My friend Melissa joins me on a walk that leaves Agan Park and finishes behind the Sunoco on Crawford Run. We stop and wait for a few moments at the Agan Park lot, hoping for a Barred Owl, but there’s nothing.
It’s a nicer day than the last walk we did at the end of fall. But I don’t say that out loud. I don’t want to jinx it.
Melissa wants to know if I’ve observed a difference in the birds since the fall, and I confirm that I have.
“But I’m so excited to see what it’s like in spring,” I confess.
We hike up past the strange Springdale Lake, and Melissa takes photos. I tell her I think it must be a mine reclamation project. 1
The woods are lively and we see and hear a nice selection of winter birds. There are crows and kinglets, creepers and chickadees, juncos and sparrows and cardinals and jays.
Way in the distance is my first of year Eastern Towhee!
We stop to identify a very smooth barked tree, an American Beech. We also spend a lot of time talking about health care, and family, and some of the sadder things that are happening lately.
We ponder the meaning of some mysterious purple marks on trees. There isn’t a second trail here, is there?
As we approach the small townhome community, I get my first of year Brown-headed Cowbird. There are loads of Red-winged blackbirds and robins nearby, too.
We make it down the incredibly steep hillside without incident. We talk about running in the winter, and cereal, and how dill pickles are the only ones worth eating.
Then we conquer the somewhat steep switchback that really scared me in the fall. Is the trail getting easier, or am I getting stronger and more confident?
We talk about Springdale, Rachel’s home, and the old coal energy plant. It definitely closed in 2022, Melissa confirmed. She has videos of the towers being demolished - which did not go as planned.
Video credit: My awesome friend Melissa.
The power plant towers were supposed to collapse down on themselves in sections, instead they tipped over intact and caused some serious property damage. Luckily no people were injured.
We talk about the abandoned building that is still there, with a nearby tower pumping out steam. Neither of us knows what it is. Melissa does know there are plans to make the old coal plant a data center, which doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement.
By the end of the walk we’ve logged a healthy 28 species and talked about lots of ways we want to improve our communities.
The end of this segment usually means crossing a little bridge, but it’s closed.
It feels like a metaphor. The easy, simple way to our goals is off limits. But if you want to get there, you have to work for it. So we trek the long way around an unused event center and my favorite Sunoco. We spy a Rock Pigeon carrying nesting material!
We are done, and I didn’t jinx us at all. It was a beautiful walk.
Checklist 1
RCT - Agan to Crawford Run, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, US
Mar 10, 2026 9:54 AM - 12:11 PM
Protocol: Traveling
3.718 kilometer(s)
28 species (+1 other taxa)
Canada Goose 7
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) 2
Mourning Dove 5
Killdeer 3
Turkey Vulture 1
Red-tailed Hawk 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker 3
Downy Woodpecker 2
Hairy Woodpecker 1
Blue Jay 9
American Crow 3
Carolina Chickadee 1
Black-capped Chickadee 2
Carolina/Black-capped Chickadee 1
Tufted Titmouse 6
Golden-crowned Kinglet 2
Brown Creeper 1
Carolina Wren 1
European Starling 1
American Robin 15
House Sparrow 1
Dark-eyed Junco 4
White-throated Sparrow 3
Song Sparrow 7
Eastern Towhee 2
Red-winged Blackbird 9
Brown-headed Cowbird 1
Common Grackle 1
Northern Cardinal 4
View this checklist online at https://ebird.org/checklist/S308004979
A few days later, I finally do some research. It’s most likely a sedimentation pond related to a landfill connected to West Penn Power. West Penn Power was fined for releasing excessive boron into Riddle Run and then into the Allegheny River. Boron is really hard to remove from water, doesn’t break down, and is of course toxic to plants and animals and humans. It’s so gross that all of this happening right in Rachel Caron’s hometown.