reconnect, and she was going to be looking for some birds,\u201d said the 45-year-old Lawrenceville resident. \u201cMy wife and I hadn\u2019t really been up on the hobby. We really enjoyed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to get hooked \u2014 chasing the next bird you want to find is much like hunting Pok\u00e9mon. It\u2019s also a great way to join community groups and meet new friends, Kolakowski said, describing the time a rare bird was spotted on the South Side.<\/p>\n
\u201cA friend of mine was birding in South Side Riverfront Park, right along the Mon, and he found a Harris\u2019s sparrow. I think it had been 26 years since one had been found in Allegheny County,\u201d he said. \u201cHe texted me and some other friends and I got there as quickly as I could. It was just so fun to watch everybody, once the word started to get out, converge on the bird and congratulate him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Birds of a feather<\/p>\n
Faix runs a number of birdwatching programs through the Aviary, including beginner and intermediate classes in birding and nature photography.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do trips to birding hotspots in Western Pennsylvania. Typically, it\u2019s about four times a year. We also do more localized trips,\u201d he said. \u201cWe do kayaking tours monthly during the warmer months.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that those tours are incredibly popular and sell out almost immediately.<\/p>\n
Faix also pointed out that technology has made birding more accessible and more social.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe camera bird feeders are becoming really popular and I get tons of text messages from friends and family that have one, and they want to show me the cool bird that came to their bird feeder.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said that eBird and the bird call identification app Merlin have made it even easier for beginners to start and access a community of fellow hobbyists.<\/p>\n
The Three Rivers Birding Club started in 2001, and its current president is Mike Fialkovich. They have monthly meetings, a newsletter and outings throughout the area.<\/p>\n
Fialkovich is a lifelong enthusiast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been interested in birds ever since I was a kid. I\u2019m not quite sure how that happened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The club is a nonprofit as of last year, and Fialkovich enjoys working with its members and board of directors to best serve the community.<\/p>\n
Alex Busato serves as president of the Westmoreland Bird and Nature Club. He\u2019s been an ornithology enthusiast for about six years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very casual. That\u2019s one of the goals of the group: anyone who\u2019s interested in birds or nature in general, we try to welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
They have regular outings to local venues in Westmoreland, Fayette and Allegheny counties, as many as three a month during the peak birding seasons in spring and fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s giving people the opportunity to come out with some like-minded people and give people the opportunity to see some things if they\u2019re newer to the hobby or the opportunity to teach people if they\u2019ve been in it for a while,\u201d Busato said.<\/p>\n
The thrill of the sighting<\/p>\n
Every birdwatcher, whether they stick to their backyard or travel around the world, has at least one particularly memorable sighting.<\/p>\n
Busato has traveled around the world to catch a glimpse of a rare specimen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe birding community is really variable in levels of craziness, I guess,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are people who will book a flight and fly across the country for a single rare bird that showed up.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of his most memorable sightings was the one that got him involved with the club in the first place.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found this bird about five minutes from my house; it\u2019s called a Ross\u2019s Goose. They have not been very common in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
He spotted the bird on a lake on his drive home and posted about it on eBird. That\u2019s how he got connected to the community.<\/p>\n
Kolakowski has a particular interest in seabirds, such as gulls and terns.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo weeks ago, I was just up in Presque Isle chasing down a Willow ptarmigan,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been up there since like June 21. It\u2019s very rare; typically it just lives up in the Arctic Circle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fialkovich said his best memories are \u201csome of the rarities, because they\u2019re so special.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a Ross\u2019s gull a number of years ago in Delaware, and that\u2019s one of the rarest gulls to spot in North America,\u201d he continued. \u201cSo I went to see that. That was very memorable.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Faix, it doesn\u2019t get any better locally than the Blackburnian warbler.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very small, fiery orange-colored bird that\u2019s only found in the purest forest habitat of Pennsylvania,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From quiet walks through Frick Park and day hikes in the Laurel Highlands to trips far afield to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-257070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}