Birding tips offered at Westmoreland Land Trust workshops

Visitors who stop to smell the flowers growing on the grounds of the Donohoe Center might be surprised what they can find if they also take time to listen to and look for birds.

“When we’re busy doing other things, we don’t look to see the things that are right around us all the time but are easy to miss,” according to Paula Purnell of Greensburg.

Purnell serves as a partner for educational programming for the Westmoreland Land Trust, which is headquartered behind the Donohoe Center, on Donohoe Road in Hempfield.

With volunteer help from Penn State’s master naturalist program, she’ll present a series of four free “Be a Better Birder” workshops at sites in central Westmoreland County — starting at 9 a.m. on Saturday, in the pavilion at the rear of the Donohoe Center.

Registration is required at westmoreland-landtrust.org since the program includes a kit for constructing a birdhouse. Also, 10 binoculars and field guides will be available to share among groups of up to four people.

Since there has been an emphasis on outdoor activities during the covid-19 pandemic, birding is “a great way to get people outside with binoculars and field guides,” said Purnell.

The family-oriented, two-hour program is suited for birders of any experience level — including children, as long as at least one adult is included in each group of four.

“Hopefully, everybody will get something out of it,” Purnell said of the program. “Any time I go out birding with another birder, I usually see something new or different.”

Participants also will receive instructions for downloading free smartphone apps from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that birders can use to help identify species based on their physical description and bird songs, Purnell said.

Using the app, she was able to hone in on a bird she heard singing outside the Donohoe Center but couldn’t immediately spot.

“I could hear this bird that seemed to be following me, but I couldn’t identify the song,” she said. “I turned on my app, and it said it was a towhee,” a bird with black, orange and white feathers. “I looked up, and there it was, sitting above my head.”

Those who attend the workshops also will learn correct terms for describing a bird’s various feathers and other parts of its anatomy.

Additional birding workshops are set for: Aug. 7, at Jeannette Junior-Senior High School; Aug. 14, at Twin Lakes Park Pavilion No. 3; and Aug. 21, at Historic Hanna’s Town.

Land Trust Executive Director Betsy Aiken said the workshops are an effort by the organization to “go out into the community and reach people who may not have come to one of our nature reserves or been involved with the Land Trust before.

“We’re thinking of it as sort of a pilot program and hoping it will be successful and set the groundwork for offering more community-based workshops,” said Purnell.