Putnam Highlands Audubon Society

Summer 2023 Newsletter

Local Birding Stories, Sightings and Coming Events

Greetings PHAS Members and Friends!

“Summertime and the Living Is Easy” Not quite, if you’re a bird!

When we think of summer, we think of relaxation, spending time with friends and family, barbecues, and trips to the beach. For the birds it’s their most crucial time of the year. The majority of birds arrive from their wintering grounds and begin finding mates and setting up territories in May. June is a time for nest preparation, egg laying, and incubation. When July rolls around, many birds are busy raising young which means vigorously foraging for food and delivering it back to their hungry babies almost around the clock. Other birds are on their second or even third broods like Common Grackles or even just beginning to nest such as Cedar Waxwings and American Goldfinches. All of this has to get done typically before mid to late August before fall migration begins (yes, it starts in August…)

Why am I rambling about this? The reason is that New York State is in the midst of year 4 of 5 of its breeding bird atlas and PHAS is reaching out to our members to participate! While Putnam County is the second smallest county in NY, it has a wide variety of habitats that range from the mountains in the Highlands, the forests of Fahnestock, the reservoir system and the Great Swamp to the east. The downside is the number of unique habitats on private properties that cannot be accessed and that’s where you, our membership comes in!

Atlassing is a much slower paced form of birding and the best part is, valuable data can be collected anywhere, including your backyard! How can you participate? Easy, all of the data is collected through eBird. Visit the breeding bird atlas website here: https://ebird.org/atlasny/home and go to the tutorial page here: https://ebird.org/atlasny/about/tutorials. In the age of climate change, human encroachment and disturbance, this data is incredibly important for understanding how birds are adapting to their surroundings, populations of species, and the distribution of breeding species. 

Just recently, Yellow-crowned Night Herons were discovered nesting above a small pond in someone’s backyard in Dutchess County! This species is typically associated with saltmarsh environments along the coast. This all came about because someone posted a photo on Facebook! There very well could be a unique species like this nesting near you!

Click Here to Contact Us - if you have any question on how to participate.  Check out the Putnam County Atlas page to view our progress, so far, 102 species have been confirmed breeding in the county!

Sean Camillieri, President

Notable Bird Sightings May Through June

PHAS Board Member and prodigious birder Anthony Macchariola continues his quest, roving Hudson Valley Counties, sighting scores of fabulous bird species and noting them in eBird.

All of the notable sightings listed below were compiled using eBird.org. eBird is a fantastic website that allows you to find birds and places to go birding (both locally and while travelling somewhere new), as well as a way to keep track of your bird lists and photos. All of the data you input into eBird contributes to science and to the conservation of birds and their habitat. We encourage everyone to join eBird (it is free, you just need to create an account) and record all of your bird sightings there. And remember, eBird is not just for notable sightings! Please visit ebird.org/about to learn more and to sign up. And visit eBird Putnam County to see Putnam County’s eBird page. 

Read all here and enjoy Anthony’s dramatic photos

May 1, 2023 - June 30, 2023

Birdathon 2023 Results

by Kyle Bardwell

On May 20th Putnam Highlands Audubon Society held its annual Birdathon. Four teams captained by Putnam Highlands Audubon board members set out to see and identify as many bird species as possible in a 24-hour time frame to fundraise for the Audubon chapter. 24 hours of birding always comes with good sightings and better stories. This year the teams sighted over 176 species.

Birdathon is always good for a classic fishing tale from time to time. Teams were allowed to venture anywhere in NYS over the 24-hour period starting at 12AM on Saturday May 20th. Some teams took advantage of the limitless boundary of NYS, traveling from Sullivan County and the northern reaches of Dutchess County all the way down to Long Island.

Other teams tried a different strategy of making many short stops in smaller footprint. Collectively the teams totaled a whopping 176 species for the day and covered a great portion of the Southern part of NYS. A detailed list of the collective species seen can be found here: Read More

Boscobel’s Meadow Plan - Putnam Highlands Audubon Society Position Paper

Boscobel Home and Gardens has announced that starting this year and over the next several years, Boscobel hopes to devote 1.88 acres of their land to creating a dynamic, evolving, and beautiful habitat for everyone to enjoy.

This is a welcome initiative however we urge caution in regard to Boscobel’s filing of an application to the Philipstown Conservation Board outlining their request to use RoundUp (Glyphosate) on a 1.88 acre field.

We submitted to the Philipstown Conservation Board a 7 page position paper outlining the new science research on Roundup and Glyphosate herbicide the most widely used herbicide globally. RoundUp is now banned in 8 States, PHAS Glyphosate Submission Regarding Boscobel Meadow Project 6-6-2023

Putnam Highlands Audubon Society, the local Chapter of National Audubon hopes that Boscobel initiates further studies of the negative effects of using Roundup, a toxic herbicide on its planned meadow restoration project on a 1.8 acre field that sits on its property in Cold Spring/Philipstown. The field is situated above Audubon’s Constitution Marsh Bird Sanctuary, a designated Audubon Important Bird Area, that is also a New York State Bird Conservation Area, and part of the Hudson River Estuary.

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the widely used herbicide Roundup, has been linked to higher risk of cancer, birth defects, and a host of other health problems. In 2021, the EPA found that glyphosate is “likely to adversely affect” 1,676 federally threatened or endangered plants and animals—93 percent of all species evaluated, including 88 birds.

In their Application to the Town Conservation Board by Boscobel there was no mention of the proximity to the Sanctuary or its protective status.

We posed the following questions to Boscobel for starters: What are the concentrations of glyphosate being proposed? What is the time frame, schedule? How will it be dispensed? Is there any possibility of it entering the marsh through groundwater or through seepage or runoff? Have you considered new research that shows glyphosate is also taken up into algae as well as other plants, and its half-life is 41-99 days? Has new research on this subject been considered? What are the monitoring plans for the above? We submit these comments for your consideration.

We found at the Conservation Board hearing that the Board members had read Audubon’s submission and asked good questions of Boscobel. The Board is bound by what is their legal purview in these applications. We were very appreciative of the time they took to consider the points we raised and that they did add a monitoring element of the soil and water as we requested. It will be on-going for the life of the permit and be monitored by an established and accredited organization.

Submitted by Connie Mayer, PHAS Conservation Chair