Overview
Registration opens on Friday, April 3.
Deadline for general registration is June 14.
Deadline for registering for the banquet is June 9.
Altoona is most famous as an iconic location for railroad history and tourism. The Railroaders Memorial Museum, Horseshoe Curve, and numerous other sites are in and immediately around Blair County. The county’s tourism website brands Blair as the “First Frontier” in reference to its key position as a historic Appalachian crossing point to the Ohio Valley. Throughout the county, you’ll see sites containing plaques and remains related to the Juniata iron industry, the Pennsylvania Canal, the Allegheny Portage Railroad, and of course the Pennsylvania Railroad itself.
The county’s importance in trans-continental transportation history is a function of its physical geography–western Ridge-and-Valley and eastern Appalachian Plateaus provinces. Altoona, the “mountain city,” has one of the most mountainous urban settings in the state — it’s situated on the gentle Devonian hills of Logan Valley, with the Allegheny Front rising almost 3,000 feet up to its west at Blue Knob, the second-highest point in the state, and Brush Mountain, the westernmost ridge of the Ridge-and-Valley to the east, rising almost as high. Railroads and main roads follow branches of the Juniata River, including the Frankstown Branch and the Little Juniata River, through water gaps at Tyrone, Roaring Spring, and elsewhere. Between the steep ridges are limestone/dolomite farming valleys such as Sinking Valley, Canoe Valley, Scotch Valley, and the Cove.
Blair has three top birding sites — Canoe Creek State Park, the Lower Trail (with multiple entry points), and Plummer’s Hollow, as well as a range of other sites worth visiting, most of which are contained in one or multiple eBird hotspots. Just outside the county are Prince Gallitzin State Park (Cambria Co.), popularly known as Glendale, after its large lake, Raystown Lake (Huntingdon Co.), a range of gamelands along the Allegheny Front, and the bulk of Blue Knob State Park (Bedford/Cambria).
Canoe Creek State Park is rich in riparian habitat and has probably the best accessible wooded wetland in a county that isn’t particularly well-endowed in this type of habitat. Upstream from Canoe Creek is the massive and remote SGL 166 wilderness, with gated access and limited bird data, particularly for the breeding season. Downstream and more accessible is the entrance point to the upper Lower Trail (rhymes with “flower”) near Williamsburg. This wide rails-to-trail route winds for many miles downstream toward Alexandria and is a prime breeding location for Cerulean Warbler. Perhaps the most desirable potential summer rarity is Swainson’s Warbler.
Plummer’s Hollow is a private nature reserve owned and managed by the Bonta family with help from the Friends of Plummer’s Hollow. A small part along Plummers’ Hollow Run is accessible to the general public. It includes the Tyrone water gap and the adjacent Brush Mountain ridge and is most notable for its 100- to 200-year-old hardwood forest that contains some of the state’s largest concentrations of breeding and migrating Worm-eating Warblers, Wood Thrushes, and Scarlet Tanagers.
The highest elevations of Brush Mountain are part of the publicly-accessible Brush Mountain Preserve. Meanwhile, much of the Allegheny Front and its approaches, in SGL 198, SGL 267, SGL 108, and SGL 158, has access points to trails through relatively under-surveyed hardwood forest, conifer, and some reclaimed strip mines where Grashopper Sparrows and other specialties breed.
An excellent hike can be had along the forested Bells Gap Trail, a 6.3-mile rail-to-trail above Bellwood that takes you on a gentle ascent from the base to top of the Front. A similar transect can be hiked at the 6 to 10 Trail in the Allegheny Portage NHS.
Altoona, Logan Valley, and the rest of the structural trench that continues southwestward and northeastward from the conference site under various names (Tuckahoe Valley, Bald Eagle Valley, etc.) has numerous small gems thanks to a physical geography that favors patches of flat, saturated ground along the tributaries of the Juniata.
There are far more than we can list here, but the adventurous birder can trace eBird records to search out roadside marshes and swamps that could contain rare breeding species. Sites of note include the Northern Blair County Rec Center (Ray Amato Trail), right off Old HWY 220, Moorhen Marsh and other sites along Old 6th Avenue Road, the Bellwood Trolley Trail, and the I-99 Tipton Wetland.
The limestone valleys east of Altoona are the place to go for breeding grassland birds. Sinking Valley is particularly attractive, as there is little traffic and a lot of agriculture and land management conducive to birds, including a thriving Amish community. Crawford Road is worth visiting, and if you’re in the valley, a short drive from Altoona along the Kettle Road, don’t miss Fort Roberdeau County Park with its breeding Red-headed Woodpeckers, as well as the easily accessible Tytoona Cave Natural Area, a water cavern.
Other popular limestone birding valleys are the Cove, centered on Martinsburg, and the extension toward Williamsburg, and Canoe Valley along US HWY 22. Recent years have yielded summer records of Bobolink, Vesper Sparrow, Grasshopper Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, and other specialties.
For more information on birding in and around Blair County, particularly questions beyond the scope of the field trips, you can reach out directly to the Juniata Valley Audubon Society, a group advocating for birds and conservation in the area for over 50 years. You can also contact Mark Bonta via email.
