Hangin' with my peeps

hangin'

Last weekend, the shorebirds finally showed up at Inwood Hill Park. Following a report by Nathan O'Reilly on Saturday, I went up on Sunday and saw my first peeps of the season.

Peeps--tiny sandpipers about the size of sparrows--are fun to watch skitter along the mudflats or beaches. Sunday I mustly saw Least Sandpipers, like these:

the Least of sandpipers

But there were also a couple of Semipalmated Sandpipers--generally grayer and with black instead of yellow/green legs. If you get a close view you can see the partial webbing--thesemipalmation--on their feet, but my views were not so good.

Semi-Palmated on trust

Nathan also had Greater Yellowlegs and a Semipalmated Plover, but those had left by Sunday. I contented myself with a Great Egret, a couple of Great Blue Herons (one of whom was going out of his way to bug the egret), and a charming family of ducks.

There should be plenty of more chances to see shorebirds there between now and about the end of September. Or if you don't mind a bit of wading, you can go out to Jamaica Bay, where they flock by the hundreds or thousands.

on your marks! get set! dabble!

Down in Central Park, Fall migration continues to trickle along. I saw a worm-Eating Warbler on Saturday, and a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher, both near Warbler Rock in the Ramble.

Gnatcatcher

The main warbler in right now is American Redstart--lots of females and immature types.

I often wonder if they remember their close encounters with people

Less common birds will be drifting through for a couple of months. There was a sighting of a Golden-Winged Warbler in the North Woods, but nobody saw it but the initial observer as far as I know.

And of course, our resident birds are still around enjoying the pleasant summer weather.

bold grackle

Surprisingly slow

Sunday and Monday were beautiful days, after nights of steady southerly winds; Tuesday came up gloomy and rainy, but again after a night of good winds.

Rainy Day Robin #12

Despite three nights of favorable winds, few migrating birds came into Central Park. There are still Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers, mostly on the Point.

Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher

Ruby-Crowned Kinglets are also still around; the Golden-Crowneds seem to have mostly moved on. There are Pine and Palm Warblers, and a couple of Yellow-Rumped Warblers, but no others; except one report of a Prairie Warbler near Turtle Pond. But I'm told that one of the birding guides played recordings of Prairie Warbler songs "to bring it in closer" until the stressed bird escaped elsewhere.

Swallows are coming in, however; Tree and Northern Rough-Winged Swallows at Turtle Pond on Monday, and today one Tree Swallow and a very small, fluttery, brown swallow that from the size and flight style might be a Bank Swallow. On the other hand, Bank is highly unusual in the park, and they don't tend to travel singly, so perhaps not. I couldn't get my binoculars on it for more than a tenth of a second, so I didn't get any field marks.

At Evodia on Monday I saw an extremely pretty female Red-Winged Blackbird. The females are usually quite reclusive. Unfortunately, a female Brown-Headed Cowbird was hanging around with it. That's not good news.

Soap opera in progress

Snipe hunt

When you set someone an impossible or fictional task as a prank, that's called a Snipe hunt. There's a reason for that.

At breakfast, I check several web pages--eBird rare birds and "year needs" lists, the NYSBirds-L mailing list, the NYNYBirds text alert page--to see if anything interesting has been seen. Thursday morning, there was a report of a Wilson's Snipe seen about 7am on the Point, a little peninsula in Central Park Lake that gets interesting shorebirds and warblers. Wilson's Snipe is a good bird for New York, and would be a life bird for me, so you can probably guess where I went.

I got into the park a little after 9am, and found other Snipe-obsessed birders. The story was, the bird had been seen and photographed on the east side of the Point, along with a Louisiana Waterthrush, and then both were accidentally flushed by park workers doing maintenance and trash removal. The Snipe flew around the Point and was lost to sight.

The obvious place for such a bird to hide is the Oven, a marshy area at the base of the western side of the Point. You can't (or at least shouldn't) climb down into the Oven, but a number of sharp-eyed people scanned the area from the land above it, and saw nothing. Where had the Snipe gone?

I walked all around the Lake shore. There's some decent places for a shorebird--not as good as the Point or the Oven, but possible--but neither I nor anyone else who explored the area over the course of the day saw anything Snipe-like.

I did see a nice first-of-year bird, a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher feasting in the Cornelian Dogwoods on the western shore. They were just now bursting with little yellow flowers that attracted a lot of insects. The Gnatcatcher is a tiny, fast moving bird, very hard to photograph.

My consolation prize for the Snipe hunt

Eventually I returned to the Oven and the Point. I watched a park worker go down into the oven. He seemed to doing something with a shrub. After a while, a Louisiana Waterthrush flushed--flew out of the Oven a bit down the Lake shore. I watched another twenty minutes as the man completed his work, but no Snipe followed the Waterthrush out.

I went and had a late lunch, and then did another circuit of the Lake. The Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher was still hard at work on in the dogwoods. I finally quit the Snipe hunt just after 5pm.

When I got home, I saw reports that the Snipe had been seen under a willow on the Point, and then in the Oven. Yeah, sure. I wasn't falling for that again.