March | 2019 | Bill Beatty Nature

The AFMO has been operating each fall (mid August to early October) since 1958 and is the oldest continuously operating bird banding station in North America. The AFMO is located along the Allegheny Front (eastern continental divide) near the Red Creek Campground on Dolly Sods in WV. Most of Dolly Sods is a federally designated Wilderness Area comprising 32,000 acres. The banding station is in the Dolly Sods Scenic Area, next to the Wilderness.

I have been visiting this bird banding station since 1972 and volunteering since 2004. Jan has volunteered since 2007, the year she retired. We are both federally-licensed bird banders, but at the AFMO instead of banding, we work as net-tenders removing the birds from the 30 mist nets used for trapping the migratory birds that cross the Allegheny Front in this area.

Shortly after we started our trip to the AFMO in 2018, our adventure was augmented by a fallen tree blocking Rt. 42 just south of Friendsville, MD. It had just happened and we were the first south-bound car to be stopped by the tree. Fortunately I had a pruning saw. Three other gentlemen joined Jan and me and we had the tree off the road in a short time. People in West Virginia and western Maryland are like that — we take care of things.

Saffitickers is always a welcome stop on our way to the Blackwater Falls/Canaan Valley area. Ice cream is a great reward for a tree-moving job well-done. Despite my reputation, I really am a vanilla kind of guy.
We arrived at the Red Creek Campground without further interruption and set up our trailer for our 2-week stay.

The sunrises at the eastern-facing AFMO are spectacular, and, since we open the banding station well before sunrise, we are always there to see them. Thrushes like to get an early start, often getting into the nets before the sun rises. Later, all kinds of warblers and other species of birds grace us with their presence.

Some mornings when the banding station is open we can be quite busy. Most of the birds we capture are warblers.

The two birds above are Hooded Warblers. Hooded Warbler males who were born before this year usually show an obvious hood like the one on the left. An older female will usually have a lighter, less-pronounced hood. Hatch-year Hooded Warbler males and females sometimes show no hood whatsoever so we have to use other means to identify the species. The hatch-year Hooded Warbler on the right is being identified by looking at the under-tail coverts and retricies (tail feathers).

mourning redstart — Mourning Warbler on left and male American Redstart (Photos (c) Jan Runyan)

In the fall, a Mourning Warbler can be differentiated from a Connecticut Warbler by the Mourning’s broken eye-ring. On an American Redstart, an older male will show deep orange to salmon colored patches on the tail and wings, while younger males look more like females with pale yellow to yellow-orange patches. After examining the throat, breast, head and coverts of this bird, it was determined to be a young male.

We regularly capture many different species of warblers. Some look very different in the fall than they do in the spring when they are in their breeding plumage.

btbl and babr — Black-throated Blue Warbler on left and Bay-breasted Warbler (Photos (c) Bill Beatty)

The white wing patch of the Black-throated Blue Warbler stands out vividly from the intense blue and black of the rest of the feathers. Very little of the bay-colored breast shows up on Bay-breasted Warblers in the fall. It can be a tough fall bird to identify as it sits in a tree.

mawa and blbr — Magnolia Warbler on left and Blackburnian Warbler (Photos (c) Bill Beatty)

The Magnolia Warbler on the left has a distinctive pattern on the underside of its tail. The Blackburnian Warbler’s brilliant orange springtime throat is much more muted in the fall.

cmwa and bwwa — Cape May Warbler on left and Black-and-White Warbler (Photos (c) Jan Runyan)

The Cape May Warbler on the left shows much less of the chestnut-colored cheek patch than he had in the spring and summer, but his distinct white wing patch tells us he is a male. Black-and-White Warblers look fairly similar all through the year, but this bird’s darker cheeks indicate that it’s a male.

palm (western) — Palm Warbler (western race) (Photos (c) Jan Runyan)

It is very difficult to tell the age and gender of the nondescript Palm Warbler (western race — Dendroica palmarum).

On the left, Jan is removing a Black-throated Blue Warbler from a mist net. Between net-tending at the AFMO and our own banding at home, she has worked with many thousands of birds. On the right, Jan is teaching Lee about ways to carefully and safely extricate a bird from a net. Lee has been working at several banding stations learning the intricacies of net-tending.

Jan is removing Black-throated Green Warbler from a mist net. Net-tenders know how to hold a bird so it is safe and doesn’t hurt itself. A band on the leg of a bird doesn’t harm the bird or cause it problems. At our home banding station we have had many local banded birds who have stayed around for years and other migratory banded bird who have returned to our nets for several years, sometimes even beyond their “expected” life span.

When we’re on Dolly Sods working at the Allegheny Front Migration Observatory (AFMO) we do more than just work with birds. On some days the banding station doesn’t open due to high winds, dense fog and/or rain. And since most days we are finished banding by noon, we have plenty of time for other nature/Dolly Sods adventures.

monarch life cycle — Monarch Butterfly life-cycle (Photos (c) Bill Beatty)

This year we noticed a lot more Monarch Butterflies than in the past several years. Our friend, a young man named Finn, being considerably shorter than the adults, was a master at finding Monarch caterpillars on the undersides of leaves.

wet banding station — (Photo (c) Jan Runyan)

There were many wet and foggy days during the two weeks that Jan and I were on Dolly Sods this year. The trail from the road to the AFMO became a stream (left 2 photos) and one of the streams flowing through the north net lanes was gushing over the rocks instead of trickling below them. Of course we had to explore it all.

flooding and fog — (Photos (c) Bill Beatty)

On the left, Jan is walking through the water flowing across the entrance road to the Red Creek Campground. She was pleased she had remembered to bring her tall boots. The photo on the right shows the foggy, limited scenery observed by some of the visitors to the AFMO overlook.

Although I did some solo hiking on “the sods”, there was one day I led a hike for a group of friends. It rained the entire day, and the water was high everywhere — in the streams, in the bogs and in other usually-dry places. We still had fun. A bad day on Dolly Sods is better than a good day anywhere else.

Five of us hiked the wilderness edges of Alder Run Bog. Some of us stayed dryer than others, who ended up in the hidden channels of deep streams.

hikers 2 — (Left photo (c) Bill Beatty, right photo (c) Lee Miller)

At the halfway point of the hike, three hikers opted for the road back to dry vehicles and homes. Only Lee and I finished the hike by taking the Edge of the World Trail along the Allegheny Front.

wild raisin and — Wild Raisin (Viburnum nudum) and Virgin’s Bower (Clematis virginiana) (Photo (c) Bill Beatty)

On some afternoons Jan and I hiked along the road looking for wildflowers and other interesting plants.

While we are there in September, Jan and I always visit out favorite Dolly Sods wetlands to pick and eat fresh cranberries. We often pick a bagful to make into cranberry relish, a fruity treat during the winter.

Birds aren’t the only ones attracted to the AFMO. We have groups that visit to observe the research and see the birds up close.

On the left, Shelia, one of the AFMO station managers, is showing a bird to a group of young boys. On the right, station banders and net-tenders talk with visitors about birds and bird banding as we wait for the fog to lift so the birds will fly.

woodpecker tongue — (Photo (c) Jan Runyan)

Visitors are always excited to see woodpeckers up close, especially when I show them something they never expected. Woodpeckers’ tongues are about as long as the bird’s body (not including tail feathers). After woodpeckers peck holes into insect trails in the tree and under the bark, the tongue allows them to “fish” for the insects they eat. Here I am showing the special tongue of a Northern Flicker, a kind of woodpecker.

On the left Jan is showing a warbler to some budding photographers. They knew how to use their equipment and got some great photos. On the right a boy is ready to release a Northern Flicker. This group of home-schooled students represents several nearby states and they visit the AFMO each year. They are all very accomplished birders and hopefully future bird banders.

Jackie showed our friend Andy a Black-throated Blue Warbler, taught her how to hold the bird and then Andy got to release the bird.

Here I am at the demonstration mist net showing a group of students how the birds are captured.

Although warblers are what we capture most often, we also catch other kinds of interesting birds.

On the left is a Wood Thrush and on the right is a Grey-cheeked Thrush. If you look carefully on the Grey-cheeked Thrush, you can see that bird’s legs are not uniformly round, but much thicker from front to back than from side to side.

We could tell that this bird was obviously a flycatcher, but which one? Each bander brings a library of books and notebooks to help with dilemmas like this. The closest we could determine was that it was an Alder or Willow Flycatcher, which are so similar that usually only the song can tell them apart, so it was recorded as a Traill’s type of Flycatcher.

On the left is a beautiful little Red-breasted Nuthatch. On the right, bander Zig is showing a Lincoln’s Sparrow.

Apart from the avian data collected at the station, another great value inherent in the AFMO is exposing people to the love of nature.

Our friend, Finn is holding two different Smooth Green Snakes he found nearby.

Here Finn and I are exploring a Dolly Sods road edge together. He is becoming a great young scientist and a certified Nature nut, like me.

(Left photo (c) Bill Beatty and right photo (c) Jan Runyan)

After a morning of banding birds at the AFMO, Jan is walking back to our campsite at the campground. I am getting ready to eat lunch with Jan before I take off for some alone time in the Dolly Sods Wilderness.

Time with special friends at the campground! Every now and then, the banders, net-tenders and other AFMO people get together to share potluck food, stories, laughter and fun. Such wonderful friends!

For Jan and me, Dolly Sods represents so many different kinds of opportunities: helping to protect the earth through scientific avian research; alone time to better understand who we are as individuals and to find clues to age-old questions like “Why am I here?”; alone time together, just Jan and me, in a spectacular place; and group time with some of the best people on the planet, our friends, who also love Dolly Sods and all of nature.

Dolly Sods sunrise (Photo (c) Jan Runyan)

A bad day on Dolly Sods is better than a good day anywhere else.

Bill Beatty Nature

The Best of Nature and Natural History in West Virginia with Bill Beatty and Jan Runyan

Month: March 2019

The Allegheny Front Migration Observatory (AFMO), Hiking, Wildflowers and More on Dolly Sods – late September, 2018