Avoidance tactics

here's looking at you, kid

So I guess I'll just go on blogging about birds as if nothing's happened.

Speaking of avoidance mechanisms, I made my usual trek up to Randall's Island on the day of the NY Marathon. I live east of First Avenue, so if I don't get out of the area before 8:30am on Marathon Sunday, I'm pretty much stuck there until late afternoon unless I walk a couple of miles each way to get in and out of the area.

Song Sparrow watches out

The north end of the island was pretty quiet. The first few Brants have arrived for the winter, and there were a lot of Song Sparrows and Savannah Sparrows. The Song Sparrows were pretty cooperatve.

landscape with Savannah Sparrow

I followed a group of Savannah Sparrows north along the eastern shore. They were a bit less approachable than the Songs.

inclined to fly

I did get a couple of decent photos of them anyway. The usual gulls were around. Mostly Ring-Billeds and mostly distant, but there was a Herring Gull on the rocks on the shore.

curious Herring Gull

There were a few Laughing Gulls in their winter plumage. I don't recall seeing many in the county so late in the year before, though eBird didn't blink at them. I didn't succeed in turning any of them into more unusual species.

who's laughing now?

The little freshwater wetlands across Central Road from Icahn Stadium was also quiet. There were a couple of late migrants: a Black-Throated Blue Warbler skulking around the underbrush, and a Monarch Butterfly in the flower garden just south of the marsh.

Monarch of all et cetera

It looks like they're putting in another water feature in the wetlands area, and also they seem to have completed a bike/pedestrian path just east of the marsh, right outside the wastewater treatment plant. I look forward to seeing what's up back there on a later visit.

Not much was doing at the Little Hell Gate saltmarsh: a few Mallards and one Black Duck, a few sparrows, and along the southern path, several Golden-Crowned Kinglets very active in a tree.

ready for takeoff

In the next tree sat a single tired-looking Ruby Crowned Kinglet.

contemplative Kinglet

Along the River's Edge Garden )between Little Hell Gate and the Ward's Island pedestrian bridge) there were a few more Savannah Sparrows, and one Black Capped Chickadee who scolded me vigorously while feeding.

hungry but talkative

The Marathon was still going when I got back to First Avenue. Up in that area, the crowd was much thinner than in my neighborhood, but there were some spectators.

watching the race

Midtown birding

Until the end of October, when my job moved, I worked at 45th Street and Sixth Avenue. Across the street is a pedestrian plaza--a fountain, some cafe tables, a few trees--that I hadn't really paid much attention to in the Spring and Summer. But in September and October it was surprisingly birdy.

Several Common Yellowthroats passed through, and a Brown Thrasher stayed for a considerable time, only disappearing a few days before I did.

The photo above is a looking out of the plaza onto 46th Street. I don't have a good photo of the plaza's glory, which is a circle of five Dawn Redwoods. The history of the plaza is kind of interesting; here's an old New York Times article about the plaza.

The neighboring building was the headquarters of International Paper, whose symbol is a redwood tree. The redwoods can stand there because that part of the park was occupied by a building whose owner didn't sell out for years, so there isn't any building space below teh tree circle, so it can accommodate the tree's huge root balls.

One of the first interesting birds I noticed there was this Ovenbird, the only warbler besides The Yellowthroats I saw there. The Ovenbird moved on fairly quickly, which is good. Every year, one or two Ovenbirds try to overwinter a few blocks away in Bryant Park. They never make it.

This Flicker showed upo one afternoon, farging furiously on the ground behind the benches, just a few feet away from peopel chattingon cellphones and drinking coffee. It wasn't there the next day. A Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker showed up one in a while. That one might be trying to stay the winter.

A number of other migrants came through -- sparrows and Towhees and Catbirds and Hermit Thrushes. Some of them occasionally do manage to survive a winter in the city, but usually in Central Park.

The best bird I saw in the plaza was a Woodcock, who foraged fairly happily in the redwood circle, but flew out in the mid-afternoon. I think he found the street noise a bit much.

Of course, the little park also had the usual New York street birds--House and White-Throated Sparrows, Starlings, and pigeons. Here's a couple of pigeons who were getting affectionate my on my last day there.

My new work neighborhood is less interesting, but I'll have something to say about it eventually. really, there are birds almost anywhere if you look.

Margaret Morse Nice, The Watcher at the Nest

Song Sparrow, Bryant Park

Every year, we go to a speculative literature convention near Boston called Readercon, driven up by friends who are also birders. This year's Readercon was last weekend, and as always we got a little birdwatching in on the trip, and I'll have a post about that soon. But while at the con, we went to dinner at a little Korean BBQ place, next door to which is a used book superstore called Used Book Superstore. Well, of course we went there. What do you take us for?

So I picked up a battered copy of a little book called The Watcher at the Nest, which would be a good title for a horror novel but is actually about Song Sparrows. The author, Margaret Morse Nice, pioneered life-history studies of birds in an era that was mostly concerned with finding and cataloging species. The Wilson Ornithological Society gives an award in her honor.

This very charming book is an account of her observations of the Song Sparrows who nested near her home in Columbus, Ohio during the eight years she lived there. Here's her description of the life of a male Song Sparrow dealing with the stress of nesting season with one brood just fledged and a nest full of eggs for the second batch:

Life for the Song Sparrow husband and father in the midst of the nesting season is a complicated affair at best; he has an incubating wife to protect, troublesome neighbors to watch, a brood of young hopefuls to feed, and his own living to get, not to mention keeping himself and his family out of the clutches of prowling enemies. The reason that he can successfully cope with such a multiplicity of details is that he does one thing at a time with all his might, and in the next minute, perhaps, turns his whole attention to something else.

That's an approach worth considering for all of us.

Nice's work in Columbus resulted in an immense two-volume study Studies in the life history of the Song Sparrow. I need to read that, I think; also her biography Research is a passion with me.

Nice called the area "Interpont" because it was between two bridges, and thanks to an excellent post at a blog called Bee's First Appearance, I found the location on Google Maps and then found an eBird hotspot for Tuttle Park, which is basically exactly the area she explored.

It's pretty decently birdy there, still. On an image search it seems a bit more manicured than Margaret Morse Nice would have liked:

Weeds were one of the glories of Interpont--the giant ragweeds that towered above one's head, the thistles that offered snug homes to Goldfinches, the incredible cow parsnips in May, the asters and goldenrods that wove bright patterns along the ditches. Despised by many, weeds are in reality an important element in our landscape, holding the precious soil, providing nesting places for many birds, extending hospitality to migrating hosts of native sparrows that find upon them a harvest of insects, and finally affording food and shelter to those hardy birds that brave the northern winter, Let us therefore leave weeds and shrubs and tangled vines wherever we can along roadsides and fence rows, for where such things are, there will birds be also.

Preach it!

Miscellany

Dragon

Here's a few photos from my Sunday jaunts in the parks. The Red-Breasted Merganser above was preening in the river, and I caught her at a good angle.

listen to the Mockingbird

This Mockingbird--one of a half-dozen I saw on the river walk north of Dyckman Street--was giving a rusty little call in a bush by the river, and a Song Sparrow sang in a tree nearby.

singing out

The last two photos didn't quite fit in earlier posts. The Common Redpoll--who is still in Central Park at the Evodia feeders--gets along OK with the Goldfinches.

best buddies

The Chipping Sparrow is still around as well.

Chipping Sparrow and fungus

Prattsville, conclusion

Ruby-Throated resting by the roadside

Sunday morning in Prattsville, my host and I took a long walk down a road toward Schoharie Creek, and on a gravel path branching off from that. Unfortunately, neither road came very close to the creek itself, but there was a fairly good variety of birds, like the male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird above and this American Redstart.

Redstart rockin' in the branches

There were interesting sights that weren't birds, as well.

why did the newt cross the road?

That's an Eastern (Red-Spotted) Newt who crossed the road in front of us, and on our return a butterfly settled down on the driveway

goodness gracious, Great Spangled Fritillary

I know little about butterflies, but I think this is a Great Spangled Fritillary.

Back in the meadow next to the house, the birds continued singing all day long, but mostly stayed out of sight. The Song Sparrows were the most visible.

sing! sing! sing!

The Common Yellowthroats and the Chipping Sparrows sang constantly, but I only had glimpses of them. This is the closest photo I had of either species:

Chipping Sparrow, momentarily out in the open

Other birds were in the vicinity as well--we had a glimpse of a Black-Billed Cuckoo and heard a Yellow-Billed Cuckoo sing several times. I never heard a Purple Finch singing, but they must be nesting nearby since I saw a small group of females.  This one stopped on a low branch for a minute until the others caught up; then they all flew away.

leading the way

Start of summer birding

Spring migration is over, and attention turns to unusual nesters and the occasional accidental sighting.

I went up to Inwood Hill Park Tuesday, following a report of Eastern Screech Owls (maybe transients, maybe taking up residence). I didn't find them, but I eventually made my way to Hudson River promenade, where there were quite a number of Mockingbirds and Song Sparrows.

Song Sparrow, singing

In between looking at them, I scanned the water--there was a goose family swimming across the river--and the Jersey cliffs. I caught sight of a tiny bright flash of white, and in my binoculars I saw a bird with a white head and tail, and an all-dark body and very long, all-dark wings. It could be nothing else but a Bald Eagle--as Peterson says, the bird is "all field mark".

I watched the eagle climb a thermal, high and higher, then glide north on flat wings and disappear in the haze. There were a couple of nesting pairs on the Palisades last year, perhaps this was one of them. It would certainly be very late for a migrating eagle.

No photo, alas. I could not get my camera to focus on such a small moving target so far away. I think it would have been about 20 pixels long even if I had snapped it.

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The next day, I went out to Governor's Island to look at the nesting colony of Common Terns. I really don'r recommend going there on a weekday. Many of the areas listed as being open to the public are in fact blocked by construction, including a lot of the shore. Yankee Pier, where the most accessible nesting colony is, is a ferry terminal on weekends, but during the week it is padlocked lest someone steal it. You can only get a distant view of the terns from the shore.

red-billed agents of the Common Tern

I did get a nice sculptural shot of some nearby cormorants resting.

sculptural seabirds

There were a lot of crows around. Some were silent, some cawed like American Crows, but several gave the distinctive nasal double call of the Fish Crow. (How do you tell a Fish Crow? Ask a crow it's an American Crow, and a Fish Crow will say "Nunh-unh! Nunh-unh!")

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The Ruby-Throated Hummingbird is still on her nest at the Upper Lobe of Central Park Lake. The nest is now festooned with lichen, just like it says in the books.

hummingbird home decoration

The surrounding area is festooned with birders and photographers.

People are saying this is the first recorded hummingbird nest in Central Park. I don't know how it works with hummingbirds--if she has already laid the eggs, or if she is ready to lay but can hold them until the nest is ready, or if she's actually still in need of a male. In that last case, this may not turn out well--it's kind of late for hummingbirds to come through.

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I'm finding it as hard to write about identifying Empidonax flycatchers as it is ti identify them in the first place, so that post may be a while. For now, let me just count up: I had Acadian, Yellow-Bellied, and Alder flycatchers (in addition to Least), which got me to 164 species. The Bald Eagle, Common Tern, and Fish Crow make it 167 in the county. Last year, I got my 167th species in November (and was at 145 on this date), so it continues to be a busy year.

Inwood Hill Park

I went up to Inwood Hill Park for the first time today. There have been reports for a week or so of White-Winged Scoter in Spuyten Duyvil creek and in the Hudson River nearby, and I figured I'd check it out.

It's not hard to get to. I took the #1 train to 215th street and walked up to Columbia's Baker Field athletic complex at 218th and Broadway, then up 218th a couple of block to the park.

There are a pair of coves just inside the park there, mostly full of gulls. Song Sparrows were singing along the shore. About halfway along the second cove, I spotted some dark spots out in the mouth of the cove, a little too far for my binoculars or camera to resolve. I backtracked to a point of land on the east point of the cove and saw they were a male Hooded Merganser and three female Greater Scaup (first of year for me). The Merganser was on patrol while the Scaup were mostly asleep.

Moving back down the cove, I ran into a gentleman who pointed out a Red-Tailed Hawk nest high in a tree over the nearby soccer field. he also told me how best to get to the part of Spuyten Duyvil creek west of the bridge (where some of the Scoter reports were from), and down to the Hudson. Turns out there's a path along the lower part of the big hill that makes up most of the park.

There was nothing in the creek between the auto bridge and the Amtrak bridge. I followed the path a half-mile south to an overpass over the train line and then down to the Hudson. I headed back north along the river walk to the end, and watched the river for a half-hour, but no birds appeared on the water.

I decided to backtrack to the coves to see if the Scaup might have woken up enough for a good photo, so back down the river walk, over the overpass, north along the path. I kept scanning the river; hope springs eternal.

Suddenly, dark dots on the water.

Could those be...Scoters?

They sure looked like Scoters when I zoomed in on the photo, drifting down the river. So it was back down the path, over the overpass, up the river walk... by the time I got there, the Scoters were well past the end of the walk, which was probably the closest they got to shore. But they were still close enough for a decent photo.

You can clearly see the "swoosh" mark on the faces of two of the males.

The Scoters' behavior was interesting. They were drifting backwards down the river, facing north. They'd dip their bills into the oncoming waves and occasionally dive into the current.

I watched them for a few minutes, and then they decided to fly north, well past Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and start over. The white patches on their wings were very evident as they flew. I elected to head south down the river walk, heading for the Dyckman Street exit at the south end of the park.

I was counting Song Sparrows when a huge white bird flew past me on the river, perhaps 60-80 feet offshore.

That's a Whistling Swan (Tundra Swan, they're calling it these days). For once my camera managed to focus quickly on a flying bird. Not the best picture, but you can see the essential features--all-while wings, dark legs and bill, long neck.

An excellent adventure. Greater Scaup, White-Winged Scoter, Whistling Swan bring me to 78 species in New York County this year. When I left the park, I saw a Kestrel chase a Red-Tailed Hawk high over Dyckman Street. That was the cherry on top.