It's a hard life being a bird

It's nesting season, and woodpeckers are among the busy birds in Central Park. The the end of May I spotted the female Downy Woodpecker excavating a willow tree at the east end of Turtle Pond.

Downys nested there a couple of years back, too. I think the tree is pretty rotten at this point, so the wood is soft enough for a little beak like a Downy's to dig in. The limb she was working on extended over the water, and I watched sawdust float down to the surface of the pond as she worked.

The male took part in the digging, too. I don't remember that from last time. The hole got quickly deeper over the next few days, with more and more of the bird disappearing into it as it worked

Finally I saw the female disappear into the nest hole, and then poke her head out. That was about the fourth of June. I figured she must have laid eggs then, and they'd probably hatch about mid-month.

A week later, I noticed that the area of the hole looked different, as if more excavation had been done. And I didn't see the birds, though I could hear the whinnying call of a Downy occasionally on the south side of the pond. Maybe they were mostly keeping in the nest, on the eggs.

Unfortunately, no. The next day I saw a gang of about five juvenile Starlings poking around the hole. They or their elders must have raided the nest. Starlings are also cavity-nesters, and they're tough birds that are hard to compete with.

In the Ramble, there was a pair of Northern Flickers nesting near the bend in the Gill. When I saw them, the female was in the nest hole, and the male was calling from somewhere nearby. I was told that she had been coming out frequently and they'd been seen mating, but now she was staying in the hole. Possibly she was on eggs already.

Alas, once again, a couple of days later Starlings were seen in the nest hole, having evicted the Flickers.

Meanwhile, uptown, the nest of Red-Tailed Hawks at Grant's Tomb ran into some problems. Around the time the young were fledging, the male hawk apparently flew into a window hard enough to break it, and has not been seen since. Then the mother hawk lost an argument with a car and was taken to a rehabber where it was discovered to have some problems from ingesting rat poison. That left three fledglings with nobody to feed them, but mobile enough to be hard to catch; eventually they were caught and brought to rehab centers.

There's a series of posts about the Grant's Tomb nest at the Urban Hawks Blog, June 10, June 11, and June 14; and at the Morningside Hawks blog (I hadn't know about that one before!) on June 10, June 13, June 14, and June 17.

I hear the female has actually been released now, but not the fledglings yet--a single parent would have some trouble feeding three fledglings who can't hunt yet. The young birds are losing important time in learning to hunt.

It's a hard life, being a bird.

Heron vs Frog

Here's some photos I unearthed from the archives. These were taken five years ago, on a walk through the Ramble in Central Park. Walking along the water's edge on the Point, I encountered a Black-Crowned Night Heron.

Frankly, I almost walked right into him, but he was a little too busy to worry about me.

The heron struggled with that frog for quite a while. He kept bashing it on logs and tree roots. Once in a while he'd half-release it in the water, I guess to see if it was still struggling. As far as I could see, it wasn't--I think it might have been dead already.

I believe he was mostly having trouble figuring out how to swallow it. That was one of the largest frogs I've ever seen in Central Park.

Eventually I had to leave to go to work. The heron still had his own work to finish when I left.

Kirtland's Warbler

Part one: the immediate aftermath (posted on Twitter Friday night)

the Kirtland's Warbler of legend

Six hours later, I'm still wired from seeing the Kirtland's Warbler that showed up in Central Park this afternoon.

Never in my life expected this bird to show up in New York City. Incredible.

Kevin Topping found the bird just after 5pm and tweeted the location. I got there at 6:25, and there were 80+ people already there watching it.

the birderazzi

The warbler was in an oak between the West Drive and the bridal path, and cyclists and runners stopped and asked what the heck we were looking at, so we told them about Kirtland's, the migration, the whole saga of the conservation of this extremely endangered little bird...

It was great. One of my best birding experiences. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, bird.

Good night, all.

good night, bird

Part two: what makes this bird so great

what, it's not obvious?

So why was I--and all these people--so excited about this little bird? I mean, it's a nice enough looking bird, but there are a number of prettier warblers.

Well, to start with, Kirtland's Warbler is probably the rarest songbird in North America. There's only three thousand or so. The saga of their conservation is pretty amazing.

And, none have ever been seen in New York City before (I think this is the third record in the whole state). They breed in Michigan, and a few spots in Wisconsin, and they winter one some of the more isolated of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos islands. Third migration route seems pretty direct, so it goes nowhere near here, and they're rarely spotted in migration anyway.

ready for launch

All the places they live are isolated, and protected for conservation, so it takes some serious planning to see them even when they're where they're supposed to be. For 98% of the people out there, this was not just a life bird but a once-in-a-lifetime bird.

Part three: the saga continues

with a tasty snack gleaned from the leaf above

The warbler was still there on Saturday, so Elena and I went to see it. Our field Elissa joined us...and the hundred or more birders, photographers, journalists, and curious passers-by at the site (west of the Reservoir, about 91st Street).

He was a very cooperative bird. I noticed he was doing a lot more hover-gleaning (that's when a bird jumps up and flutters in place to grab bugs off the underside of a leaf above it) than it had done on Friday, and I was able to get one decent action shot.

warbler in action

I say "he", because he sang a bit in the early morning. He was still there Sunday morning, but wasn't seen after the rain stopped. He was likely still somewhere in the area and still might be re-found. And if not--

Often I feel a little sad about seeing a rare vagrant bird, because it's normally unlikely it will ever find its way back to it's normal range again. But the Kirtland's is on the right side of the right continent, and should have no problem finding a habitat with suitable food this summer. So I think that it has good chance to get back to the Bahamas in the winter, and maybe it will have better luck getting to the breeding grounds next year.

hopeful

Might as well be Spring

dramatic Jay

The last weekend of winter was chilly but bright. Sunday I took a walk through Central Park, testing out a new camera. I caught a couple of birds in dramatic light at Tanner's Spring.

Grackle down for a drink

The camera is a Nikon P900, which I bought mostly for it's huge zoom range; I'm hoping to use it instead of a spotting scope when I go to Jamaica Bay. Hauling around a scope and tripod is a pain in the ... backpack. It seems to work pretty well despite its tiny sensor.

Cardinal in a song battle

There's a lot of birds singing now. In the Ramble I watched a Cardinal counter-singing against a nearby rival. House Finches are in voice, and I've heard Fox Sparrows and even a few Juncos. The Goldfinches seem to be behind this year, though--I haven't even seen any really bright males yet.

Robins have been singing in small numbers. WHite-Throated Sprows have been relatively silent--there haven't been very many in the Park this winter.

O Robin, harbinger of Spring!

Then Spring came in with a blizzard. I saw a flock of over 40 next to the Met Museum in the falling snow on Wednesday. That's the most I've seen at once since last Summer. I guess they flew in just before the storm.

Hopefully we'll start getting real Spring weather soon.

Local falcon

One of the pleasant things this winter has been a Peregrine Falcon that roosts most days in a tree overlooking the north end of the Central Park Reservoir.

She (large bird; presumed female) favors a tree just south of the iron bridge near the north pumphouse, and often sits there for long stretches. The view is much closer than I usually get with a Peregrine.

The particular tree the falcon favors has a squirrel nest in it. You might imagine the squirrels aren't too pleased.

However the squirrels have figured out that she isn't actually too dangerous at this range. In fact tying to take a mammal out of a tree is not her hunting style at all. Peregrines are more "swoop down and grab a bird out of the air" hunters.

In fact, she's not too happy about the squirrels approaching her, and she'll display at them. Unfortunately I don't have a good photo of that yet.

But she hasn't let that change her roosting spot. I guess it's otherwise the perfect tree.

November rarities

In November the rare birds come. Hatch-year birds who've never migrated before, birds blown by storms, birds whose sense of direction has gone off--all sorts of birds can show up anywhere.

There was a Corn Crake on Long Island. I missed that--no transport--and the poor bird got hit by a car a couple of days after its discovery. That's a ridiculously rare vagrant from Europe, only a few North American records in the last century. Excellent young birder Ryan Zucker wrote a very nice blog post about the Crake twitch.

Closer to home, we had a different skulky bird of the reeds up in the Loch section of Central Park, a Virginia Rail . This wasn't off-course so much, but unusually easy to see, foraging in the leaves just off a popular path.

I got to see an interesting bit of behavior--a Blue Jay who had been hanging around suddenly flew up to the top of a small tree and started alarming, and the rail ran for cover, closing the 15 feet or so to a large log in about a second and crouching underneath until the danger had passed, or at least until the Jay quieted down.

in this and the next picture, look at the feet.

seriously, aren't they amazing?

The Rail might have been released in the park by the Wild Bird Find after a rehab stint.

This is just a ridiculously close look at a Rail. That never happens.

Down in the Ramble, an apparent Hammond's Flycatcher has been around for almost two weeks now. Hammond's is a western Empidonax flycatcher, and empids are notoriously hard to identify, but this bird's small bill, teardrop eyering, long tail, and long "primary projection" (which makes the wings look sword-shaped) are pretty strong evidence, and people have heard it call (which is usually the best way to identify Empidonaxes), so everyone seems happy with the ID.

I had an unsatisfactory look at it when it first showed up, and then for some days the bird was seen before and after I left the park, but then first I had a decent look late one afternoon, and then a couple of days later I came upon a couple of people looking at it at perched over a small stream the Gill)...

..and then it flew right in and showed off on a fence six feet from me. I've never had such a good look at any empid before.

As of today (Friday 12/8), the bird is apparently still present. It goes all over the Ramble, so it might take some searching unless you see a crowd of people staring into the trees.

That same day I saw two other nice birds. While entering the park I stopped to watch a biggish flock of Common Grackles on Cedar Hill, maybe 150 or 200 birds. They weren't two nervous and I was able to walk pretty close as the foraged and fussed, and then I spotted a slightly larger and browner bird in with them.

A Boat-Tailed Grackle! Very unusual for Manhattan, though there's a breeding colony at Jamaica Bay in the summer. I think this is the same bird that was spotted by Anders Peltomaa a week or so before. It's been seen almost daily since; opinions are divided as to whether it's a female or a hatch-year male.

hey there, long legs

It was interesting to watch this bird interact with the Common Grackles. Aside from being a bit bigger, it had much longer legs, and when it felt crowded, it would rise up on them and kind of lean on the neighbors a little until they backed off.

After seeing the Grackle and then the nice view of the Hammond's, I wandered around the Ramble for a while, and came upon a Pine Siskin in a holly tree.

Pine Siskin (OK, next to the Holly)

Pine Siskins are a decently unusual bird here, although some winters we see a number of them as they wander the region looking for good crops of pine cones to eat. This was the first I'd seen this year.

Winter Is Coming

The days grow short, and it's getting cold. Ducks are coming in to stay at the Reservoir, and now the Juncos are here, so Fall migration is basically over.

I hadn't been seeing too many Juncos this Fall, but a couple of days ago I found a flock of about 60 on a path behind Tupelo Meadow in Central Park, and more scattered south of there in the Ramble. White-Throated Sparrows are still in relatively short supply.

Meanwhile, on Cedar Hill, I've been watching a female Downy Woodpecker excavating a roost hole. When they feel winter coming on, many woodpeckers dig holes in trees to roost in at night, which is what's happening here in this video clip. (By the way, if anyone can recommend simple video-editing tools for Windows, I'd like to hear about them. Doesn't have to be free, but does have to be really easy. Mostly I'd be looking for something to do stabilization better than the YouTube tool.)

Woodpeckers don't reuse their nest holes for winter roosting, which makes perfect sense when you think about what a nest cavity must look and smell like by the time the young have fledged.

She appears to have finished her roost hole now. Hopefully she can defend it from Starlings and House Sparrows.

Happy Thanksgiving! You stay warm, too.

Looking back at Spring (part 2)

Another bird I got a better-than-usual look at this Spring was Worm-Eating Warbler. Usually they're hard to find in Central Park in the Spring, but this year there were several good sightings, mostly along the south short of Turtle Pond.

Worm-Eating Warblers are more frequent in the park in Fall, when they tend to creep through the dead leaves on the ground in shady spots. They are pretty cryptic in that setting. These Spring migrants, though, liked the catkins in the oaks, pretty high off the ground but sometimes coming down almost to eye level. The oaks at Turtle Pond are set well back from the fenced path, but it was still a pretty good view.

because of the distance and light, these photos didn't come out quite as well as I had hoped, but it was still quite a nice view of the bird.

Looking back at Spring (part 1)

So how have you all been? Had a good Spring migration? Mine was good, but I didn't have my act together to post about it. Too many photos, too little time. I really need to come up with a better workflow. And now Summer is beginning, and the migration has passed, and it'll be another year before I get to do it again.

Anyway, it was a pretty good migration season. There were a lot of birds, although some of the "normal rarities" didn't show up much--I don't think anyone had a Prothonotary or Cerulean Warbler, for example, not in Central Park, maybe not anywhere in Manhattan.

I never ran into a real "magic tree", but I did have a nice long encounter with a Bay-Breasted Warbler, right where the Belvedere Caste plaza ends and the steps down to the Ramble start.

He foraged in one tree for a good half-hour, frequently at eye-level, and in really good light. I was amazed how his cap glowed in the sunlight.

Stepping into Spring with a spring in your step, or something like that

in spring a young hawk's fancy...

Spring is here! And resident birds are at various stages of family life. Some of the lcal Red-Tailed Hawks were already sitting on eggs by the beginning of April. Others, like the pair above that I ran across one morning in the Ramble, were just getting started on the process.

Great Horned Owls, not big on nest concealment this year

Some birds were even farther along. The Great Horned Owls at the NY Botanical Garden in the Bronx nested in a very prominent place this year and had nestlings by mid-March, who should be about ready to fledge by now

not just one but two adorable slaughterfloofs!

Once the slaughterfloofs are ready to leave the nest, they will flutter down into nearby trees. The parents will feed them there until they can actually fly. The Botanical Garden folks are prepares to rope off the whole area while that's going on.

Jay chillin'

Other residents, like this Blue Jay, will be breeding a bit later in the Spring and are just chilling for now. I've only just started seeing Robins building nests this week, though they've been singing for a month or more.

"Rusty Blackbird" always sounds to me like a baseball player's name from the 1930s

Many birds who spent the winter in the NYC area will be moving north to nest. Rusty Blackbirds were at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx all winter as usual, and are now headingfor their mysterious breeding grounds in somewhere in the boreal forests.

American Wigeon, swim away from me

Our wintering ducks will also be nesting somewhere in the north. THis female American Wigeon spent a good deal of the later winter at Harlem Meer.

male Golden-Crowned Kinglets have the orangey racing stripe on their head

Meanwhile the first spring migrants have started moving through the area. Both kinds of Kinglets have been around, along with Chipping Sparrows. Fox sparrows have basically all left already, and the bulk of Song Sparrows have passed through, though some will stay and nest here.

very confiding Chipping Sparrow behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Phoebes came in in a big rush around the end of March and have also mostly left by now. Still waiting to see the first Pewees and Empidonax flycatchers.

Phoebe, here today gone tomorrow

The first warblers have arrived--Pine, Palm, Yellow-Rumped, and now Black-and-White--but I don't have good photos yet. Also there have been several reports of Yellow-Throated Warblers, which is unusual.