Christmas Count

It's that time of year again--Christmas Count season! The 116th running of the Central Park Christmas Count went off on Sunday December 20th, in unseasonably warm weather. It was fun but, a bit slow. As always, a large group of people met at the south pumphouse of the Reservoir and divided into seven teams--covering the Northeast, Northwest, Reservoir, Great Lawn, Ramble, Southeast, and Southwest areas of the Park--and, accompanied by Urban Park Rangers, attempted to count every single bird in Central Park.

It was a little slow. The Park totals were 4264 individual birds representing 55 species. That's a little sparse--two years ago in terrible sloppy weather, for example, we had 62 species and 5414 individuals--and some types of birds, like native sparrows, had very low numbers. On the other hand , there were three late warblers--Wilson's, Black-and-White, and Orange-Crowned.

The best bird in the Park, for me, was the Orange-Crowned Warbler at the top of this post. It was found by the Great lawn group during the count, next to the "Three Bears" playground at 79th and Fifth Avenue. After the collation meeting, I went to look for it, and found a number of birders watching it some small distance away, along the 79th Street Transverse just south of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, foraging with a couple of Ruby-Crowned Kinglets.

It was a very active little bird, hard to get my camera on, though it gave some excellent (though brief) views. The photo above is the best one I got, but if you want to see what a better and more patient photographer was able to get, you should check out this photo at Jean Shum's website. You should scroll around for other great views as well.

This year, I was in the Ramble group. It was really too large a group, over 20 people, and a big chunk of the Ramble is currently fenced off for maintenance of the paths (which doesn't seem to me actually happening, but that's another matter). Our best bird was the Great-Horned Owl who's been hanging around for almost two months now.

Near the owl's roost, the bird feeders were quite active. Here's a Chickadee coming in for a landing next to a House Finch.

So, that wraps up my posting for 2015. I hope to update this a little more regularly next year.

Midtown birding

Until the end of October, when my job moved, I worked at 45th Street and Sixth Avenue. Across the street is a pedestrian plaza--a fountain, some cafe tables, a few trees--that I hadn't really paid much attention to in the Spring and Summer. But in September and October it was surprisingly birdy.

Several Common Yellowthroats passed through, and a Brown Thrasher stayed for a considerable time, only disappearing a few days before I did.

The photo above is a looking out of the plaza onto 46th Street. I don't have a good photo of the plaza's glory, which is a circle of five Dawn Redwoods. The history of the plaza is kind of interesting; here's an old New York Times article about the plaza.

The neighboring building was the headquarters of International Paper, whose symbol is a redwood tree. The redwoods can stand there because that part of the park was occupied by a building whose owner didn't sell out for years, so there isn't any building space below teh tree circle, so it can accommodate the tree's huge root balls.

One of the first interesting birds I noticed there was this Ovenbird, the only warbler besides The Yellowthroats I saw there. The Ovenbird moved on fairly quickly, which is good. Every year, one or two Ovenbirds try to overwinter a few blocks away in Bryant Park. They never make it.

This Flicker showed upo one afternoon, farging furiously on the ground behind the benches, just a few feet away from peopel chattingon cellphones and drinking coffee. It wasn't there the next day. A Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker showed up one in a while. That one might be trying to stay the winter.

A number of other migrants came through -- sparrows and Towhees and Catbirds and Hermit Thrushes. Some of them occasionally do manage to survive a winter in the city, but usually in Central Park.

The best bird I saw in the plaza was a Woodcock, who foraged fairly happily in the redwood circle, but flew out in the mid-afternoon. I think he found the street noise a bit much.

Of course, the little park also had the usual New York street birds--House and White-Throated Sparrows, Starlings, and pigeons. Here's a couple of pigeons who were getting affectionate my on my last day there.

My new work neighborhood is less interesting, but I'll have something to say about it eventually. really, there are birds almost anywhere if you look.

Everybody's heard about the bird

If you live in New York, even if you're not a birder, you may have seen the story about the Painted Bunting which showed up in Brooklyn's Prospect Park a week ago and has attracted a gaggle of bird paparazzi and a bunch of ordinary people. he's quite a charismatic little fellow. A male Painted Bunting has more color for his size than any other North American bird. Blue head, neon green back, deep red underside--think of a largish sparrow that's been used to clean paintbrushes.

This bunting has been in the Post, he's been in the Times, he's got the obligatory twitter feed, he's been on a selection of the finest websites and blogs (there's a nice roundup by David Ringer), there's so many great pictures you wouldn't believe. There isn't a lot to add, but I'm going to anyway.

Elena grew up around Prospect Park, so we took off Saturday morning for her old haunts. The bird was easy to find: we entered the park in the southeast corner and immediately spotted a crowd of about a hundred people with binoculars and huge camera lenses staring into a bit of shrubbery. Ah, my people!

he was tricky to see in the undergrowth--it always amazes me how even very colorful birds can disappear when they aren't moving--but after a few minutes he flew up into a tree with a Cardinal. That was the highest we'd see him.

He flew off to the greenroof of the skating rink building (the Lefrak Center), where he chowed down in dense native grasses. A little patience was rewarded with some good looks when he came out in the clear for a minute.

After that, Elena and I went off for a stroll around the park--there was an American Wigeon on the lake, and a large number of Coots, and a famikly of Mute Swans--and then went to the zoo. I decided to come back on Sunday and see if I could get a better photo.

Sunday, the bunting spent the whole day in a little patch of grasses and shrubs. He was pretty well visible, but the best vantages to see him had him quite backlit. still I'm pretty happy with a couple of my snaps.

Now, this bird is pretty lost. They breed in Texas and Louisiana, and along the Carolina coast, and they winter in Florida, Cuba, and Central America. Usually a vagrant bird like that who shows up in the northeast is in serious trouble, but in this case I have some hope he'll survive. from all accounts He's been eating continuously from dawn to dusk every day, and appears to be getting pretty plump. That sounds to me like the behavior of a bird getting ready to migrate, so maybe he'll take off south. Even if not, a good fat reserve could help him through the winter, if it's mild.

I got in some more birding around the lake on Sunday. There was a Black-Headed Gull reported, but I did not consciously see it. I'm not sure I could pick one out of a police lineup (which, as it happens, is a fairly common venue for gulls).

Specific-hope Flycatcher

Rarity season continues: a week or so ago, some experienced birders spotted a small flycatcher in Central Park's Ramble, near the Boathouse cafe. The bird was a member of the genus Empidonax, which all have eyerings and wingbars, and are notoriously hard to identify as specific species with certainty. It had a yellow wash on the breast and belly, and they identified it as a Yellow-Bellied Flycatcher.

Some days later, other birders re-found the bird. They say that it had a very large eyering, and the eyering was kind of teardrop-shaped, and then the game was on. By Friday, the area was flooded with birders--because, you see, that kind of eyering is a hallmark of a "Western Flycatcher", and so the bird was thousands of miles out of its normal range, a screaming rarity that everyone list-making birder wanted to see, the second (or maybe first) record of this kind of bird in New York State.

Cool! Elena and I were planning to meet some friends for a walk in the Ramble on Saturday. Our friends aren't really birders, but they're interested, and we got to show them three excellent species. We easily found the continuing Great Horned Owl, and the Red-headed Woodpecker who is settled in for the winter. Then we joined the mob of bird paparazzi looking for the flycatcher.

We got a couple of nice, though brief, looks at it--little greenish-backed bird with messy plumage, distinctive eyering, feathers on the crown very spiky, basically rather rumpled from its wild journey across the country. And all the mobbing birders also got good looks at the scruffy little vagrant, and many photos were taken. Excellent.

There's just one problem. "Western Flycatcher" isn't a species. It's officially two species, Pacific-Slope Flycatcher and Cordilleran Flycatcher, and--remember I called the Empidonax flycatchers notoriously hard to identify? These two are almost completely impossible to separate, except by the region they nest in. Which in this case is no help. Until the late 1980s, they were considered one species, and a lot of people think that the split is poorly-founded. Even if you have a bird of each species in your hand, the are simply no physical characteristics to tell them apart.

This could not stand. Birders, list-making birders, especially rarity-chasing birders ("twitchers") want--no, need--a species ID.

So the crowd watched and watched, on into Sunday. More photos were taken. The bird wasn't vocalizing--the call is usually a good way to separate empid species. In this case the calls are almost identical, but if they got a recording, a sonogram might tell which kind we had. Eventually, it called, and they recorded it. And a careful observer saw the bird poop and collected the output; maybe they can analyze its DNA from that. I'll let you know if I hear any results.

I slept poorly Sunday night and was up early, so I went to the park before work. I ran into Corey Finger of the 10,000 Birds blog, and we watched the little bird for a while. It was fairly cooperative--I was finally able to get some photos (my view on Saturday was too brief).

For myself, I'm happy to just call it "Western Flycatcher". But who knows, it might turn back into a species, if the American Ornithological Union ever has second thoughts about the split.

Rarity season

In November, after the bulk of migration is over, the rarities start to show up. Some are lost birds, blown off course or young and inexperienced at migrating. Some are northern birds on the move for winter food sources. Some are young birds of sedentary species, dispersing in search of their own territory.

A Great Horned Owl showed up in Central Park on Sunday (11/1). I didn't know about it until after sunset--I had gone up to Inwood Hill Park, which was quiet, though I did see one nice bird:

This Vesper Sparrow was fairly confiding, foraging on the soccer field south of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and occasionally retreating to a small fenced-off area of tall grasses. Anyway, I went home afterwards and took a nap, and woke to find owl reports on my Twitter stream.

The last Great Horned Owl in Central Park was in April of 2012, and only stayed one day. So I thought I was out of luck. But to my surprise, there was a Twitter report early Monday morning that the owl was still there. It was sleepy and turned away from observers, so it wasn't a great look even though it was not hidden at all, high in a huge sweetgum tree. Then I had to go out of town on business for three days, but on Friday, the owl was still there! and awake in the morning.

It moved around a bit--at one point it leaned forward as if interested in flying out at something. Or more likely it was just pooping.

Another excellent bird in the park is a Red-Headed Woodpecker. It's a first-year bird, so its head hasn't turned red yet.

It's been there for a couple of weeks now, and looks like it's settling in for the winter. The bird has been excavating a roost hole in a snag, and caching acorns in locust trees. I hadn't known that Red-headed Woodpeckers stored acorns.

This weekend, strong winds from the west blew in some very interesting birds--Franklin's Gulls and Cave Swallows--but I haven't had any luck in spotting any.

I can't resist showing off one more owl photo.

A sight for Sora eyes

For almost two weeks, the most notable bird in Central Park has been this Sora who has been in the Loch in the northern part of the park. Soras are freshwater marsh birds, and don't normally stop in Manhattan even during migration. We get maybe one very couple of years--the last one was in Bryant Park in October of 2013.

Soras are also normally quite skulky, though you wouldn't know it from this one. Probably it has resigned itself to the lack of really dense cover in the Loch. The bird's left wing appears damaged--it drags the wingtip, though I'm not sure if there's actual structural damage or if the feathers are just mangled.

You can see the droppy left wing in this second photo. There's been some talk of trying to trap the Sora and get it to a wildlife rehabber; I know the park rangers tried at least once, unsuccessfully. The Wild Bird Fund people are worried that catching the bird might be more stressful than letting it try to heal on its own--it appears to be foraging well, and if the problem is just feather damage it might replace those feathers in time to get south on its own. Or, they can try to capture it later. No need to force a crisis early.

Meantime, it's been giving some excellent views. Unfortunately, I have heard that a photographer was chasing it around with a big flash a couple of days ago. I suspect I know who that was--not a malicious guy, but just clueless about how birds behave. Which is not a great excuse.

Anyway, I got this second photo from about 18 feet away--I stood behind some vegetation on the opposite bank of the stream (it's only two or three feet wide) and waited for it to emerge from a thicket. The top photo, taken slightly later, was even closer.

I moved down the stream ten feet or so in the direction the Sora was going, and waited. I was rather in the open, and I was worried that the bird would spot me and turn back, but I figured at least it wouldn't be really disturbed as long as I didn't approach it.

I think this is usually the right technique for a bird that forages on the ground--figure out where it's headed, get there first, be still and wait quietly. Just don't chase the bird around--you'll scare it, it will think you're a predator.

In the event, the Sora paid no attention to me and continued working downstream, walking right past me. I could have gotten a lower point of view, but I was in a bit awkward position, and I didn't want to move a lot once it came into sight.

Return of the son of the revenge of more Fall migration photos

Winter Wren working it for the camera

The thing about Fall migration is that it lasts a long time. Spring migration is a few intense weeks in May, with a slow build up for maybe a month. before, and a rather abrupt ending. Fall migration starts around the end of July and continues in a fairly steady stream for about three months.

So the less common birds get spread out a bit. Sort of.

lazy afternoon

This Whipoorwill turned up in the Loch in northern Central Park in late September. That's a nice bird for Manhattan; we get maybe one a year--more frequent than then Chuck-Will's-Widow, less frequent than Common Nighthawk.

Whipoorwills sleep most of the day, like owls, and wake up around dusk to hunt insects. They're hard to spot, since they don't move around much during daylight, and they generally roost pretty high up. This one was in an unusually low perch, the the photographers had a great time with him.

That same day, a Grasshopper Sparrow was spotted on the Knoll, also in the northern part of the Park just a short walk from the Whipoorwill's roost. I didn't see that bird, though. Well, maybe I did: I saw a very streaky backed sparrow fly by me that the other birders said was the Grasshopper. They had had a good look at it before, but for me, that wasn't enough of a view to count.

showing the flag

Then the next week, two fairly uncommon birds showed up at Harlem Meer. This female Green-Winged Teal spent a lot of time browsing a patch of duckweed in the southwest corner of the Meer near the little island.

The Green-Winged Teal is our smallest duck. Here's what that means:

size comparison

You see it's about half the size of the Mallard. You can almost ID it just on size.

Also on the Meer at the same time was a female American Wigeon. I had a heck of a time picking it out of the crowd of Gadwalls, even though they were all just a few feet off shore. It blended in surprisingly well.

semi-anonymous

The dark bill isn't all that striking when you're watching it swim around, and the coloring is a bit cryptic. Eventually I noticed that it was the only one never showing a white speculum, and then it became obvious.

bird of the evening

Besides the Grasshopper sparrow, Central Park has hosted a couple of other uncommon sparrows. A Vesper Sparrow spent the better part of a week in the area called Locust Grove, along a woodchip path just west of the Great Lawn between the Delacorte Theater and the Pinetum. It only liked to come out when the light was dim.

Of course, a lot of non-rarities continue to move through, like the Winter Wren at the top of this post, and this very confiding Pine Warbler:

warbler at my feet

He hopped around within a few feet of me, too busy foraging to worry about some slow monkey.

But there are signs the migration is ending, like the arrival of Juncos. They usually come right at the end.

sign of the end times

More Fall migration photos

bold Redstart

Fall migration continues to be productive. Warblers are still coming through; I'm seeing mostly Common Yellowthroats and American Redstarts, like the charming little guy above.

There have also been some rarities, like this very cooperative Marsh Wren who spent a day at Maintenance Meadow in the Ramble.

confiding Marsh Wren

I'm going to rant a bit now. This bird was showing quite well, popping out of the bushes along the west edge of the meadow every few minutes, and giving some fine looks. Then, one of Central Park's famous bird guides came through with his group.

Locals will know who I'm talking about when I say that he played recordings of the wren's calls for a good twenty minutes to try to get a better (or faster) look for his group. As so often, that didn't work at all--the wren went and hid the whole time. One of the onlookers was a visiting birder from England, who was boggled by the entire business. When the group went away, the wren eventually returned, but was much more skittish and less cooperative. At least it wasn't scared entirely out of the area; I've seen that happen, too.

The whole practice is abusive to to birds and inconsiderate of everyone else in the area.

Anyway. If you're visiting and want to go on a Central Park bird walk with a group, there are walks organized by the Museum of Natural History, the Audubon Society =, and the Linnean Society, which are all very good and don't engage in this kind of nonsense. Try one of them.

Chat in a tree, for once

Returning to rarities--the Maintenance Meadow also hosted a Yellow-Breasted Chat for a couple of days. Unlike all other Chats I've seen on migration, this one liked being up in a tree instead of hiding out in the bushes.

Last weekend, a Whipoorwill roosted at the Loch in the northern part of Central Park--I'll have photos of that when I do my next post--and a Grasshopper Sparrow was seen on the Knoll (also in the north end of the Park).

More common migrants have also been showing well. I spotted this Wood Thrush, my first of the season, while taking a break from the bad birdwalk incursion (so that time wasn't a total loss).

first Wood Thrush of the Fall

Great Crested Flycatchers have been around and a couple were active much lower down than usual.

goodness gracious!

I haven't seen too many Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks this Fall, but one posed in the sun on a fence at Tupelo Meadow at the end of a line of House Sparrows.

just trying to blend in with the crowd

There have been a lot of Brown Thrashers around--you can hear them all over, and sometimes they come out for a look around and a nice berry.

Thrasher with tasty berry

Northern Flickers have been moving through in great numbers as well.

Flicker striking a noble pose

More coming soon.

Connecticut Warbler!

Connecticut Warbler, up close and personal

I've mentioned before that I've never seen a Connecticut Warbler in a dozen or so attempts. Once, I was standing next to four other birders, who all saw one skulking in the bushes only a few feet away. The Connecticut is kind of a "nemesis bird" for me.

Monday, I took the day off from work for an appointment. It ended sooner than I expected, and when I was finishing lunch afterwards, I saw a tweet that a Connecticut Warbler had been seen in Trinity Church Cemetery, which stands at the head of Wall Street.

The Lexington Avenue subway entrance is literally right in front of the church, so I was there inside of a half-hour. I spotted birders among the ancient tombstones in the northwest corner. And there was the bird, popping out of the shrubs and flower beds occasionally. It would walk under the shrubs (and walking is one of the field marks of the Connecticut), once in a while jumping up to snatch at an insect. When it reached the edge of one planting it would take off low and fast to the next.

I watched it circle the area several time in this way. It's big eye-ring was plain to see (when the bird was in sight), as was the dull brown hood. Eventually it retreated...somewhere.

I walked around a bit. There were several other warbler species there--Black-and-White, Redstart, Black-Throated Blue, Common Yellowthroat--plus a Veery and a couple of Catbirds. Quite birdy for such a small bit of greenery.

new bird, old headstones

The northeast part of the churchyard is blocked off from visitors--I believe they're doing some renovation--and we spotted a bird walking on the grass there--a second Connecticut, or the same one? It was rather distant from any place one could stand and watch it, though.

On a hunch, I walked out of the churchyard onto Broadway, and looked through the wrought iron fence. As I hoped, the bird worked its way closer to Broadway, away from the bird paparazzi inside the cemetery.

putting on a show

For about a half-hour, I was the only one watching the warbler from the street. I saw people moving back to the northwest corner inside. The bird became quite confiding, coming to within perhaps eight to ten feet from the fence at times. An excellent view!

the blemish below the eye is probably a tick

Eventually other birders came out onto Broadway as well. They had been watching the other Connecticut--so clearly there were two--back in the northwest shrubs, and then it flew to somewhere in the closed-off area. We never had both birds in view at once, but the one I'd been watching continued to wander fairly close to Broadway, and everybody got fine views.

So now I have seen a Connecticut Warbler and I'm going to need a new nemesis bird. Of the northeastern warblers, only the quite rare Golden-Winged Warbler isn't on my Manhattan list, but that's really too rare to be a nemesis--I've never even had a chance to chase one.

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The Connecticuts continued at Trinity church on Tuesday, and I'd say the odds are fair they'll be there Wednesday, so if you're in town it's worth a look in.

Some Fall migration photos

I'm sorry I've been silent lately. It's been a tiring summer, is all. Also, there hasn't been much going on at once, so it has taken a while for the interesting things to build up to the size of a post.

Still, there's been a steady trickle of Fall migrants, like the proud young Redstart above (a first-Fall male, from the orangy bits), and the very nice male Hooded Warbler below, from Tanner's Spring a couple of weeks back.

The resident birds have held some interest, too. I was quite surprised to see this scene in the Ramble the other day:

That is a Common Grackle killing a mouse. I have never seen a Grackle stalk and kill prey before.I didn't know they even did that. This one kept chasing the mouse into the waters of the Gill--and occasionally grabbing at it with his beak--until the mouse drowned. Then the Grackle ate part of it, with some difficulty. A Grackle's beak is pretty big, but I don't think it's really suited to tearing up meat.

Other birds dined in a less violent manner.

I love watching birds eat berries, don't you? Also, woodpeckers are hard at work as always.

I'll wind up with a couple of more migrants. This shy Canada Warbler was in poor light, but I think it made a nice picture:

And a Great Crested Flycatcher was hanging around Maintenance for several days, giving uncharacteristically close views.