I missed the Naturalist Certification Series birding field trip, so I made it up by joining a small group on the weekly Sunday morning bird walk at Bucktoe Creek Preserve, in southern Chester County. It was a great experience, and because it is regular and open to the public, I can wholeheartedly encourage anyone who wants to try this themselves to go! We had a friendly, funny and knowledgeable guide, and the half dozen of us along for the walk rounded out a good group from neophytes (my mom and me) to people who could have been guides themselves.
29 June Bucktoe Creek Preserve, Kennett Square
7:55 a.m. 70 degrees F sunny, not a cloud in the sky
We arrived just a few minutes early and found one person had already been sitting at the shelter by the parking lot for a while. It wasn’t a bad place to watch birds even without walking, in fact, as the expansive meadow in front of it, with forest to the left, provides good ecotone habitat for a diversity of birds, and they have set feeders near the shelters that bring near the less shy birds. Before we even set out we had seen a number of red-winged blackbirds, probably nesting in the meadow, tree swallows, barn swallows, and a red-bellied woodpecker that flew overhead.
