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!

Return of the son of the revenge of more Fall migration photos

Winter Wren working it for the camera

The thing about Fall migration is that it lasts a long time. Spring migration is a few intense weeks in May, with a slow build up for maybe a month. before, and a rather abrupt ending. Fall migration starts around the end of July and continues in a fairly steady stream for about three months.

So the less common birds get spread out a bit. Sort of.

lazy afternoon

This Whipoorwill turned up in the Loch in northern Central Park in late September. That's a nice bird for Manhattan; we get maybe one a year--more frequent than then Chuck-Will's-Widow, less frequent than Common Nighthawk.

Whipoorwills sleep most of the day, like owls, and wake up around dusk to hunt insects. They're hard to spot, since they don't move around much during daylight, and they generally roost pretty high up. This one was in an unusually low perch, the the photographers had a great time with him.

That same day, a Grasshopper Sparrow was spotted on the Knoll, also in the northern part of the Park just a short walk from the Whipoorwill's roost. I didn't see that bird, though. Well, maybe I did: I saw a very streaky backed sparrow fly by me that the other birders said was the Grasshopper. They had had a good look at it before, but for me, that wasn't enough of a view to count.

showing the flag

Then the next week, two fairly uncommon birds showed up at Harlem Meer. This female Green-Winged Teal spent a lot of time browsing a patch of duckweed in the southwest corner of the Meer near the little island.

The Green-Winged Teal is our smallest duck. Here's what that means:

size comparison

You see it's about half the size of the Mallard. You can almost ID it just on size.

Also on the Meer at the same time was a female American Wigeon. I had a heck of a time picking it out of the crowd of Gadwalls, even though they were all just a few feet off shore. It blended in surprisingly well.

semi-anonymous

The dark bill isn't all that striking when you're watching it swim around, and the coloring is a bit cryptic. Eventually I noticed that it was the only one never showing a white speculum, and then it became obvious.

bird of the evening

Besides the Grasshopper sparrow, Central Park has hosted a couple of other uncommon sparrows. A Vesper Sparrow spent the better part of a week in the area called Locust Grove, along a woodchip path just west of the Great Lawn between the Delacorte Theater and the Pinetum. It only liked to come out when the light was dim.

Of course, a lot of non-rarities continue to move through, like the Winter Wren at the top of this post, and this very confiding Pine Warbler:

warbler at my feet

He hopped around within a few feet of me, too busy foraging to worry about some slow monkey.

But there are signs the migration is ending, like the arrival of Juncos. They usually come right at the end.

sign of the end times

Birds still coming in

Over the last week or so, the Fall migration has brought me a couple of new birds for the year. On the 26th, there were a flock of Pine Siskins in the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park.

Siskin irruption!

Usually, Pine Siskins stay well to the north, but in some years when the pine cone crop is scarce, they irrupt into the US to find food. There have been a lot of Siskin sightings this Fall. I had missed them until now, and they became my 185th Manhattan species of the year.

While I was in the Park that day, I spent a pleasant hour at Belvedere Castle looking for migrating raptors. I didn't have much luck with the migrants, but I did watch a local resident Kestrel hunting over the Great Lawn. Eventually it roosted in a tree top, and a bold Blue Jay made it known that he found the Kestrel's presence unsatisfactory.

off with you, I say!

The Kestrel was not too impressed.

During the week I saw my first brown creeper of the autumn in the Park, bathing at the east end of Turtle Pond.  It was the most birdlike I've ever seen a Creeper--they usually act more like some kind of acrobatic mouse.

fluffing dry

Last Sunday was the NY Marathon. I live east of First Avenue, so usually the Marathon traps me at home all day. This year, I got moving early to take a bus north before they closed the streets, and went over to Randall's Island.

I once again failed to see a Nelson's Sparrow in the salt marsh area at the northern tip of the island, although an older gentleman there told me he had seen one. Well, they're notoriously hard to spot. I gave up after an hour and a half and went off to see what else was on the island.

sign of winter

There were a lot of Brant in the East River, a sure sign of impending winter. I noticed two very small brownish ducks swimming with them. Green-Winged Teal! (Species 186 for the year in New York County.)

our smallest duck

Down in the Hell Gate Inlet salt marsh there were Yellow-Rumped warblers, and a very pale bird with streaks on the sides of the breast that was either a very pale Yellow-Rumped, or maybe a Blackpoll.

Along the "Water's Edge Garden" on the east shore of the island, Palm Warblers frolicked in the flower beds. Then I saw a Red-Tailed Hawk flying hard and low across the grounds of the mental health center. He was carrying a squirrel, which he carried up into a tree. There was a dense chain-link fence between us, but I got a couple of decent photos.

hawk and dinner

I hear there are Green-Winged Teal on the Central Park Reservoir, and someone saw a Woodcock in Strawberry Fields the other day. There was a report of a Varied Thrush in Madison Square Park as well, but the reporter wasn't sure of the ID and as far as I know the bird was not refound. among more common but still very nice birds, there are Kinglets all over the place. So it's still quite birdy out there.