Friday, June 27, 2014

Donut Hole Trail - 3rd Installment

Happy Hikers
Once again, Barbara and I joined Frank on an overnight hike along the Donut Hole Trail. This part of the trail is in Clinton County near Lock Haven. We stayed overnight at a quaint hotel in Lock Haven on Thursday night. We took in some local fare at "The Saloon" and turned in early. 

Lock Haven Town Hall
We dropped Frank's brand new Jeep at the ending point in Farrandsville and Connie dropped us off at the starting point near Hyner Run State Park. We made great time over the first part of the trail. Then, we couldn't find the trail. Then,we realized that we weren't on the trail. We wasted 2 hours. Ugh.


I didn't lug binoculars or a camera on the trail. I decided to put my ears to the test on this trip. We made out pretty good considering the warblers were still singing up a storm even on June 21st. I thought they would be quietly tending nests by now but they were singing away. Some are easy to identify like Ovenbird "teacher, Teacher, TEACHER!" and the thrushes flute like songs. Buzzy Black-throated Green and Blue warblers were singing throughout the woods. Other birds were tougher to identify. I recorded those with my iPhone to identify later. One of my triumphs was identifying a pair of Mourning Warblers who were scolding us for being to close to their nest. I matched the chip call to the iPhone. We never saw the birds but we didn't have to. 



4 Pileated Woodpeckers put on a show for us at one of our rest points. They were really squawking up a storm. The best critter of the day was a Hognosed snake. It looks like a baby Rattlesnake which scared us a bit. Look closely. The snake was only about 1 foot long. 

Hognosed Snake
Did I mention that I was sick? A summer cold has had a grip on me for over a week. I trudged through but it wasn't easy on the first day. I came in last. Sigh. 
 
Medicine - can of beer
To top it off, we were so late that we had to camp in someone's front yard while a bulldozer graded the road. 

Tents - with spotlight

The second day was a different story. I was determined to get to the car before dark and we did. This is one of very few breaks that we had. 

Rest stop
Roxy was a real trooper.
Roxy
If you can figure out this bird call - post a comment. 

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What happened to the first two installments? HH