Three Rivers Birding Club Southwestern Pennsylvania

Our Next Three Rivers Meeting

FUTURE PROGRAMS:

• February 4, 2026 - JEAN IRON - Are There Penguins in the Arctic? (Zoom Only)
• April 8, 2026 (the second Wednesday) - SCOTT ROBINSON - What Birds Need During Migration
• June 3, 2026 - AMANDA HANEY - Trinidad and Tobago
• August 5, 2026 - FRANK IZAGUIRRE - TBA
• October 7, 2026 - BRIAN SHEMA - Chimney Swift Research

Last Updated on 11/22/2025

Items of Interest

   VIEW THE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2025 EDITION OF OUR NEWSLETTER -- THE PEREGRINE

The November/Decemober edition of The Peregrine (in full color) is avaiable here: November/December 2025.
See also Tom Moeller's photo gallery to accompany his "Observations" column:
San Joaquin Marsh.

   THE WRITTEN MINUTES AND VIDEO OF OUR OCTOBER 8, 2025 MEETING WITH DAVE BROOKE ARE AVAILABLE!

Read the Meeting Minutes for our October 8, 2025 hybrid membership meeting featuring Dave Brooke and his program "The Sandhill Cranes of Bosque del Apache" here: October Minutes.

You can see the video of the October 8 meeting here: October Meeting.

   ANOTHER FALL OUTING HAS BEEN ADDED IN DECEMBER!

One outing is left this fall. Our last this season comes on December 6, 2025, featuring TED FLOYD, an iconic Pittsburgh native and preeminant author and editor of birding literature, as one of the leaders.

Find the details here: Outings page.

   FOUR INTERESTING ARTICLES HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE WEBSITE

The pages of our newsletter The Peregrine are limited. Many fine trip reports and articles are submitted for publication by our membership, but since we cannot fit them all into The Peregrine, we can publish them here on our website.

Four interesting submissions have been made by our members, and they are now published. Patience Fisher made a birding trip to Costa Rica in December 2024, and her detailed report "Pura Vida in Costa Rica" is online. Ted Weller visited the Galveston FeatherFest in April 2025, and his report may interest you to visit the 2026 FeatherFest. Sam Sinderson, who has contributed several trip reports to the website, wrote "Dominican Adventure" about his May 2025 tour in the Dominican Republic to find endemic birds for his life list. Finally, Sheree Daugherty has reviewed another book Feather Tails, which describes the work biologist Sophie Orborn has done with three endangered birds.

Check out these informative and entertaining reports by following the links to their works on the Trip Reports and Articles page of this website. Maybe you'll look into other articles there, too.

   BRAND NEW WARBLER HYBRID FOUND IN SOUTH CAROLINA

A new warbler hybrid has been discovered by Mary Alice Tartler in Hilton Head, South Carolina. This bird is a cross between a Yellow-rumped Warbler and a Black-throated Blue Warbler. Photos of the bird have been seen by expert, Andy Jones, executive director of the Spring Island Trust in South Carolina, who is researching the new hybrid.

In Western Pennsylvania we have the three-species, two genera hybrid warbler, commonly called the "Burket's Warbler," discovered by Lowell Burket in May 2018. It is a cross between a Chestnut-sided Warbler and a Brewster's Warbler (a Brewster's Warbler is a cross between a Golden-winged Warbler and Blue-winged Warbler). Another hybrid in our area was found by Steve Gosser in June 2020. This hybrid was a cross between a Scarlet Tanager and a Rose-breasted Grosbeak, not warblers but an unusual pairing.

Find out more about the new warbler hybrid here: https://tinyurl.com/HybridWarbler

Photo by Mary Alice Tartler

Longer Articles Highlighted in THE PEREGRINE

Longer articles and a photo gallery that members contributed to The Peregine have been assembled in this compilation. We hope you enjoy them again:

Oscar Miller's recent article "Blue Grosbeaks in Southwestern Pennsylvania," referred to in the September/October 2024 edition of The Peregrine, has moved from this Main page to its own page: Blue Grosbeaks.

Frank Izaguirre wrote an article for the January 2021 edition of Birding magazine. With permission of the magazine and its editor Ted Floyd, we can present a PDF of the article at this link: Celebrating the Stumpbreaker of Squirrel Hill.

Tom Moeller had a two-part article in subsequent editions issues of The Peregrine during 2020 on Cedar Waxwings. Here are the two parts as one: Here's the Background on a Backyard Beauty.

Frank Izaguirre's adventure in exploring snowy Canada for winter birds in February 2020 was also a two-part article in two editions of The Peregrine. Again, the two parts appear here as one: Frigid Canada's Birds Warmed a Pair of Birders.

The stunning gallery of birds and scenery from Northwest Argentina, which is an adjunct to Claire Staples' article "A Very High Adventure: Birding to 15,000 Feet in Argentina's Andes" [The Peregrine Vol. 18, No. 2, March/April 2019], can still be enjoyed: Northwest Argentina.

David Yeany II and his friends took a side trip from Magee Marsh one rainy day in 2018 to find a Kirtland's Warbler in his narrative Saving the Best for Last: A Kirtland's Warbler Adventure.

Other Important Items

2024 WAS A PRODUCTIVE YEAR AS WE BECAME A NON-PROFIT CORPORATION

Our 2024 activities included our usual winter, spring, and fall outings, and membership meetings continued as hybrid in-person/Zoom formats, except in the winter months. Steve Thomas was able to compile the six meetings we had, the full sets of spring and fall migration outings, and other events in our full 2024 calendar. See the year's history as a PDF here: 2024 Events.

A NEW ERA FOR THREE RIVERS BIRDING CLUB IS SPELLED OUT

As you know by now, the Three Rivers Birding Club has formed into a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation governed by a nine-member Board of Directors. Our organization has an official set of Bylaws, which spell out many details of the make-up of the "new" club, including the responsibilities of the Board of Directors, choosing of officers and their terms and duties, financial reporting to the IRS, standing committees, an annual election meeting, voting procedures, and so on. The members can read these Bylaws by following the link found at the top of each page of this website: Three Rivers Bylaws

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK!

Be sure to visit our club's Facebook page for up-to-date news on happenings with the club, member photos, or links to other birding articles and sites.

WE'RE ON INSTAGRAM TOO!

Our social media presence has expanded. Thanks to member, Malcolm Kurtz, we now have a site on Instagram. You can check for developments on our website 3rbc.org, upload photos, or comment on bird sightings, photos, or outings. Check out our Instagram site here: https://www.instagram.com/3rbcpgh/.

PSO's "PENNSYLVANIA BIRDS" MAGAZINE: SEE WHAT YOU'VE BEEN MISSING

The Pennsylvania Society for Ornithology (PSO) publishes previews of the current issue of Pennsylvania Birds online, which consist of the cover, table of contents, and a featured article. Now anyone who does not subscribe or perhaps does not even know about PSO can actually see a little bit of what they've been missing, and hopefully be encouraged to join PSO! Click on the following link for an example of an article from the latest edition of Pennsylvania Birds: sample article.

Pennsylvania Birds is an all-volunteer effort, created and maintained by a group of Pennsylvania's most dedicated birders, but it is not an exclusive club. Anyone may contribute, whether a member of PSO or not, any original work related to birds or birding in Pennsylvania. If you have photos, article ideas, letters to the editor... as long as it is original work and related to birds or birding in Pennsylvania.

Consider joining PSO if you haven't already. They especially encourage the "beginners" out there, those of you who are just starting to discover the wonderful hobby of birding. In addition to being relatively inexpensive, membership buys you a year's subscription to Pennsylvania Birds and The Pileated, the PSO newsletter.

Find the Home page of the Pennsylvania Society for Ornithology here: PSO.

"BIRD WATCHER'S DIGEST" BRINGS BIRDING NEWS AS "BWD"

Bird Watcher's Digest, the birding magazine that suddenly closed in December 2021, resumed publication with its July/August 2022 edition under its new title BWD.
Two new publishers, Rich Luhr and Mike Sacopulos, have taken on the task of resurrecting BWD. Many of the magazine's former staff have returned to revamp the style and size of the publication. A welcome return of a vital birding publication.

For more information on the magazine, visit the BWD website here: BWD.