UW Madison Student Chapter of The Wildlife Society

This past weekend we set out as a group to Wyalusing State park where we did some hiking and saw a few birds despite the weather. Some notable ones were 10 red-headed woodpeckers, 5 American white pelicans, some white-throated sparrows, and an immature bald eagle! We also had another member go birding in Madison to seek out some rare species. Some of her notable sightings were a prairie warbler, blue-winged warbler, yellow-bellied sapsucker, red-breasted nuthatch, and a hermit thrush!

we totaled to 50 species and overall 917 birds! We had one group visit Pheasant Branch Conservancy and focus in on their prairie unit and that group also checked out University Bay towards the end. One of our special sightings at Pheasant Branch Conservancy was seeing five Eastern Meadowlarks! We were hearing them and struggled to ID by sound, but then we finally saw them as they sat on some bushes calling out and chased each other around in the field. The other group went to the Arboretum where they were able to see a lot of cool waterfowl, including a Red-breasted Merganser! To end it all off, as we returned to campus we noticed this large flock of white birds very high up in the air and circling in an odd fashion. At first glance we thought it was a bunch of gulls showing some odd behavior, but a better look with binoculars showed that it was 43 American White Pelicans!