More street birding

I work across the street from St Bartholomew's Church, which is in midtown Manhattan on Park Avenue. It has a tiny garden which attracts a number of migrants (and which I've written about once before). Recently I saw a couple of new species in the park--rather late in the afternoon both times, so I didn't get any usable photos; I;m going to use that as an excuse to post some old ones.

I saw a dark shape walking by the wall of the church. It was too large for an Ovenbird (which I've seen there once or twice this Fall), but I couldn't imagine a pigeon skulking in the shrubs like that. I went around to the church steps, where you can look down into the garden, and found a Woodcock sitting under an evergreen shrub.

It was an interesting vantage point. The bird was facing straight away from me--I was behind and above it, but it's eyes are so placed that it was staring right up at me. It's a startling thing to see up close. They really do have eyes in the back of their head.

There were a pair of Gray Catbirds in the garden for a while. Last year, one catbird overwintered. However a couple of weeks back, I spotted a Brown Thrasher in the garden at dusk, and both it and the catbirds seemed agitated--the Thrasher was flitting in and out of the shrubs, and the catbirds were sitting in the tree above them and calling loudly. The next day, they had all gone. It's a mystery.

The Out-of-Towners

Cattle Egret on the prowl

It's migration season! And of course New York City is getting pretty much every type of warbler found in the northeast, just like every Spring. Enjoy them while you can!

But we're also seeing some very unusual visitors. At the top of this post, we have a Cattle Egret--I think the first every seen in Manhattan--who has been hanging around at the Penn South co-op, around 28th Street between 8th and 9th Avenue in Manhattan.

Rare bird and common passers-by

Cattle Egrets are originally an African bird, showed up in South America in the 1950s, and have been steadily extending their range over the last few decades. They're quite common now in the southern US--basically a roadside bird in Florida, for example.

on the move

However, it's rare up north. I believe one shows up at Jamaica Bay or Jones Beach once in a while, but that's all. It's in good breeding plumage--the off-white crown and back feathers--but I don't think it's going to find a mate up here.

Not much of an environment--but enough

The area you see the Cattle Egret in here is (so I understand) having some construction work done on it, but the bird is still around a little farther south, still on the grounds of Penn South. Worth a visit if you're in Manhattan. Keep an eye out for other birds when you're there--there were some warblers about when I visited.

Wild Turkey, Central Park

A Wild Turkey showed up in the North Woods of Central Park a couple of weeks ago. Turkeys are not unknown in the City. I'm told there are some in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, and even in Manhattan there are reports occasionally from Inwood Hill. And of course there was Zelda the Battery Park turkey, killed by a car a couple of years back after a long life there. Still, they're pretty rare here.

official vehicle, unofficial bird

I was emerging from the Ramble after an afternoon's birding, and I saw David Barrett looking at something at the edge of the Ramble Maintenance parking area. Surprise! The North Woods turkey had been one the move. We watched the bird scratching through leaves and pecking at the grass for a while, until some idiot chased it across the lawn and it flew up a tree.

I think I'll just stay up here. To heck with you people.

The turkey continued moving south through the park the next day, and wound up at the lawns around Seventh Avenue and 59th Street. I think it's still there--it seems to be smart enough to avoid traffic and dogs.

Least but not last

On Sunday, a Least Bittern was spotted perched high up in a tree over the Gill in the Ramble in Central Park. This small egret is very unusual in this area. I asked long-time bird photographer Peter Post if there had ever been one in Central Park before. He said he had seen one--sixty years ago!

Least Bittern, lurking

There appears to have been one since then, seen by legendary bird guide Starr Sapphire in 1989. But anyway, wow.

Up a tree, by the way, is not where you'd expect to find such a bird. It would like t be down in the tall reeds at the edge of a pond or stream with some tasty fish in it. Alas, reeds are in short supply in Central Park these days. I suspect the bird was waiting for dusk--if all the large mammals would just go away, it would chance a fishing expedition at Azalea Pond.

Anyway, you never know what might turn up in Manhattan.

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.

Couch's Kingbird, Abingdon Square

the hero of the hour

Well, the first thing Christmas weekend brought me was a head cold. After spending Christmas Day in bed, I struggled in to work on Friday morning--and then struggled right back out on Friday afternoon to chase the reported Couch's Kingbird in Greenwich Village. Luckily I have an understanding boss.

Couch's Kingbird is a Central and South American bird, with a range extending into southern Texas and no reported sightings in New York before now. But apparently one has been hanging around a vest-pocket park at Jane and Washington Streets for six weeks or so--and nobody reported it until Christmas Day, when Zack Winestine, who found the bird, told Gabriel Willow, who posted it that night on the NYSBIRDS-L mailing list, and the next morning it was off to the races.

I got down to Jane Street about 2 PM. A knot of birders was on the corner opposite the little park. Ken Gayle had just seen the bird, but it had flown. I walked around the block and then into the park, thinking about where I would be if I were a flycatcher.

The answer came when I rejoined the other birders, who had just gotten a call that the bird had been sighted at Bleeker and Hudson, and off we went.

that first glimpse!

There we found sixty-plus birders, and one bird.

the bird paparazzi

A lot of passers-by were curious about what was going on. Everyone was happy to explain about the bird, the first state record, and all that. "And this is what always happens when there's a first sighting of a bird in the state," I told them, "the bird paparazzi all come out."

or maybe "birderazzi?"

So, Couch's can only be distinguished from a Tropical Kingbird -- a more numerous species with more vagrant records -- by voice, and this one wasn't calling. It's possible I heard it call once--when a kestrel flew overhead calling, and wouldn't that have been a bad scene--a sharp kip! Maybe.

ready for action

Luckily it had been calling that morning and was heard and recorded by people who could positively ID it.

Eventually I headed back to work, checking on the Ovenbird still present in Bryant Park and making it back to the office inside the two hours I had told the boss I'd need. Urban birding, there's nothing like it.

you made it to the end, so you get one more pic of the pretty bird

Welcome to the working week

excitable boy, they all said

It's Kinglet season! Walking through the Ramble, you'll see dozens of them. There are also sparrows coming through, like this juvenile White-crowned Sparrow.

the young and the restless

We're also seeing a lot of Winter Wrens. I saw a half-dozen in a half-hour walk one day. I don't remember seeing such concentrations before.

winter is coming

There are migrants on the streets of the city as well. Last Monday morning as I hurried in to work, this Common Yellowthroat popped out of a tree pit on 40th Street near Park Avenue.

tourist

Raptor migration is in full swing, too; Monday ended with a Peregrine Falcon followed by a Bald Eagle soaring over Grand Central Station heading south-southeast.

Meanwhile life for the city residents continues apace. We can all enjoy the landscaping around the main branch of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue:

getting a street snack on Fifth Avenue

By the way, the reports from Randall's Island the last couple of days are amazing--Nelson's, Saltmarsh, Vesper, Eastern Meadowlark. If you have time to go there, it sounds wonderful.

Watching you like a hawk

Pale Male on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bird and Moon

Pale Male perched over Fifth Avenue and 79th Street

I wasn't in Central park very long this afternoon; still weary from a trek to the Bronx the previous day, I made a brief trip through the Ramble, and then headed out via Cedar Hill. There I met Karen Fung, who told me that Pale Male was perched on an antenna atop the building at Fifth Avenue and 79th Street.


When I got him in sight, I realized that the rising moon was visible in the late afternoon sky, and I found an angle where bird and moon were well-framed. And of course I thought about Rosemary Mosco's excellent nature comics, Bird and Moon.

In with the new

We were out until 4 AM on New Year's Eve, but I still made it to the Park by 9:15. The continuing Ring-Necked drake was almost the first bird I saw when I got to the Reservoir.



I circled the reservoir and then headed down the west side of the park to the Reservoir. Across the street from Summit Rock, an American Kestrel surveyed the world from a balcony.



In the Ramble, A young Red-Tailed Hawk flew in and perched only a few feet from me.



Later, I saw a young Sharp-Shinned Hawk attacking squirrels. I think this was the same hawk I watched making passes at the ducks on Turtle Pond a few days ago. It's not having much luck.



Other park birding news: the Baltimore Orioles continue around Evodia. There's supposed to be a Winter Wren along the Gill between Azalea Pond and Laupot Bridge, but I didn't see it. Now you know as much as I do.



I ended 2013 with 176 species in New York County and 179 overall. That's counting the European Goldfinch, the Budgie, and the Yellow-Fronted Canary. So, really, three less without the escapees; though I'm inclined to count the Goldfinch, who was flocking with finches. I don't expect to get anything close to that in 2014, but I do start the year with 36 species, only two less than last January 1.