Avoidance tactics

here's looking at you, kid

So I guess I'll just go on blogging about birds as if nothing's happened.

Speaking of avoidance mechanisms, I made my usual trek up to Randall's Island on the day of the NY Marathon. I live east of First Avenue, so if I don't get out of the area before 8:30am on Marathon Sunday, I'm pretty much stuck there until late afternoon unless I walk a couple of miles each way to get in and out of the area.

Song Sparrow watches out

The north end of the island was pretty quiet. The first few Brants have arrived for the winter, and there were a lot of Song Sparrows and Savannah Sparrows. The Song Sparrows were pretty cooperatve.

landscape with Savannah Sparrow

I followed a group of Savannah Sparrows north along the eastern shore. They were a bit less approachable than the Songs.

inclined to fly

I did get a couple of decent photos of them anyway. The usual gulls were around. Mostly Ring-Billeds and mostly distant, but there was a Herring Gull on the rocks on the shore.

curious Herring Gull

There were a few Laughing Gulls in their winter plumage. I don't recall seeing many in the county so late in the year before, though eBird didn't blink at them. I didn't succeed in turning any of them into more unusual species.

who's laughing now?

The little freshwater wetlands across Central Road from Icahn Stadium was also quiet. There were a couple of late migrants: a Black-Throated Blue Warbler skulking around the underbrush, and a Monarch Butterfly in the flower garden just south of the marsh.

Monarch of all et cetera

It looks like they're putting in another water feature in the wetlands area, and also they seem to have completed a bike/pedestrian path just east of the marsh, right outside the wastewater treatment plant. I look forward to seeing what's up back there on a later visit.

Not much was doing at the Little Hell Gate saltmarsh: a few Mallards and one Black Duck, a few sparrows, and along the southern path, several Golden-Crowned Kinglets very active in a tree.

ready for takeoff

In the next tree sat a single tired-looking Ruby Crowned Kinglet.

contemplative Kinglet

Along the River's Edge Garden )between Little Hell Gate and the Ward's Island pedestrian bridge) there were a few more Savannah Sparrows, and one Black Capped Chickadee who scolded me vigorously while feeding.

hungry but talkative

The Marathon was still going when I got back to First Avenue. Up in that area, the crowd was much thinner than in my neighborhood, but there were some spectators.

watching the race

Road Trips (2): Quincy MA

Ruby on rail

Our other road trip this summer was to Quincy, Massachusetts for our favorite science-fiction convention, Readercon, which I blogged about a couple of years ago.

such purple, very finch, wow

Our friends Barbara and Jim drove us up, and as we do every year we stopped at Traveler Food and Books in Union CT (they seem to have no website, but here's a newspaper story about them). They have good food, a used bookstore in the basement, and they give away free books with every meal; highly recommended.

They also have bird feeders right outside their window, and the feeders are quite active.

eating on the run

So we got in some bird-watching while we ate. (I don't seem to have ever blogged about the place before; how odd.)

looking sharp

Even through the window, I got some pretty decent photos. The hummingbird feeder was used by four birds, which I think were a female with two fledglings, and a male.

showing the kid the ropes

Telling a female from a juvenile is hard with Ruby-Throateds, but I saw one plain-throated bird bird show up with another on two occasions, and the second bird I think was different each time.

what the heck, one more hummingbird photo

And the male came from the opposite direction. Males have nothing to do with raising the young, anyway.

Readercon used to be in Burlington MA, and we'd go to Middlesex Fells on the first morning before the con began. This year, we went instead to the nearby Blue Hills Reservation. It seems very nice, but we got there a bit late in the morning, so the birding was slow. We did hear a bunch of singing Scarlet Tanagers, but nothing presented itself for a good photo.

full bloom of youth

The hotel in Quincy was set on the top of a hill, and at the bottom was a nice pond. Ther were geese and ducks, of course, and a Green Heron hunted on the far side. Closer up, the Red-Winged Blackbirds were abundant, including the interesting bird above, one of a group of what appeared to all be young males. Note the epaulettes; I don't think I've seen them so yellow before.

color photo, black-and-white scene

Also there were chickadees chasing each other around in low trees. This fellow had a lot to say, both singing and scolding.

Wanderings

I'm going to continue catching up in reporting my early-Spring birding, but first a couple of notes about the state of the Spring migration. It's shaping up to be really strong, at least for variety. Some people have had 20-warbler days in Central Park in late April, which is impressive, and even I have managed double-digits (and 19 warblers before May 1, which is a great total for me). If you have any chance at all to get out, do it--there are a lot of birds to see.

Backtracking a few weeks, I went to various places to spice up the March doldrums. A trip to the NY Botanical Garden wasn't too productive, though it did get e my first Pine Warbler of the year, in addition to the curious Chickadee at the top of this post.

Our friend Barbara took us out to Jamaica Bay NWR for an afternoon, our first time there. There were some nice birds about, like Ospreys and American Oystercatchers, but they were mostly too far away for good photos.

There was a big flock of Boat-Tailed Grackles (part of which was in the tree in the photo above). I hadn't realized they were so well-established in the New York area. I saw one at the NY Botanical Garden a few years ago and it was a startlingly rare sighting.

This female Cowbird was roosting in a tree outside the visitors' center, directly above a nest box, which is bad news for some nesting bird.

On a trip out to Roseland NJ for a business meeting, I took a walk at lunchtime around the industrial park we were in. I heard a lot of birds tooting and peeping nearby. I went around a building and found a culvert and a gathering of Killdeers, feeding and flying about. They were all calling constantly, justifying their Latin name of Charadrius vociferus, which loosely translates as "loudmouthed Plover".

As always, look for birds and you'll find birds.

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.

The beginning of Spring

Watch this! I am going to eat these seeds, and not get eaten!

Spring began this weekend. It was a long winter, and Elena had some knee trouble and couldn't get out much. We were finally able to go birding in the Ramble Sunday, and it was a fine outing.

The first order of business was to feed the Titmouses and Chickadees at the Upper Lobe. The Titmousen were characteristically fearless; the Chickadees were a bit more standoffish. One was at least interested enough that it actually sat still for many seconds at a time, and I was able to get some of my best Chickadee photos ever.

I'm not sure I want to do that

We didn't neglect the otehr little birds, though they never come to hand.

that's right! never neglect the Sparrow, for he is puissant and fierce

All the usual late winter birds were around.

I'm not going to show you where I've stashed the seeds

And there was singing everywhere. This Cardinal gave a concert about 4 feet from a path and just six feet up.

I call this number, "Get Out of My Territory, Fool"

The best birds of the day (in the birding sense) didn't yield any good photos: two American Woodcocks deep in the brush near Azalea Pond; a Merlin perched briefly atop a tree at the south end of Maintenance, then flying fast and hard toward Belvedere Castle; a Turkey Vulture high, high overhead. Fine things to see, though.

I hope you had a good first weekend of Spring, too.

In the good light

I went back to Central Park on Sunday to see what was around the Reservoir. Not much of positive interest was around, though the lack of Ruddy Ducks, Buffleheads, and Shovelers was interesting; Hooded Mergansers were almost entirely absent as well.

There was a group of five Coots at the north end, squabbling occasionally. One decided to try his luck elsewhere and stalked off across the ice on his big ridiculous Coot feet.

Coot, bigfooting

I thought that the late-afternoon sunshine would make for a good photo of the Common Redpoll, so I went back downtown to the Ramble. I had a bit of a wait before the Redpoll appeared,and a longer one as he left and returned to the feeders several times, always in the shade. Other birds were a bit more cooperative.

the Chipping Sparrow is still hanging in there

Chickadee, pausing briefly

"get my good side"

Finally, the Redpoll showed up on the sunny side of the feeders briefly

worth the wait