Monday, April 21, 2014

Green Heron

Ed Gaillard: birds &emdash; having his say
not the Easter Heron

It was a slow week--mostly northerly winds, not favorable for migratory movements--though I picked up a couple of new species for the year. Northern Rough-Winged Swallows were at Turtle Pond Monday, and a male Common Yellowthroat was under the willow at the Upper Lobe on Wednesday. Those are both normal species for Central Park.

I went up to the Bronx for Easter. I saw on my phone that a Green Heron had been seen in the willow tree at the end of Point in Central Park early in the morning. That's a pretty good bird for the park; I see one or maybe two a year. So although I didn't think it would still be around when I got back to Manhattan late in the afternoon--on a beautiful Easter Sunday, there would be rowboats all over the Lake to disturb it--I needed to at least look.

So it wasn't there. People out on the Point were watching a male Yellow-Rumped Warbler, about the only warbler around the last few days. Nice-looking bird.

I swung around to Willow Rock, and I ran into a birder named Ginny--and she had spotted the Heron in a willow tree there. Perfectly logical place for the bird to wind up, but it was very well-hidden. Very good spotting, that was.

My photos of this bird are uninspiring--it was really well-screened by branches--so I'm showing off a nice photo I took of of a Green Heron at Azalea Pond a few years ago.

The Green Heron is my 103rd species of the year in New York County.

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