[Citizen Science] Observations of Small Birds and Animals in South-eastern Pennsylvania from March of 2026
In today's post, we're going to continue reviewing the wildlife photo-journal that I began creating in March.
To recap, this series began with a desire to get better at photography. In an effort to improve my photography skills, I began taking "wildlife walks" in my yard so I could take practice shots of the animals that I see there. Later, I also found a way to use my newfound photography hobby to begin contributing to "Citizen Science" or DeSci by submitting bird observations to the iNaturalist web site. Accordingly, some of today's photos may appear in both places.
The next adaptation was starting to blog about it on Steem. This creates a possible path for the Steem ecosystem to start contributing to worldwide citizen science efforts by incentivizing participation and logging textual data about the activities and observations.
Something I learned recently is that iNaturalist even has an API, so it may be possible for developers to build a bridge between Steem and iNaturalist that could embed Steem solidly into DeSci ecosystems. They recently announced passing 300 million observations, so this is not as much of a niche application as we might have expected.
Previous posts in the series will be listed at the end of this post. It turns out that the birds I saw during March can be placed into two main groups, small birds and raptors. The current post will focus on photographs of the small birds that were found in my yard or in nearby locations. The small birds can then be broken down into two other groups, the woodpeckers and the other birds.
Also, since I only had one good set of photos of an animal that was not a bird, I'll be including a picture of an American Red Squirrel in this post. I don't really have any way to group it.
So, let's get to the pictures.
American red squirrel
| March 22 - ƒ/7.1; 1/1600; 432mm (102X); ISO800 |
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Woodpeckers
Ironically, the first and last woodpeckers of the month were the same type of bird. A Red-bellied woodpecker. I thought that was the only one I would see during March, but then a bunch of others showed up for the end of the month.
| Red-bellied Woodpecker March 1 - ƒ/8; 1/320; 539mm (125X); ISO400 | Northern Flicker March 25 - ƒ/8; 1/800; 539mm (125X); ISO800 |
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| Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (lighting adjustments by Gemini) March 30 - ƒ/5.6; 1/800; 270mm (62X); ISO800 | Same bird March 30 - ƒ/7.1; 1/800; 395mm (91X); ISO800 |
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| Red-bellied Woodpecker March 31 - ƒ/7.1; 1/1000; 467mm (108X); ISO800 | Same bird March 31 - ƒ/7.1; 1/1000; 467mm (108X); ISO800 |
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Other small birds
The following table includes all the other small birds that I was able to photograph during March. I'm fairly confident of all the identifications, except for the Tufted titmouse. Merlin, iNaturalist, and Claude were unable to agree on that one. (Obviously, it's not a great photograph, as far as lighting goes. As seen in many of these photos, I still struggle with light and shadows, especially in the hour or two before dusk.) It might be a Tufted titmouse, or it might be a Carolina Chickadee, or it might be a Blue-gray gnatcatcher.
| Dark-eyed Junco March 14 - ƒ/8; 1/160; 539mm (125X); ISO400 | Blue Jay March 21 - ƒ/8; 1/160; 539mm (125X); ISO400 |
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| Mourning Dove (Behind) March 21 - ƒ/8; 1/125; 539mm (125X); ISO720 | Mourning Dove (Facing) March 21 - ƒ/7.1; 1/125; 395mm (91X); ISO450 |
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| Mourning Dove Pair March 21 - ƒ/8; 1/640; 539mm (125X); ISO800 | Same Pair March 21 - ƒ/8; 1/640; 539mm (125X) |
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| Blue Jay March 24 - ƒ/5.6; 1/800; 180mm (41.7X); ISO800 | Brown-headed Cowbird March 26 - ƒ/8; 1/800; 539mm (125X); ISO280 |
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| Another Brown-headed Cowbird March 26 - ƒ/8; 1/1250; 539mm (125X); ISO400 | Dark-eyed Junco (brightness adjusted by Google Gemini) March 27 - ƒ/5.6; 1/800; 216mm (50X); ISO800 |
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| Tufted Titmouse (or Carolina Chickadee or Blue-gray Gnatcatcher -- what do you think?) March 29 - ƒ/5.6; 1/800; 198mm (46X); ISO220 | White-breasted Nuthatch March 29 - ƒ/5.6; 1/800; 198mm (46X); ISO280 |
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| White-breasted Nuthatch March 29 - ƒ/5.6; 1/800; 198mm (46X); ISO280 | Northern Cardinal March 30 - ƒ/5.6; 1/800; 144mm (33X); ISO800 |
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| Blue Jay March 30 - ƒ/6.3; 1/800; 306mm (71X); ISO800 | Mourning Dove March 31 - ƒ/6.3; 1/800; 359mm (83X); ISO160 |
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Conclusion
That's it for the small birds and small animals from my March wildlife walks. The next and final post for March will contain some of the raptor photos that I managed to capture.
I invite other Steem participants to contribute to Citizen Science initiatives like iNaturalist or GlobeAtNight and then to blog about it here on Steem. As a reminder, the next campaign for light pollution observations is currently in progress. It runs until April 18. People in the northern hemisphere can report on the brightness of Leo and those in the southern hemisphere can report on Crux.
Unfortunately, there's one piece of bad news. Last week-end, the property owner of the last remaining acre of woods behind my property started tearing them down, so I don't know how many birds and animals I'll be able to photograph in the future. It may turn out that my backyard photography hobby is going to be short-lived.
Every time I walk through the yard now, I feel like I should be listening to the song, Paradise.
Links to previous posts
- [Citizen Science] Another way that Steem photographers and bloggers can help to advance science and protect wildlife
- Six lessons from backyard wildlife walks in the month of March
- [Citizen Science] Overview of Backyard Wildlife Observations in South-eastern Pennsylvania During March 2026
- Backyard Photography in Chester County, Pennsylvania during March 2026: Warm-up Shots
All photos above were taken by me with a Nikon P1000 camera and I'm sharing them under the CC BY 4.0 license (share & adapt freely with attribution to the original source).