Carnegie Museum of Natural History
One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
Powdermill Nature Reserve is Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s environmental research center. Located 55 miles southeast of Pittsburgh in Rector, Pennsylvania, Powdermill is a field station and laboratory where researchers do long-term studies of natural populations in western Pennsylvania. In addition to being positioned for Appalachian-specific studies in ornithology, ecology, invertebrate zoology, and botany, Powdermill is a great place to spend a fun-filled day outdoors with the family.
This is probably one of the easiest warblers to identify with it’s name being quite literal.
Powdermill Nature Reserve’s avian research center is part of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s biological research station in Rector, Pennsylvania. The research center operates a bird banding station, conducts bioacoustical research, and performs flight tunnel analysis with the goal of reducing window collisions.
Both of these male and female bird types pretend to have broken wings to distract predators close to their nest.
Powdermill Nature Reserve’s avian research center is part of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s biological research station in Rector, Pennsylvania. The research center operates a bird banding station, conducts bioacoustical research, and performs flight tunnel analysis with the goal of reducing window collisions.
At Powdermilll Nature Reserve, researchers use different sized bands for different sized birds, which helps them track the movement and lifespan of populations.
The band pictured above is a hummingbird band. It is so small that the customary nine-digit band number is reduced to five digits with a letter prefix.
Powdermill Nature Reserve’s avian research center is part of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s biological research station in Rector, Pennsylvania. The research center operates a bird banding station, conducts bioacoustical research, and performs flight tunnel analysis with the goal of reducing window collisions.
This bright yellow bird is a rare hybrid that was banded at Powdermill Nature Reserve, the museum’s environmental research center, in spring 2017.
This hybridization occurs when a golden-winged warbler mates with a blue-winged warbler. This individual was just the 12th Lawrence’s warbler banded at Powdermill in our 55 years of banding.
Powdermill Nature Reserve’s avian research center is part of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s biological research station in Rector, Pennsylvania. The research center operates a bird banding station, conducts bioacoustical research, and performs flight tunnel analysis with the goal of reducing window collisions.
Thanks to western Pennsylvania’s wet summer, you can easily find all sorts of beautiful mushrooms during a quick walk through the woods.
Staff at Powdermill Nature Reserve recently snapped these photos on a walk through the environmental center’s property in the Laurel Highlands.
Birding magazine recently featured the research of Luke DeGroote, the avian research coordinator at Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s environmental research center Powdermill Nature Reserve. Check out the June 2017 issue for the full article.
