November rarities

In November the rare birds come. Hatch-year birds who've never migrated before, birds blown by storms, birds whose sense of direction has gone off--all sorts of birds can show up anywhere.

There was a Corn Crake on Long Island. I missed that--no transport--and the poor bird got hit by a car a couple of days after its discovery. That's a ridiculously rare vagrant from Europe, only a few North American records in the last century. Excellent young birder Ryan Zucker wrote a very nice blog post about the Crake twitch.

Closer to home, we had a different skulky bird of the reeds up in the Loch section of Central Park, a Virginia Rail . This wasn't off-course so much, but unusually easy to see, foraging in the leaves just off a popular path.

I got to see an interesting bit of behavior--a Blue Jay who had been hanging around suddenly flew up to the top of a small tree and started alarming, and the rail ran for cover, closing the 15 feet or so to a large log in about a second and crouching underneath until the danger had passed, or at least until the Jay quieted down.

in this and the next picture, look at the feet.

seriously, aren't they amazing?

The Rail might have been released in the park by the Wild Bird Find after a rehab stint.

This is just a ridiculously close look at a Rail. That never happens.

Down in the Ramble, an apparent Hammond's Flycatcher has been around for almost two weeks now. Hammond's is a western Empidonax flycatcher, and empids are notoriously hard to identify, but this bird's small bill, teardrop eyering, long tail, and long "primary projection" (which makes the wings look sword-shaped) are pretty strong evidence, and people have heard it call (which is usually the best way to identify Empidonaxes), so everyone seems happy with the ID.

I had an unsatisfactory look at it when it first showed up, and then for some days the bird was seen before and after I left the park, but then first I had a decent look late one afternoon, and then a couple of days later I came upon a couple of people looking at it at perched over a small stream the Gill)...

..and then it flew right in and showed off on a fence six feet from me. I've never had such a good look at any empid before.

As of today (Friday 12/8), the bird is apparently still present. It goes all over the Ramble, so it might take some searching unless you see a crowd of people staring into the trees.

That same day I saw two other nice birds. While entering the park I stopped to watch a biggish flock of Common Grackles on Cedar Hill, maybe 150 or 200 birds. They weren't two nervous and I was able to walk pretty close as the foraged and fussed, and then I spotted a slightly larger and browner bird in with them.

A Boat-Tailed Grackle! Very unusual for Manhattan, though there's a breeding colony at Jamaica Bay in the summer. I think this is the same bird that was spotted by Anders Peltomaa a week or so before. It's been seen almost daily since; opinions are divided as to whether it's a female or a hatch-year male.

hey there, long legs

It was interesting to watch this bird interact with the Common Grackles. Aside from being a bit bigger, it had much longer legs, and when it felt crowded, it would rise up on them and kind of lean on the neighbors a little until they backed off.

After seeing the Grackle and then the nice view of the Hammond's, I wandered around the Ramble for a while, and came upon a Pine Siskin in a holly tree.

Pine Siskin (OK, next to the Holly)

Pine Siskins are a decently unusual bird here, although some winters we see a number of them as they wander the region looking for good crops of pine cones to eat. This was the first I'd seen this year.

Swainson's Warbler!

Thursday morning, I checked Twitter while finishing breakfast. What? Don't look at me like that. It's Spring Migration, and some people are out birding at six in the morning. And some of them will let the world know what they're seeing.

This morning, Alice Deutsch was one of them: "#birdcp swainsons warbler imagine mosaic". It was 7:22 AM.

Well, that was interesting. Swainson's Warbler? Do they even come this far north?

Another birder quickly replied, "Swainson's WHAT? Confirm, please."

"confirming and it's singing"

I tossed the cereal bowl in the sink, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door. Outside, I did something I've never done before: hailed a taxi to take me to a bird sighting. God, I love New York. "72nd and Central Park West", I told the driver. The Imagine mosaic is there, at Strawberry Fields. I resisted the urge to add, "and step on it!"

Traffic was maddening, but I was on the scene by ten to eight. There were twenty or so birders on the park drive, staring into the low bushes separating the road from the pedestrian path. Some were lying on the ground for a better view. (The New York Post story about the bird has a nice photo of the scene.) I got down with them. The bird was singing in the bush--a ringing, jazzy little phrase of six or seven notes, reminiscent of a Fox Sparrow's song. After a few minutes, I saw something walking around down there (Swainson's are walkers), and that got me on the bird.

Over the next forty minuets or so, the bird moved around quite a bit, all under the bushes, all in an area of perhaps 15 feet long by 5 feet wide. The growing crowd followed him around. Every few minutes he sang. He came out into a relatively clear area once or twice, and then there was a flurry of clicking from the bird paparazzi. Eventually, I headed off to work--I wasn't even late. Much.

I kept seeing online report about the bird all day. he just stayed in the same little area. It is estimated that over two hundred people saw him, all in all.

Why all the fuss? Well, it's like this: Swainson's Warbler doesn't really belong this far north,and isn't very common even in its normal range. They breed in the southeast, mostly no further north than South Carolina, except for a population that breeds in the Appalachians as far north as West Virginia. We get one in this part of the country only when it overshoots by a considerable distance during its northern migration, which happens...rarely. Deb Allen did some research and apparently this is the first sighting in Central Park since May of 2000, and the fifth since 1973.

I saw some posts that implied that people were getting into fights while jockeying for position. I am sorry to have to remind you all, there are rules. You are required to maintain an icy civility until your seconds make the arrangements. Brawling in the street is simply infra dig. Tsk.

Anyway, if you're in New York and didn't see the bird, it might still be there Friday. It was still around in the late afternoon, and the weather overnight might not be conducive to it flying...wherever it's going next. What do migratory overshoots do, anyway? Do they figure out they're too far north and go back? Do they wander around until it's time to migrate south again? Anyone know?