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.

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