Long Pond Barrens Birding Guide

Here at Long Pond, you’re standing in a rare mesic till barrens habitat. It’s teeming with fascinating plant and animal life. Notice the early successional species like goldenrod, sweet fern, and other acidic soil loving shrubs.

If you turn to face the parking lot, you’ll see various plant species competing for the mesic till barrens. This habitat is defined by its unique plant composition and acidic soil, rare to the region.

Keep an eye out for scrub oak, ericaceous shrubs and pitch pine. These fire dependent species have adjusted their life cycles to thrive in environments that see regular fire.

The Nature Conservancy leads controlled burns to knock back non-fire dependent species like red maple, gray birch and aspen. And that’s good for bird species.

This forest edge is home to the Common Yellowthroat, the most popular warbler in the area. Its unique “witchety-witchety-wichety” song echoes here in the summer months. The warbler takes advantage of the thick scrub oak and other low-lying vegetation for foraging and dense wetlands for nesting.

Here, you’ll notice the openness of the barrens. Along either side of the firebreak, you’ll see high-bush blueberry, huckleberry, and teaberry thriving.

In the warmer months, you will find some of the plant leaves curled inward, likely housing caterpillars in various stages of development. These caterpillar habitats are what make herbaceous shrubs a hot spot for birds seeking food.

This low-lying drainage area may experience frost annually from late August through early June. Grasses, sedges, and forbs are able to flourish in these open locations, thanks to regular fire management led by The Nature Conservancy.

Birds borrow this plant material for their bird boxes, which you may see along the pipeline. Listen for the calls of the Ovenbird, a summer resident of the Poconos. In the warmer months, Ovenbirds can be heard singing their “teacher-teacher-teacher” song in hardwood forests throughout mid-Atlantic states.

There are *a lot* of them, so you’ll likely hear them singing louder and more frequently than most birds in the area.

Listen for the calls of the pileated woodpecker, or the drum of their beak as they drill holes. Their long, strong beaks have a chisel-shaped tip, which is the perfect tool to create nests and search through bark for insects. 

Sharing this busy forest floor is the Hermit Thrush. With up to 10 different songs, they are more difficult to recognize through calls. But as ground nesters, they are easier to see with their black spotted white breasts. 

Look for red spruce, scrub oak, and pitch pine along the firebreak. Teaberry grows close to the ground and has a peppermint smell and flavor.

If you look to your right, about 5 feet off the fire break, you will find the pitch pine scratching post used by bears in the area, often leaving behind scratches and hair on the bark. You may even see tracks and scat along the firebreaks.

This section is wet throughout much of the year. Because of that, you may observe White-fringed orchids in late July through August. 

You have just walked into the heart of the barrens. On the left side, overgrown scrub oak dominates. On the right side, controlled burns led by The Nature Conservancy have opened up the woodland habitat.

In the weeks following a prescribed fire, birds flock to the charred understory to feast on insects that were toasted to perfection. No need to worry about other woodland critters, though! They know to temporarily relocate before the smoke can even reach them.

On your journey to this point, you might’ve noticed the gradual transition from open barrens to thick forest. By managing the property with prescribed fire, we encourage mixed forest habitat with large canopy gaps for sunlight and thickly forested swamp. Birds and other wildlife can forage in one area of the pipeline and nest in another.

This is ideal for the Black-and-White Warbler who prefers this mixed-aged forest. You may see them fluttering up and down branches and trunks for bugs. Surprisingly, they nest on the ground at the base of trees, acting more like a nuthatch than a warbler.

You’ll see a string of bluebird boxes on the pipeline. No vacancies here: they were quickly occupied by various bird species that prefer a more open habitat. These boxes are monitored by volunteers and cleaned out every March, right in time for hatchlings from the previous year to move in and start their own families.

Along the barren’s edge, you are likely to find Chestnut sided warbler. They nest at eye level in young deciduous regrowth where saplings and shrubs have been regenerating. 

Be sure to record your sightings in the eBird app. This will help your fellow birders and help The Nature Conservancy track the progress of our land management.

Can you spot the difference here? On one side of the firebreak, you’ll find young sapling red maples. On the other, there’s a downhill slope where the red maples are older in age and larger in diameter, continuing toward the Tunkhannock Creek drainage.  

In this region of transition between forests and barrens, the generalists will leave their homes in the taller trees to seek opportunities in the more open, barrens side of the brake to forage, or vice versa.

From here, you’ll observe several stands of pitch pine, red spruce, red maple, witch hazel, American tamarack, and a thick understory of ericaceous shrubs.

Flashes of red darting from oak to maple will be the Scarlet Tanager. They will stay red with black wings up until they migrate in the fall, when they molt their feathers, their new plumage will turn olive green. Find them in small groups, foraging throughout the forest. Maybe you’ll even see a pair: Scarlet Tanagers are quite monogamous. 

At this intersection, notice how the wetlands run through these pitch pine stands. We’re downhill from the older white and scarlet oak forest. On the ground, ericaceous shrubs, cinnamon fern, Canadian blue joint and blueberry dominate.

Vernal pools are scattered through the barrens. These are tiny bodies of water that are microhabitats of their own. They’re crucial for providing homes for diverse amphibious species and food for our avian friends.

Listen for the sharp “tink” call of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak as they forage for seeds, berries and insects. You may see a flash of red-and-black as they search for the fly-poison borer moth. The moth’s host flower, the flypoison lily, benefits from the mechanical disturbance of firebreak preparation.

You have reached a firebreak intersection for a forest dominated by red maple, white oak, scarlet oak. The understory contains low growing shrubs such as blueberry and huckleberry.

The Long Pond Raceway becomes more evident from this location, with a large expanse of mowed grass that is used for parking during events.

Notice the large leaves of the mature maples along the edge of the outer field. You may see the red eyed vireo scanning those leaves for caterpillars. Their nea- incessant calls help identify them as one of the chattiest birds in the area.

The Long Pond Barrens Preserve is made up of over 450 acres of habitat, making it a conservation hub for ecological activity. The Nature Conservancy permanently protects and manages lands in order to provide connected migration corridors for wildlife as well as protective buffers for natural ecosystems.

The firebreak here separates an early successional “old field” species area from a mixed oak forest. With the amount of direct sunlight the pipeline receives, we are seeing more and more pollinator species every year. These pollinators favor goldenrods, spirea, dewberry, and assorted sedges.

The Nature Conservancy has conducted multiple supplemental seedings to build on the biodiversity that already exists here. Controlled burns help establish new host plants by removing leaf litter. They also send a nutrient pulse into the soil and enhance seed germination and nitrogen fixation.

The openness of the barrens provides an ideal habitat for the prairie warbler, identifiable by their yellow feathers and the black semi-circles under their eyes. The prairie warbler song is often confused with the field sparrow’s. However, the field sparrow’s song is monotone like a bouncing ball, whereas the prairie warbler song goes up in pitch.

This area was burned as recently as 2024, making the new growth of the forest edge an ideal foraging spot for the Eastern Towhee. You are more likely to see them hopping around on two feet as they scour the leaflitter scratching for food. They are rummaging for acorns, berries, and insects to help fuel them during their short migration.

The Eastern Towhee will appreciate this early successional edgeline. Younger scrub oak, like what you see along this edge, is dense enough to provide coverage. Birders all over will agree that the Towhee’s call sounds like they’re saying “Drink your tea.”