Rarity season

In November, after the bulk of migration is over, the rarities start to show up. Some are lost birds, blown off course or young and inexperienced at migrating. Some are northern birds on the move for winter food sources. Some are young birds of sedentary species, dispersing in search of their own territory.

A Great Horned Owl showed up in Central Park on Sunday (11/1). I didn't know about it until after sunset--I had gone up to Inwood Hill Park, which was quiet, though I did see one nice bird:

This Vesper Sparrow was fairly confiding, foraging on the soccer field south of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and occasionally retreating to a small fenced-off area of tall grasses. Anyway, I went home afterwards and took a nap, and woke to find owl reports on my Twitter stream.

The last Great Horned Owl in Central Park was in April of 2012, and only stayed one day. So I thought I was out of luck. But to my surprise, there was a Twitter report early Monday morning that the owl was still there. It was sleepy and turned away from observers, so it wasn't a great look even though it was not hidden at all, high in a huge sweetgum tree. Then I had to go out of town on business for three days, but on Friday, the owl was still there! and awake in the morning.

It moved around a bit--at one point it leaned forward as if interested in flying out at something. Or more likely it was just pooping.

Another excellent bird in the park is a Red-Headed Woodpecker. It's a first-year bird, so its head hasn't turned red yet.

It's been there for a couple of weeks now, and looks like it's settling in for the winter. The bird has been excavating a roost hole in a snag, and caching acorns in locust trees. I hadn't known that Red-headed Woodpeckers stored acorns.

This weekend, strong winds from the west blew in some very interesting birds--Franklin's Gulls and Cave Swallows--but I haven't had any luck in spotting any.

I can't resist showing off one more owl photo.

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

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

Big weekend

I started my weekend by taking Friday off from work. There had been a lot of rarities reported in Central Park on Thursday--Blue Grosbeak, Red-Headed Woodpecker, both kinds of Cuckoo--but I was responsible adult and went to work.

They were all gone Friday, but I quietly got a total of 49 species anyway. A lot of migrating warblers were in.

I'm on my way

And a lot of resident birds were going about their business--establishing territory

I am wren, hear me roar

bathing

Orchard Oriole and a Yellow-Rumped Warbler at the bird spa

and foraging.

yum!

It was a splendid day. I had 46 species by noon, and then went off to look for the Mourning Warbler seen between Balcony Bridge and Triplets Bridge. I found it--along with dozens of other people--and had some good views, but I spent the rest of the day trying to get a good photo of it. It was too wily for me, though.

Saturday was the Global Big Day, organized by the Cornell Ornithology Lab as a conservation-awareness and fundraising initiative. The idea was to get a lot of people out in the field and see how many species they could see. The Lab hoped to record 4500 of the 10000+ species--they got almost 6000.

But it was a bit slow in New York. I had only twenty species in the Ramble, so I went up to Inwood Hill Park. The tide was rushing in when I arrived, but I was lucky enough to see the previously-reported Greater Yellowlegs

skinny legs and all

which was a life New York City bird for me, and as a bonus there were a pair of Snowy Egrets--

Egrets, I've had a few

--first of the year for me, and a very good bird for Inwood Hill.

Since I was there, I decide to look for the Wild Turkey that had been reported recently, and on the way up the hill I met Nadir Sourigi, a really fine birder who leads walks for Audubon and so on, and we went off to look for her and for Cuckoos. No luck on either, but I highly recommend the experience of birding with someone who's massively better than you. Great fun, as well as instructive and informative.

Sunday was a little brisker in Central Park, and a lovely day for birding as well.

Northern Parula

Blue-Headed Vireo

I'll post more soon.

Yet another "Spring is Here" post

So it seems this my my third "Spring is here!" post in a row. Well, what can I say? The first Warblers have arrived!

Pine Warbler, a usual early-spring arrival

I saw my first Pine and Palm Warblers of Spring on Easter morning. The were at the southwest corner of the Great lawn, mostly ignoring the kids playing catch with their dad a few feet away.

Palm Warbler, also a reliable early bird

They did flush into a tree when people strolled by, not noticing them.

There were some Golden-crowned Kinglets there as well, looking very much like animated Easter eggs as they foraged in the grass.

Easter-egg bird

A couple of the Pine Warblers were about the most colorless I've ever seen--very drab even for a fall plumage bird, never mind Spring.

I was hypnotized by their grayness.

I haven't see any Yellow-Rumped warblers yet. Up to a couple of years ago, the Ramble was ankle-deep in them by this time in April. In 2013, there were those terrible Spring storms in the Gulf of Mexico which killed a huge number of early migrants, and the whoel Spring there were string north winds, I think the Yellow-Rumpeds went north inland that year--we hardly saw any in New York. last year they were a little more abundant, but nothing like before.

Anyway, other Spring migrants are arriving apace. The Black-Crowned Night Herons have started coming in; some of them will stay. Here's six of them in two willows--you can play "find the hidden birds".

Landscape with herons

There's been a Common Loon on the Reservoir for about a week, and someone spotted a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher in the North Woods the other day.
Also, a few Winter birds are still around. I went up to Inwood Hill Park last friday to track down a Horned Grebe reported there by Joe DiCostanzo. I hadn't managed to see a Horned Grebe all winter--they're a normal bird in this region, but not so abundant around Manhattan--, so I was glad to catch this one before it left.

at last!

Winter doldrums, interrupted by Canvasbacks

Sorry about the long silence. I've been a bit under the weather. I did manage to get up to Inwood Hill Park on Saturday, looking for some Canvasback ducks reported by Nathan O'Reilly. I found two drakes in a little pond in the ice just off the tip of the promontory that helps form the main cove along Spuyten Duyvil Creek.

They were quite contentedly diving for food and preening between dives.

The creek was solid ice starting just west of the little ice-pond. Out on the ice I saw a Great Black-Backed Gull take a partly-eaten fish away from a juvenile Herring Gull. On the shore, a Double-Crested Cormorant rested.

As I watched, snowflakes began drifting down, and then suddenly it was snowing quite heavily. I decided I wasn't quite up to hiking over the hill to get to the Hudson. Still, it was a nice outing.

American Tree Sparrow, Red-Shouldered Hawk, and a mystery hawk

Sunday, I went to Riverdale to take my aunt out to lunch, and on the way I stopped for an hour's birding in Inwood Hill Park, where I ran into my first American Tree Sparrow of the year.

Tree, Sparrow

All the classic marks: red cap, bicolor bill, breast clear except for one central spot, single bold wingbar (not shown).

On the way home, I went across Central Park. Entering the Ramble, I ran into Adrian Burke, who told me there was a Red-Shouldered Hawk "just west of the Oven". We don't get to see those all that often in the City. At Mugger's Woods in the Ramble, I saw a big lump high in a tree, and it turned out to be this:

rare visitor

...a Red-Shouldered Hawk. He flew off, roughly in the direction of the Oven, and I wound up tracking him through the Ramble.

Red shoulder, see?

Now here's the funny thing. When I got to the Oven, Bruce Yolton was there with his camera set up, its enormous lens trained on a hawk in a tree just west of the Oven--well, a few steps down the path to the Riviera. "What the heck is this bird?" he asked me and another birder.

Mystery hawk

What, indeed? We couldn't quite figure it out. Clearly a Buteo by shape, but that isn't the belly band of a Red-Tail, and that tail is quite long for a Buteo (though too short for an Accipiter), and the banding is faint with thick dark bands, not the many thin bold bands of a juvenile Red-Tailed. 

another view of a mystery

Aside from the shape and tail length, when it flew out, it used not the flap-flap-glide style of an Accipiter but the fast steady strokes of, well, a Red-Shouldered Hawk.

So I think this may be an immature-plumage Red-Shouldered. If I'm right, two Red-Shouldered Hawks in Central Park at once is amazing.

Bald Eagle on ice

I went up to Inwood Hill Park for the first time this year. There was a report of Canvasback ducks yesterday, and it's generally a good place for winter waterfowl--last year I had Long-Tailed Duck, White-Winged Scoter, and Greater Scaup there.

Today, the first thing I saw when I went to the Hudson shore at the end of Dyckman Street was this:

Bald Eagle, chillin' on the Hudson

That's an adult male Bald Eagle standing on an ice floe drifting up the river with the tide, eating a fish. Amazing.

Inwood Hill is actually a pretty good place to spot Bald Eagles, but usually they're soaring over the cliffs in New Jersey, not sitting in the middle of the river.

Presently, some Great Black-backed Gulls started investigating the scene.

the eagle is not too impressed with this punk gull

You'll notice the eagle is not vastly larger than that juvenile-plumage Great Black-Backed; that's why I surmise he's a male. Female eagles are much larger.

The eagle had devoured the whole fish except the head, and decided to leave before the party got rough.

my fish head, understand?

The gulls established some kind of pecking order, and drifted up the river nibbling away at the fish head.

gulls' banquet

I saw nothing else of note, but who needs more?

Dickcissel

On Friday, there was a report of a Dickcissel at Inwood Hill Park, in with a sparrow flock on the soccer field near the cove. Dickcissel is a very good bird for New York--they're a midwestern bird--but I doubted it would still be around on Saturday, and I was frankly feeling a bit lazy, so after brunch I headed off to Central Park instead, Maybe there'd be Bluebirds.

On the bus, I checked the eBird reports, and lo! The Dickcissel had been seen again, a bit before noon, on one of the baseball fields along the Hudson just north of Dyckman street. OK, OK, I know when I'm being told to get moving. I grabbed the C train and was at Inwood Hill by 1:30.

There was a big group of House Sparrows around the southmost fence of the last baseball field. I scanned it over and over. Every few minutes the birds would flush into the nearby trees or from one side of the fence to the other; sometimes because a bicyclist went by, sometimes for no apparent reason, and then they'd come back and I'd start scanning again. I did that for a half-hour, then decided to check out the rest of the river walk and try again afterward. The north end of the walk is a good place to spot raptors over the Bronx (I had a Bald Eagle there once) or over the cliffs in Jersey, or to see unusual seabirds (that's where the Scoters were last winter).

Not much there today. A flock of about 50 Canada Geese were on the field where some soccer goals are set up. I've never seen anyone playing soccer there. A Ring-Billed Gull buzzed them once, just for lulz, and they set up some honking. A Red-Tailed Hawk looking for dinner cruised over Inwood Hill from north to south and on to Fort Tryon Park. A dozen or so Goldfinches moved through the trees along the railroad tracks, and a larger flock of Juncos foraged along the fence by the tracks. I scanned the Juncos. There were a few Chipping Sparrows and a Song Sparrow in with them.

I thought about going back and trying the baseball fields again, when I heard dogs barking from that direction. I could see there were people on the field there. Then groups of House Sparrows arrived from that direction. One stopped by a big maple and commenced foraging on the grass right by the path. So I looked them over. Again very minute or two they'd all move into the bushes or fly over to the trees along the railroad tracks, then quickly return.

To give you an idea of what I was looking at, here's a small part of the House Sparrow flock:

Where's Waldo?

There's a Dickcissel in there. See it?

Once, when the birds flushed, I noticed a couple of birds stayed behind. That was interesting. So I got my binoculars on them, and saw one with a bright yellow breast--score!--and then it flew to join the rest.

Now at least I knew the Dickcissel was there. I caught glimpses of yellow a couple of times, and then she pulled the slow-to-flush business again.

gotcha!

I say "she" because males have a black "V" near the throat, like a tiny Meadowlark. The field guides say the female has a "hint" of yellow on the breast. I'd say this is more than a hint.

Eventually the House Sparrows joined the Juncos by the fence along the railroad tracks. I moved slowly over there. The House Sparrows moved further north, but the Dickcissel stayed behind with the Juncos.

Junco partner

I watched a good long time--House sparrows moving north and south, Juncos flushing to the trees and returning, a Field Sparrow popping up in their midst, and the Dickcissel moving through the flock, sometimes near, sometimes far.

Eventually, with the sun getting low, I headed back toward Dyckman Street. I stopped off at the pier there. There were two Mute Swans in the surf with some Mallards.

surf's up!

A birder came up looking for Bonaparte's Gulls, but headed off to look for the Dickcissel when I told him where I'd seen it. I hope he got it; dusk was coming on pretty fast.

It turns out there were Bluebirds in Central Park. I should have another chance at them, though.

Surprises and diversions

Sunday, Elena and I went up to Riverdale to visit my elderly aunts. The bus was stuck in traffic on the Harlem River Drive near Macomb's Dam Bridge. I was looking out the window up at the clear blue sky, and I spotted a hawk, circling up a thermal on straight wings. Its wings were wide and pointed, and dark-bordered, and the bird was light underneath with a thick black subterminal band on the tail--a Broad-Winged Hawk, my 181st species of the year in New York County.

Coming home, we were intending to take the West Side express bus from Riverdale. We had discussed maybe taking a local bus to go to Inwood Hill Park, but decided that we'd rather walk through Central Park and look for the Pine Siskins peopel were reporting at teh Shakespeare Garden. As we walked to the bus stop, no less than 6 local buses passed us. Then I looked at the MTA's handy bus tracking app. There was no bus within an hour of us. We took the seventh local bus instead. Clearly Something wanted us to check out Inwood Hill.

All the sandpipers and plovers were gone from Muscota Marsh. Song and Swamp sparrows were plentiful in the tall grasses, and a single Great Egret hunted in the outgoing tide.

Over in the big cove were many ducks and geese, and a single Kingfisher.

It was a very pleasant interlude, but I'm still not sure why Something sent us all those buses.

End of summer

I feel there should be some fine Japanese calligraphy on this one

This weekend was the technical end of Summer. Of course, that means that Fall migration is about halfway done already--more for some birds, such as shorebirds.

Despite that, there was a report on Saturday of a very unusual bird for New York, a Pectoral Sandpiper, at Muscota Marsh in Inwood Hill Park. They come through the region on migration in the Fall fairly regularly, but apparently there had never been one in Manhattan before.

Sunday morning, a report from eBird said the bird was still there, so off I went to the very northern edge of Manhattan.

The Pectoral gets its name from the fact that it's upper chest is quite buff. Seriously.

And there it was, hanging out with a couple of dozen Semipalmated Sandpipers. Our hero bird was notably larger and browner. I was very lucky--after I had watched the flock from some distance awhile, they took off---and landed not thirty feet in front of the bench I was sitting on.

Pectoral and Semipalmated Sandpipers synching up

I watched them there for a long time, then went off to see what was doing in the rest of Spuyten Duyvil Creek (answer: not much). When I returned, another birder told me that a Peregrine Falcon had flown in and perched atop a light tower at Baker Field (the Columbia University athletic complex right next to Inwood Hill Park). The sandpipers had mostly flown off, except a few very brave or very foolish Semipalmateds.

The Peregrine eventually gave up, but the Pectoral did not return while I was there. Which doesn't mean it's gone.

dinner is served

Meanwhile, in Central Park this weekend, migration also continued. Scarlet Tanagers, Rose Breasted Grosbeaks, and a good variety of warblers are all around. Oh, and hummingbirds. Did I mention the hummingbirds? They were all over the place.

right now, wherever there's jewelweed, there are hummingbirds

I also had a Red-Breasted Nuthatch at the Pinetum--my first of the year, and I had only one in all of 2013 as well--, a Kingfisher (always charming to see) and various confusing fall warblers. One of the warblers might have been a very dull Bay-Breasted, but most were Pine Warblers, I think.

confused Fall warbler

The Red-Breasted Nuthatch was my 178th species in New York County this year, and the Pectoral Sandpiper was my 179th (and a life bird).