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.

The Jazz Singer

Here's the jazzy Orchard Oriole from Inwood Hill that I mentioned in an earlier post. Very cheerful.

I'm still sorting out video editing software. I wonder if there's any way to make a video less shaky after the fact. I'm not going to haul a tripod all over creation.

No owls for me!

So I'm really bad at spotting owls. I spent several hours in Inwood Hill Park again yesterday, and again failed to see the Eastern Screech Owls being reported there. There's supposed to be five or six of them, sometimes roosting on the same branch. They're pretty small owls, but that shouldn't be so hard to spot.

But not for me. It wasn't a total loss, though. I didn't see any new birds, but when I went down the hill to the shore of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, the tide was out, and a Great Egret was browsing the bleak mudflat.

As I relaxed on a bench listening to the Song Sparrows, a female Red-Winged Blackbird popped up for a minute.

And in one tree I heard first a Warbling Vireo, and then an Orchard Oriole singing a quite jazzily syncopated song.

If I ever figure out how to edit video from my camera, I might post a little clip of this guy. Outstanding singer, well worth the trip.