Catching up

Last Sunday (1/17), I went out to Central Park and caught up on a few birds I hadn't seen in Manhattan this year.

The best thing there were two Snow Geese, a very rare sight in Central Park, even as a flyover much less down on the water.

rare visitors

I have heard that they are still there.

Walking around the Reservoir, I saw the Ring-Necked Duck drake that has been wintering there.

I think this is the first photo I've taken where you can see the ring around the neck

The Reservoir gets one or two Ring-Necked drakes every winter. I wonder if the same bird has been returning every year. He was hunting quite successfully, and I spent some time trying to get a good photo of him at the moment of the dive.

dive!

It was a little beyond my skill, and it was quite windy and cold so I gave up after only ten minutes or so. . This is the best one I got.

Also new for the year at the Reservoir was a Pied-Billed Grebe. We generally have two or three hanging around, but I think only one this winter.

Heading toward the Ramble, I found the Orange-Crowned Warbler that was found during the Christmas Count. It looks like it's trying to overwinter here, which is pretty scary.

it's a living

In this photo, you can see it's probing at sapsucker scrapes on the viburnum (I think that's the plant, anyway). The Orange-Crowned has basically been following an overwintering Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker around, poaching insects from its wells and scrapes.

It is still behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, though it has moved to the area right up against the East Drive between the Transverse and Greywacke Arch

the hawk gaze

In the Ramble itself, I found this juvenile Accipiter, which I think is a Sharp-Shinned Hawk.

tail looks pretty square to me

On my way out, I was startled by a flash of white wings darting into a mixed flock of sparrows. It turned out to be this partially-leucistic House sparrow. I think a couple of people have remarked on this bird recently.

white wings

It's interesting--the white doesn't look that extensive when the bird is at rest, but in flight it was really startling.

One thing I didn't see that day was the Great Horned Owl which was present from late October to early January, and then disappeared once all the leaves droppped from its favorite roosting tree. It's apparently back! I've seen several reports of it this past week, in the same now-bare tree near the feeder area in the Ramble. I guess it missed the attention.

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.