What's Happening in the World of Wildlife - Spring Wildlife Calendar
Posted: April 30, 2011
The days are getting longer and signs of spring are everywhere you look. Here’s your spring wildlife calendar with information on what’s happening in the World of Wildlife.
Fawns are born with a spotted coat which helps to camoflage them. Does leave their fawns and return to nurse them several times a day. Photo by Joe Kosak, Pennsylvania Game Commission
March
- Waterfowl migration peaks in March. Check local lakes and ponds for flocks of waterfowl including ring-necked ducks, buffleheads, and mergansers. Flocks of tundra swans can be heard calling as they fly overhead and can be found feeding and resting in flooded fields as the make their way to northern breeding grounds. Days with stormy weather are often the best for finding lots of birds.
- Migrant Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are being sighted along the Gulf Coast after their arduous flight across the Gulf of Mexico on their northern migration. To track the hummers on their northern migration and to add your observations see http://www.learner.org/jnorth/humm/
- Spring peepers will begin to call as soon as the ground thaws
- American Woodcock migrants return to Pennsylvania in March. Woodcock can be found displaying in open fields at dusk and dawn throughout April
- Clean out bird boxes in early March.
April
- Migrant songbirds that spent the winter in Central and South America are returning to Penn’s Woods. First arrivals occur around mid-April with numbers building up through the month. Keep your eyes (and ears) open for wood thrush, scarlet tanager, and warblers like the black-throated green warbler
- Shorebirds migrate through Pennsylvania in mid to late April. Look for migrant shorebirds in flooded farm fields
- Opening day trout season April 16
- Female black bears emerge from dens along with young that were born in January. The young weigh around 10 ounces at birth and weigh up to 10 pounds by the time they emerge from the den to see the outside world for the first time.
- Bats emerge from hibernation in late April to early May
- Spring gobbler season opens April 30.
May
- Deer fawns born in Late-May
- Spring gobbler season April 30-May 31
- Migrant songbirds peak around the second week in May with stragglers present through the end of May
- First broods of bluebirds are fledging. Bluebirds in Pennsylvania can have up to 3 sets of young over the breeding season. The first broods will fledge in early to mid-May.
- May 14 2011 - Pennsylvania Migration Count PAMC which is part of the North American Migration Count NAMC – See the news article below for more information
