(updated Dec. 25, 2003)
Tioga County birding pages
Wild Bird Gallery
Waterbird Gallery
Finch Gallery
Warbler Gallery
Non-Avian Animal Gallery
All Current species pages
Knubbles the Chickadee
Clay-colored Sparrow
Flighter the
Homing Pigeon
My Online Journals:
Daily Birding Journal
Bluebird Journal
David Slager's Birding Website
Sign Guestbook
View Guestbook
View Old Guestbook
Mailing Lists
LE FastCounter
Welcome to...
I will continue to add to my webpages as time allows!
My name is Ben, I live in Pennsylvania, and I have been a birder since I was about 12. Currently I sophomore in college, majoring in biology and biochemistry. Because being a college student is a full-time job, I have been unable to update my webpage regularly. When free time permits, however, I will try to update this site. My sister (also a birder) and I have in the past fed the birds in the yard year round. We have in the past hand-tamed some of the birds that come to the feeders, but I haven't had enough time to tame the birds for several years now. Regardless, a couple of chickadees continue to come to our hands whenever we offer food. This explains the pictures in my galleries of birds eating from my hand. In the past I have also kept an online birding journal, but I have not been able to go birding very often for the couple of years, nor do I have time to regularly update my online journal. If you would like to read my previous journal entries from May 1998 to March 2001 visit my Birding Journal archive. In my journal I have written about my previous birding experiences. Additionally, if you would like to read about the bluebirds and other occupants of my nest boxes in 1998 and 1999, check out my Bluebird Journal. Links to both journals can be found in the menu at left.
Over the years I have used a variety of cheap binoculars, but in recent years I have found higher quality equipment to be a must. Currently I use a pair of Pentax dcf waterproof 8x42 binoculars and a Kowa TSN-821 spotting scope with a 32X Wide Angle lens. These optics have proven to be quite suitable for most of my birding. For visually documentation and photography, my sister and I have previously used both VHSC and Hi-8 cam corders, from which many of the photos in the galleries were obtained on the computer using Snappy hardware and software. I currently own a Nikon Coolpix 990 digital camera which I use to photograph some species. This camera has the advantage of having a lens size that allows me to hold it up to my Kowa scope eyepiece and obtain digital photographs using the scope's magnification.
When you visit my web page and want to find out what's new or has been updated most recently, click on the "What's New" link on the left and you'll get a page that lists everything new in the last month or so. Whenever I add a new page to my web site or update one of my existing pages, I post about it on the What's New page. The date under the "What's New" link indicates the last day that I added something to that page.
Since my photo galleries keep getting larger and I have to occasionally split them into additional pages to keep them from taking forever to load, I've started creating species-specific pages. Each page has information about the species as well as additional photographs. Links to those pages can be found by clicking here or by clicking on the link on the left.
In early July 1998, we were visited by Flighter, a homing pigeon, for 5 days. You can read about his time here, where he came from, what we named him, and also see several pictures of him by clicking on the link above or the link on the left side of this page.
During April of 1999, a Clay-colored Sparrow began coming to our bird feeders. He/She came and stayed for 7 days. In the spring of 2000 I found another (the same?) Clay-colored Sparrow about 20 miles away. To read about the first CC Sparrow, click here. To find out more about Clay-colored Sparrows and see photos of both birds, click here.
Since late summer of 1998, we have had a deformed Black-capped Chickadee, who we call "Knubbles", come to us and the feeders for food. To read her story and see some pictures of this special chickadee, click on the link on the left side of this page.
I am a birder who keep's lists of birds I see and hear, i.e. a "lister". I keep several lists, including a yard list, county lists, year lists, state lists and, of course, a life list. At the moment four of my lists are online. Check them out by clicking on the link on the left side of this page.
Please e-mail me if you have any suggestions or comments about my page, or if you just want to drop me a line!
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