Stork nests

watch your fingers

We made our annual trip to Florida to visit friends in Palm Beach County at the beginning of March. This is the latest in winter we've gone, and the differences in what birds were around were interesting.

domestic bliss

At Wakodahatchee Wetlands park, the Wood Storks were nesting. Some of them were in trees right next to the boardwalk, practically close enough to touch if you didn't mind losing a couple of fingers. In January and February of past years, the dominant nesters were Great Blue Herons; this time it was the storks and smaller shorebirds like Tricolored Heron and Cattle Egret.

shorebird condo

All the little hammocks had nests in them. They were like shorebird condos. They generally had Great Blue Herons at the top.

"I just adore a penthouse view..."

Stork nests were below the Great Blues, and then Anhinga nests farther down.

nice neighbors

Cattle Egret and Tricolored Herons tucked their nests into cozy little crannies throughout the trees. Double-Crested Cormorants mostly had their own hammocks.

cozy

There wasn't much nesting at nearby Green Cay, though there were a nice pair of Screech Owl. The Spoonbills seem to have abandoned it this year, though. I'll post more Florida photos soon, in the meantime, one more Stork nest:

South Florida retention pond

This Limpkin walked around the pond, passing maybe 25 feet from the house. Not especially skittish.

One prominent feature of the South Florida landscape are the retention ponds. Every housing development has one, sometimes several; it's typical to see a circle of houses with a little pond in the middle.

These ponds aren't very deep, and aren't too clean, but they help contain runoff and keep oil and fertilizer and other pollutants out of the water supply. Plus, where there's water, there will be birds, especially since the ponds often have some fish in them.

Our friends Adam and Judy live in a South Florida development, and have a little retention pond in the backyard. The homeowners' association hasn't done much landscaping around it, so it's just a pool at the end of the lawn, but they still have birds, which we greatly enjoyed when we visited last month. There was a big flock of White Ibises that hung out must days like huge pigeons.

acting like they own the place

And a pair of Limpkns were frequently present.

Limpkins foraging

I'm guessing they were a mated pair, since I saw them passing food between them.

At evening the Limpkins flew across the pond, giving an raspy call.

Occasionally there was a Great Egret, and once a Great Blue Heron. At sunset, ducks would settle on the pond and around the shore; usually Mottled Ducks, but our last evening there thirty or so Ring-Necked Ducks decided to spend the night there.

Great Blue Heron on a drainage pipe

Great Egret at work

Plus there were flyovers by Osprey, Turkey Vulture, Kestrel, Merlin, and Peregrine Falcon--that really made the Ibises jump--and a visit by a Royal Tern who fished for a while and then flew on.

Tern hovering on the hunt

Tern in the evening sky

Oh, I didn't even mention the Anhingas, or the Cormorants, or the Killdeer... I think we had 16 species, Just amazing stuff to find in the backyard.

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 Goose

The Pink-Footed Goose is a cold-weather bird. They breed in Greenland and Iceland, and they winter in northern Europe and Britain. The field guides say that it's an extremely rare vagrant in North America (for example the online Audubon guide: "Strays that have gone the wrong direction have been found in North America only a couple of times, in eastern Canada"), but since about 2011 they've been increasingly common, and there are several in the New York City area at the moment.

One of them is in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and I went to see it on Friday.

Pink-Footed Goose for Christmas!

I may have mentioned this before, but as a rule, if you're looking for a reported rare bird, look for the birders before you look for the bird. When I got to Van Cortlandt Park--a straight shot up the to the end of the #1 IRT subway line--I spotted people with scopes on the Parade Ground, scanning a huge flock of Canada Geese. This saved me from having to circle the flock myself--there had been warnings online about how shy and nervous this goose flock was. You don't want to be the bozo who flushes the rare birds.

Anyway, the scope owners turned out to be NY birding luminaries Gail Benson and Tom Burke, and they kindly gave me looks through their scopes at the Pink-Footed Goose and also a young Snow Goose in the flock.

I moved on to nearby Van Cortlandt Lake, where there was said to be a Cackling Goose and a Northern Pintail duck.

Swans always lend a touch of elegance

Most of the Lake was frozen over, so there were a lot of waterfowl crowded into a small area of open water at the south end. A pair of Mute Swans brightened up the scene, and a phlegmatic Great Blue Heron perched on a branch over the water only a few feet from the path along the west shore.

Imperturbable

The birds on the open water included lot of Canada Geese and Mallards, several Shovelers, one American Black Duck, one Pied-Billed Grebe, and a few Ruddy Ducks.

Ruddy Duck stretching out

Eventually I found the Northern Pintail, a drake. From a distance he was quite handsome, but when I saw him close up he was a bit scruffy. Well, it's winter.

contemplative Pintail

The Cackling Goose never appeared--at least I saw no notably small Canada-type geese--and I eventually headed back to the Parade Ground to see if perhaps I might get a closer look at the Pink-Footed Goose.

There were at least a thousand geese on the Parade Ground when I arrived but almost immediately half of them were put to flight by a single large dog some schmuck decided to let run through Dogs are not allowed on the Parade Ground, by the way, and there are prominent signs to that effect. However, many dog owners consider themselves to be special beings not subject to rules. I will admit it was somehow inspiring to watch fine hundred geese rise up in a body, circle, and fly off.

Goooooooooal!

A single crow stayed behind around the.southernmost soccer nets. There remained a large body of geese at the extreme north end of the field. These geese proved to be not shy or nervous at all. As I approached, I watched two kids passing a soccer ball back and forth going south along the east edge of the flock without disturbing the birds at all. Then an oblivious young man talking on a cell phone walked right through the middle of the flock; the birds near him walked out of his way, but they didn't even honk at him.

There's no gooses like Snow Gooses

I spotted the Snow Goose first, near the edge of the flock at the north end. I walked around to the west side, staying only about ten yards away; the birds didn't pay any attention at all to me. Finally I saw the brown head of the Pink-Footed Goose, also very close by, and I was able to get some nice photos of the rarity.

Very cooperative

And so I got my Christmas goose. The Pink-Footed Goose was a life bird for me, my 280th species. Happy holidays to you all!

Florida close-ups

To return to Florida once more, the best thing about the Green Cay wetlands park is that the birds were often right up close to the boardwalk--sometimes even on it, like this Tricolored Heron.

And also the territorial Limpkin I mentioned in my first Florida post:

Those birds had no real fear of people.

We made two trips to Green Cay. On Presidents' Day we had wanted to see the nearby Wakodahatchee park, another man-made wetlands area somewhat older than Green Cay, but it has very little parking (Probably better to try it on a non-holiday weekday). Since rain was threatening, we decided not to wait and headed back to the more capacious Green Cay.

The rains did come while we were there, sometimes quite heavily, though many of the birds weren't bothered much by it, especially the waders. You can see some rain in the Tricolored Heron photos.

Smaller birds avoided the rain more, but even some of the Grackles stayed out in the open.

When the rain stopped, they all came back out. Here's a tree full of Grackles in the clearing storm:

There were some very visible large nests near the boardwalks, including this Great Blue Heron nest:

And a coupel of trees right next to that had several Anhinga nests.

There were a lot of Anhingas. I didn't see any come up on the boardwalks, but they got pretty close. I like this subadult, who looked very punk.

Their feet are pretty amazing:

I still can't believe how close the American Bitterns got to the boardwalk.

Aren't they supposed to be really skittish?

The Spoonbills were a bit more standoffish, but still pretty close.

And here's one more Tricolored Heron portrait to finish off:

And that's it for Florida. I'll be back soon with Spring's early arrivals here in New York City.

Waiting for the shorebirds

Great Blue Hunter

It's the end of July and I'm waiting for the shorebirds to show up. As far as I know, nobody's been seeing much in Manhattan--no sandpipers at all, for one thing. I've read that Jamaica Bay is quite uncharacteristically slow, too--maybe the migrating shorebirds are avoiding the whole area.

I was up at Inwood Hill Park the other weekend, and although there were no sandpipers or plovers, there were a few birds of the heron family, including my first Great Blue Heron of the year in Manhattan--two of them actually, hunting quite successfully in the coves.

Snowy Egret

There were also at least one Snowy Egret, and a Great Egret. All nice to see, but I'm still waiting for my peeps.

Great Egret, workin' hard

Surprises

There are always surprises. On Monday, a Marsh Wren popped up in Bryant Park. He (the bird was reported singing a few times) was a lot more accessible than his species usually is. I suppose he didn't have much choice--there's not that much room to hide there.

uncharacteristically sassy

The wren was in the southwest corner, next to the guard booth. He was there yesterday as well, but I haven't seen any reports from today.

After a few slow days, Tuesday was pretty busy in Central Park. On my way through in the morning, there was a commotion of birds bathing and drinking at the stretch of slow water just north of Azalea Pond. Several warblers buzzed around, including Yellow-Rumped, Black-and-White, female Black-Throated Green and Blackpoll, and a very drab one I couldn't identify. I got a bunch of photos of it and moved on.

Fifty feet on, I saw movement up in a tree. The bird seemed large but well-hidden--and then it came out.

"I'm ready for my screen-test"

A Black-Billed Cuckoo! I'd missed this species so far this Spring, despite it being reported more frequently than usual. But there it was, posing nicely. I got a few passing birders onto it, and then a bunch more showed up when I tweeted the sighting. (Reminder: a lot of good birds in Manhattan are reported on the Twitter hashtag #birdcp. There's a description of the system on David Barrett's website at https://bigmanhattanyear.wordpress.com/using-birdcp-text-alerts/)

On the way out of the Ramble, I saw my first Chestnut-Sided Warblers of the Spring. About time, too.

Then, on the subway to work, I took a look through my photos. That drab warbler? Wasn't a warbler.

got to be good-looking 'cause you're so hard to see

Philadelphia Vireo! Not a frequently-seen bird around here, and when we have it it's usually in the Fall. And they usually stay up pretty high and well back in the leaves, so this is by far the best view I've ever had of a Philadelphia. It simply never entered my mind that one would be around, so I didn't recognize it while I was looking at it.

During the day, people found an Olive-Sided Flycatcher in the Ramble. That's not as infrequent a visitor as the Vireo, and we regularly get one at the same location every May about this time. I'm convinced it's the same bird every year.

*

his favorite place for dinner when passing through the City

It likes the top of a tall mostly-bare tree just at the northwest corner of Azalea Pond. It's a good perch for an Olive-Sided, and there's lots of larger insects around. The bird will sally and return to the perch over and over, pausing in between to eat its catch. And that's where I found it in the good late-afternoon light.

This Olive-Sided comes back in mid-August, usually just a little earlier than returning birds of that species are expected. This has gone on for some years now.

This morning, I saw my first Pewees of the season. That leaves Great Blue Heron as the most common bird I haven't seen this year. That's a surprise, too--I've usually seen several by this point in the year.

have you seen me?