Invasion of the Timberdoodles!

enjoying the stream in the morning light

The day after the big March storm, people noticed a huge fallout of American Woodcock (fondly called "Timberdoodles") in the city. (A "fallout" is when a lot of migrants descend on a place all of a sudden; usually because they;re forced by the weather.) The first #birdcp tweets came from the north end of Central Park, the Loch and Ravine area. Four woodcock...no, six woodcocks, um eight, no, make that twelve... Then the first report from the Ramble, two in the stream on the Point.

So I slogged into the Ramble on the way home from work. Didn't find the ones on the Point, but there were four down in the Oven in the fading light, and then two more in a stream between there and Azalea Pond.

had to share the stream with bathing Grackles, though.  noisy neighbors!

I went back in the morning. Much better light, and even more Timberdoodles. Still two in that stream, and then:

pile o' timberdoodles

A whole pile of them in the Oven. I counted and watched, and then this little scene played out:

into this peaceful scene...	...came a chilly interloper from under the bank!
who waddled over to the pileup...	...and pushed himself into the middle.

So that was six in the Oven before I left for work. Meanwhile, Anders Peltomaa saw nine at the Triplets Bridge, and a Wilson's Snipe. And then the reports really got going. Tom Fiore estimated that there were at least a hundred Woodcock reported in Manhattan, and many more in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

Some of these birds were in trouble. Woodcocks have a tendency to fly into building. This is a problem for many birds, but Timberdoodles especially because they don't see directly in front of them very well. Their eyes are way high and towards the back of their head, which is great for scanning for predators, but not so great for flying. According to a New York Times story, the Wild Bird Fund (local wildlife rehabilitators; great people, you should send them money) had 55 Woodcocks brought to them.

Others fared even worse. Woodcocks, as I said, have their eyes placed so they can scan for predators. They need this because they are slow and tasty, and even with the nearly 360-degree vision, they rely heavily on their excellent camouflage. When they're on a forest floor covered in leaves or pine needles, they pretty much disappear. But when thy're on snow, or the bare muddy banks of a stream...well, that's a problem. Birders watched Timerdoodles get snatched up by hawks all day long. Probably at least 50 in Central Park alone; I heard from one birder that he watched a single young Red-Tailed Hawk eat three in close succession. It was a raptor buffet.

Wilson's Snipe!

So when I finally made it to Triplets Bridge, only three of the nine woodcock Anders had seen in the mrning were still there. But the Wilson's Snipe abided, foraging peacefully in the stream.

ruffled

At one point he ruffled himself up and preened a bit. I've never had such a good close view of a Snipe before.

survivor

The remaining timberdoodles were ware buy still active. One came out and walked across the stream near the Snipe, giving me a chance to see both of these similar birds together.

comparison

The Wilson's Snipe by itself gives the impression of being a largish bird. It is not. It was much smaller then the Woodcock, which is itself not huge, being rather smaller than a football.

in the hollow

That woodcock eventually nestled itself in a hollow, where it foraged.

more Snipe

Many of the surviving Timberdoodles flew out that night, but some remained in diminishing numbers. I saw one as late as Sunday in the Ramble. They should be close to finishing up migration at this point, though I know that Gabriel Willow is leading a group to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn on Saturday to see their spectacular mating flights.

Snipe success!

Elena and I were having breakfast and deciding where to go today. We had settled on the Ramble, to look for a Bluebird reported there a couple of hours earlier. I checked the NYNYBirds texts web page on my phone, and saw a very recent report from Karen Fung:

W Snipe in the Loch, found by John Wittenberg

I showed the phone to Elena. "Snipe hunt?" I asked.

She considered briefly. "Snipe hunt!" And so off we went to the North End.

It turned out to be easy. We got to the Loch, and found a group of birders. They described where it was hiding in plain sight near a log across the stream. It took some scanning, but I eventually recognized its stripy back, and then it turned its head and the beady eye came into view.

Then it was just a matter of waiting for it to decide to move out into the (relative) open for a photo opportunity. After a few minutes, a Robin walked close by and it moved out and started to forage.

Sweet mystery of Snipe, at last I've found you!

It was interesting to watch the bird moving forward in a crouch, occasionally pausing and probing the mud deeply with its long beak. The probing movement was very smooth and deliberate; a Woodcock probing into leaves is a bit jerky by comparison, for instance. The Snipe is a life bird for me, my 198th species in New York County (and 99th of the year).

We also got an added bonus, a Blue-Headed Vireo, also a first=of-year bird.

Number 100!

We made our way back to the Ramble to look for the Bluebird. No luck, but there were compensations, such as this very cooperative Palm Warbler at Tupelo meadow.

Almost within reach

In all, a beautiful day for birding.

Snipe hunt

When you set someone an impossible or fictional task as a prank, that's called a Snipe hunt. There's a reason for that.

At breakfast, I check several web pages--eBird rare birds and "year needs" lists, the NYSBirds-L mailing list, the NYNYBirds text alert page--to see if anything interesting has been seen. Thursday morning, there was a report of a Wilson's Snipe seen about 7am on the Point, a little peninsula in Central Park Lake that gets interesting shorebirds and warblers. Wilson's Snipe is a good bird for New York, and would be a life bird for me, so you can probably guess where I went.

I got into the park a little after 9am, and found other Snipe-obsessed birders. The story was, the bird had been seen and photographed on the east side of the Point, along with a Louisiana Waterthrush, and then both were accidentally flushed by park workers doing maintenance and trash removal. The Snipe flew around the Point and was lost to sight.

The obvious place for such a bird to hide is the Oven, a marshy area at the base of the western side of the Point. You can't (or at least shouldn't) climb down into the Oven, but a number of sharp-eyed people scanned the area from the land above it, and saw nothing. Where had the Snipe gone?

I walked all around the Lake shore. There's some decent places for a shorebird--not as good as the Point or the Oven, but possible--but neither I nor anyone else who explored the area over the course of the day saw anything Snipe-like.

I did see a nice first-of-year bird, a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher feasting in the Cornelian Dogwoods on the western shore. They were just now bursting with little yellow flowers that attracted a lot of insects. The Gnatcatcher is a tiny, fast moving bird, very hard to photograph.

My consolation prize for the Snipe hunt

Eventually I returned to the Oven and the Point. I watched a park worker go down into the oven. He seemed to doing something with a shrub. After a while, a Louisiana Waterthrush flushed--flew out of the Oven a bit down the Lake shore. I watched another twenty minutes as the man completed his work, but no Snipe followed the Waterthrush out.

I went and had a late lunch, and then did another circuit of the Lake. The Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher was still hard at work on in the dogwoods. I finally quit the Snipe hunt just after 5pm.

When I got home, I saw reports that the Snipe had been seen under a willow on the Point, and then in the Oven. Yeah, sure. I wasn't falling for that again.