Christmas Count and New Year's Birding

moody heron portrait

The 117th Annual Central Park Christmas Bird Count went off on December 18th. I attached myself to the group doing the southeast park of the park. Led by Ranger Wu from the Parks Department and Lynn Herzog of the Linnean Society, we set off from 72nd Street near Bethesda Fountain, down the Mall to the Pond and the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, then up to the Zoo and vicinity before retiring to the Armory for soup and the collation of the counts of the various groups covering the park.

It was a foggy morning, but not too unpleasant, and fairly birdy. We had Juncos on the Mall, and both Sharp-Shinned and Cooper's Hawks. The Hallett Sanctuary was full of raccoons--no, I mean really full of raccoons, like a couple of dozen sleeping in the trees--but there were Ruby-Crowned Kinglets along the Pond shore, and then waterfowl.

Did I mention it was foggy? See the Great Blue Heron above for proof. Not great for photography, alas, unless you like this kind of low-contrast atmospheric portrait.

Anyway, probably the best bird was a Northern Pintail duck who'd been hanging around teh Pond for some weeks:

cryptic Pintail

and which we took for a female. Now, this duck looked pretty mcuh like that at least through Christmas, but on New Year's Eve, Elena and I went down to the Pond to see it again:

what a difference a week makes

That's quite a change! Our Pintail is revealed as a handsome young male.

There was also a drake Green-Winged Teal there...and both were still there the next day to help get my 2017 list off to a good start.

getting a taste of city life

Both these ducks have been thoroughly corrupted by city life, and were in the scrum begging for food from the people who feed ducks. It's a living.

streeeetch that wing!

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.

Central Park Christmas Bird Count

I was up at 6:30 this morning and at the south pumphouse of the Central Park Reservoir by 7:45 for the Christmas Bird Count. The count divides the park into seven zones--northeast (Harlem Meer and environs), Northwest (the North Woods mostly), the Reservoir, teh Great lawn, the Ramble, Southeast (the Pond and environs), and Southwest (usually the least productive area, having no real water feature). I joined the Reservoir team this year (last year I did the Great Lawn).

It was a pleasant day to be out. Last year was miserable, icy and slushy, all the joys of bad footing and of getting your feet soaked through; but this year was warm for December, and partly sunny, and dry. But not birdy. The best birds of the day for us were right atthe start--the three Ring-Necked Ducks still hanging out in the southeast corner of the reservoir.

who's the best bird? you are!

Other than that, it was slow. We had a Kestrel along Central Park West around 94th Street--heard it first, calling klee-klee-klee! and then spotted it perched on a rooftop. Later we had what turned out to be the only Cedar Waxwing in the whole count. There were a goodly number of woodpeckers, including two Yellow-Bellied Sapsuckers. I think it's rather late for them to be here.

lingering

At the compilation, it turned out that there were only 56 species seen in the whole park. Some of the missing species were pretty shocking--no Red-Winged Blackbirds--and numbers of some common species were very low--only a hundred-odd Robins, a couple of dozen Cardinals. Not sure what's going on with that. At least the Titmousen and Nuthatches were back in force after being basically missing last year.

plenty of these guys, though

Photos from Christmas Bird Count day

My best picture of the day was probably this Green-Winged teal on the Reservoir:


Here's the group of Scaup I ran around up to the Reservoir for after the Christmas Count tally:


The Count itself was pretty quiet. We had a lot of Blue Jays:


National Audubon Society President David Yarnold was also in the Great Lawn group I was part of, and spoke to the post-count tally meeting at the Armory:

Christmas Bird Count in Central Park

I decided to take part in the Christmas Bird Count this year, my first time.  So I got up early and walked to the 86th Street bus in the dawn light.  Overhead, a flight of Crows headed for the East River.

Entering Central Park, I heard a strange stuttering birdsong:  di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di (pause) DI-DI (long pause and repeat).  I have no idea what that was;  my best guess is a Mockingbird imitating a car failing to start.

I reached the meeting place at the Reservoir's south pumphouse.  Someone explained to me that we would divide up into groups that would go to various parts of the Park under the guidance of a park ranger and an experienced birder;  choice of which group was ours.

It snowed yesterday and then rained all night, and the footing was treacherous, so I picked the Great Lawn group;  that area is mostly flat.

We set off around 8:20 for what proved to be about three hours of quite uneventful birding.  Probably the bad weather was keeping the birds quiet.

I don't like birding in large groups ("large", to me, is anything more than about four), but the company was pleasant.  A fellow named Dave struck up a conversation with me, asked me about my binoculars and how I got into birding and so on.

When the count ended and the group headed for the Central Park Armory to collate results and have lunch, the conversation turned to photography.  Dave had been a photojournalist and we talked about street photography and Diane Arbus. Very enjoyable conversation.  When we got to the Armory, Dave introduced himself to the table as Dave Yarnold, President of the National Audubon Society.  I had no idea.

When the count was compiled, I learned that a group of Lesser Scaup was on the Reservoir, so I ran off to see them;  my 173rd species in New York County this year.