Drip, drip, drip...

The weather has been as unseasonably mild this week as it was unseasonably wintry last week, and it's not helping the cause much. We've been back to a slow drip of birds - 10 owls on Sunday night, six on Monday night, and just two on Tuesday, when King's Gap had to close at 7:30 p.m. because of rain, and Small Valley a few hours later. Only Hidden Valley was able to put in a full night, and they had just one bird.

Quasi and Morticia remain on or around King's Gap State Park, and Sunday night Anna, Drew and several volunteers were able to track them. They started with Morticia, who moved all over the map and eventually out of radio range; at that point, the teams started tracking Quasi, who stayed closer to her roost area for the next several hours.

Sunday night at Hidden Valley we had a large group of visitors from Audubon Pennsylvania, the state office of The Nature Conservancy, the Academy of Natural Sciences and several land trusts. The TNC folks have posted video from the visit here, including the banding process.

The weather looks pretty poor for the next few nights, with showers and rain in the forecast through the weekend. We're keeping our fingers crossed, since this is usually our best week, and we have a lot of visiting groups on the calendar.