The WETA Clan

The morning of the day before Thanksgiving, someone walking through City Hall Park heard an odd birdcall, and looked around to find a Western Tanager up in the trees. The Western Tanager (referred to in a lot of tweets and other online reports by its bird banding code, WETA) is not normally found east of Colorado; the last time one was seen in Manhattan was in the spring of 2008.

Western Tanager (WETA), looking down...

Word got out by early Wednesday afternoon, and, well, you know what happened next.

...at the WETA Clan birders looking up

OK, so, the crowd was smaller when I was looking for it after work on Wednesday. I failed, as did everyone else that afternoon as far as I know. On Thanksgiving Day itself, however, a steady stream of birders succeeded. I don't know how their families felt about it, but after all, the day is all about the bird.

Friday morning, I emerged from the subway at 8:10 in the morning and immediately spotted a fellow with binoculars outside the park. He put me on the bird and...well, about the easiest twitch I ever had.

too busy to pose!

More birders showed up shortly after. The Tanager was quite active and occasionally calling, but the light was horrid and the bird very hard to photograph.

Saturday, Elena came downtown with me, and we had views in somewhat better light. Still hard to get a good photo, though. The crowd was even larger than before.

what are they doing down there?

The Tanager is apparently still there today (Tuesday 11/29), so if you're among the dwindling number of New York City birders who hasn't seen it yet, there's still hope. It likes the tall trees in the northeast part of the park, along the path between the back of City Hall and the Tweed Courthouse.

Chat in a roundabout...

The WETA isn't the only good bird in the park. A second Yellow-Breasted Chat has been in the for several weeks, mostly in the traffic circle just to the south (which has a sign that says "Millennium Park", which is a good joke). Sometimes it ventures closer to City Hall.

I get around

Also a few other warblers are lingering: an Ovenbird is on that northern path just a bit west of the WETA area, and quite confiding.

Steppin' out

At least two Black-Throated Blue Warblers are also present. Mostly they stay way up in the same trees as the Western Tanager, but the male came down for a drink at a little birdbath nearby.

Black-Throated Blue at the birdbath

Usually, smaller birds are very wary of larger ones at a birdbath, even if they aren't actively chased away but this little guy wasn't taking any crap from the sparrows.

you are not the boss of me

There's also a couple of Common Yellowthroats around, one of which likes to assert it's presence.

Look at me! I'm also a pretty pretty bird!

The trees also hold more common birds including several Yellow-Bellied Sapsuckers (the WETA and the Black-Throated Blues are taking advantage of the wells the Sapsuckers drill in the trees, which attract insects), Hermit Thrushes, and American Kestrels, all of which are nice to see. The lawns host the normal wintering sparrows--the suddenly-ubiquitous White-Throated Sparrows, Juncos, Song Sparrows, and Fox Sparrows.

winter Fox

Big weekend

I started my weekend by taking Friday off from work. There had been a lot of rarities reported in Central Park on Thursday--Blue Grosbeak, Red-Headed Woodpecker, both kinds of Cuckoo--but I was responsible adult and went to work.

They were all gone Friday, but I quietly got a total of 49 species anyway. A lot of migrating warblers were in.

I'm on my way

And a lot of resident birds were going about their business--establishing territory

I am wren, hear me roar

bathing

Orchard Oriole and a Yellow-Rumped Warbler at the bird spa

and foraging.

yum!

It was a splendid day. I had 46 species by noon, and then went off to look for the Mourning Warbler seen between Balcony Bridge and Triplets Bridge. I found it--along with dozens of other people--and had some good views, but I spent the rest of the day trying to get a good photo of it. It was too wily for me, though.

Saturday was the Global Big Day, organized by the Cornell Ornithology Lab as a conservation-awareness and fundraising initiative. The idea was to get a lot of people out in the field and see how many species they could see. The Lab hoped to record 4500 of the 10000+ species--they got almost 6000.

But it was a bit slow in New York. I had only twenty species in the Ramble, so I went up to Inwood Hill Park. The tide was rushing in when I arrived, but I was lucky enough to see the previously-reported Greater Yellowlegs

skinny legs and all

which was a life New York City bird for me, and as a bonus there were a pair of Snowy Egrets--

Egrets, I've had a few

--first of the year for me, and a very good bird for Inwood Hill.

Since I was there, I decide to look for the Wild Turkey that had been reported recently, and on the way up the hill I met Nadir Sourigi, a really fine birder who leads walks for Audubon and so on, and we went off to look for her and for Cuckoos. No luck on either, but I highly recommend the experience of birding with someone who's massively better than you. Great fun, as well as instructive and informative.

Sunday was a little brisker in Central Park, and a lovely day for birding as well.

Northern Parula

Blue-Headed Vireo

I'll post more soon.

A blue bird of happiness

I'm still working up a post about the various Empidonax flycatchers I saw the other day. In the meantime--Saturday morning I saw a report of an Eastern Bluebird in a meadow quite near the West 81st Street entrance to Central Park. Bluebirds are common in many places, but visit Manhattan only during migration and not in any numbers. I'm lucky to see one or two a year here, so I went to check it out.

Alas, I did not see the Bluebird. I think the increased activity in that part of the park as the morning went on probably made it seek a quieter meadow--there's plenty of suitable places in the park for a Bluebird to forage.

I did get to see a couple of warblers quite close up at Tanner's Spring nearby, including the female Black-Throated Blue Warbler shown above. She was all of four or five feet away from me. This species tends to be pretty confiding, but I've never been close enough to see the traces of blue on the female's head before.

The books generally call the female Black-Throated Blue "drab". I think that's a gorgeous little bird, myself.

Three days

Tuesday there were apparently two Red-Headed Woodpeckers in Central Park. One was reported by Anders Peltomaa early in the morning at the Great Lawn, moving north, and the second was in the Ramble. I glimpsed the second east of Evodia, in the same trees that last May's Red-Headed liked. It flew off quickly towards Azalea Pond, but I guessed that it would return, which it did, at least for a few seconds about 15 minutes later.

Red-Headed Woodpecker

Then it disappeared again, and this time did not come back for the hour I waited in hopes of a better photo.

The Ramble was otherwise moderately birdy. I had a nice view of a female Black-Throated Blue Warbler having lunch.

Mmm.. Tasty!

The Red-Headed Woodpecker is my 160th species of the year in New York County. Aside from that, the only rarity I've heard about in Manhattan is a very late Pied-Billed Grebe on the Reservoir.

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Monday was rather slow in the park--28 species, only four warblers. My highlights were a very cooperative Eastern Kingbird near Greywacke Arch:

The Kingbird is not afraid of a peasant like you

and a nice view of a female Indigo Bunting drinking in the Gill.

the subdued elegance of a female Indigo Bunting

Female Indigos tend to be difficult. They're a bit skulky, and somewhat non-descript. This one, though, came out in the open and had a nice warm brown look overall, with a bit of blue in the tail, so she was fairly easy to ID.

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Sunday I went up to Riverdale to take my aunts out to lunch. I rewarded myself for the good deed by birding in Van Cortlandt Park for a couple of hours afterward. I have never heard so many Warbling Vireos in my life--easily over a dozen, including several doing song battles, one of them a three-way fight.

The vireos stayed pretty well hidden, but I did see a loudly singing House Wren.

House Wren, belting out the hits

Also, the Ring-Necked drake was still on Van Cortlandt Lake, where he's been hanging out since at least late March. He's pretty decisively taken himself out of the mating game for this year.