A Magic Tree

Blackburnian Warbler (male)

Another great phenomenon of migration is the "magic tree". Sometimes, a certain tree will just be full of migrants, especially warblers, for an hour or two, busily feeding and giving great looks to anyone who passes by. Central Park had a Magic Tree on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. It was just off the plaza of Belvedere Castle, and it was something to see.

Bay-Breasted Warbler

I had some of the finest close views of Blackburnian and Bay-Breasted warblers I've ever seen, all in a low honey locust tree in beautiful morning light. A crowd of birders stood only ten or twelve feet from the tree--the birds didn't care.

Blackburnian Warbler (female)

It's not clear to me why certain trees get so popular. There wasn't anything obvious about this one--just an ordinary-looking tree, not especially lush--a little scraggly if anything. But it was in flower and the flowers must have been full of bugs.

The low branches of the tree were basically at eye level, so we got some fairly unusual views of foraging warblers, like the Bay-Breasted above and the Blackburnian below.

In all, I saw ten warbler species in this one small tree: Blackburnian, Bay-Breasted, Blackpoll...

Blackpoll (female)

..an apparent first- spring female Chestnut-Sided:

Magnolia Warbler{

Yellow Warbler:

fie on your "gravity"

...as well as American Redstart, Common Yellowthroat, Black-Throated Blue Warbler and Black-Throated Green Warbler. There were also a couple of Red-Eyed Vireos.

Red-Eyed Vireo

Amazing tree, amazing morning.

there may be a quiz

Fall migration

It's tough being a Cardinal papa.

The Fall migration proceeded apace this weekend. I had 32 species in Central Park on Saturday, including eight warblers (Bay-breasted Warbler, Northern Waterthrush, Black-and-White Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Redstart, Northern Parula, Magnolia Warbler, and Chestnut-sided Warbler) and some other migrants, such as several Brown Thrashers and a couple of Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks.

Chestnut-Sided Warbler juvenile

Sunday was a bit slower, only 25 species, but one was a Yellow-Throated Vireo, my first of the year (and 177th species in the county).

There are still resident birds finishing up their breeding seasons, as well, like the Cardinal at the top of this post. I spotted a juvenile Cardinal begging food in the big willow at the Upper Lobe; papa came to feed him, then spotted me and decided I needed a good looking-at. He looked pretty worn out.

Raptor migration is under way. Someone showed me a nice photo of a juvenile Bald Eagle who had flown over the Ramble, and a lot of hawks have been seen. I'm told it's going to be a good week for Broad-Winged Hawks passing through--I hope I can get out somewhere I can see some.

Sunday morning, I spotted a bunch of Gadwalls on Turtle Pond. It took me a while to be sure what I was seeing, since they seemed to be in various stages of molt.

Gadwall on Turtle Pond

This weekend's edition of "things I've never seen before" was a red-Tailed Hawk attacking a Black-Crowned Night Heron. I saw the heron fly into a tree near Hernshead on the west side of Central Park Lake. Some 15 seconds later, the hawk flew in and made what looked to me like a pretty serious pass at the heron, who dropped out of the tree and flew low across the lake making a sound I cannot find words to describe. The ducks on the lake were quite startled.  The hawk moved north, but came back to fly around the lake a few minutes later.

I don't know what that was all about. A heron is insanely large to be prey for a Red-Tailed Hawk. Maybe it was some kind of personal grudge.

Kentucky Warbler

Wednesday morning, I saw a report online of a Kentucky Warbler in the Tanner's Spring area.

The Kentucky Warbler is a member of a small group of very secretive, ground-hugging warblers that used to be all in the genus Oporornis until the splitters got to work on it. But I digress. Anyway, the members of the group--the Connecticut, Mourning, and Kentucky Warblers, and the western MacGillivray's Warbler--are notoriously difficult to find, even when you know where they are.

In fact, I'd never seen a Kentucky Warbler, so off I went in pursuit.

When I entered the park, I saw a group  people with binoculars and big cameras looking into the vegetation just north of the Diana Ross Playground, always a good sign that there's a bird down there--and surprisingly shortly thereafter, the little skulking bird popped into view.

Kentucky Warbler!

I've now seen 34 of the 36 warbler species that normally occur in this part of the country, missing only the Connecticut and the Golden-Winged.

The Kentucky continued for a while poking along under the plants and occasionally popping up for a photo op. Eventually, I decided to escape the press of the crowd watching it, and went to nearby Tanner's Spring, where only one other birder was watching a great variety of birds coming down to drink and bathe.

Chestnut-Sided Warbler and Gray Catbird at Tanner's Spring

Elsewhere in the park there were a lot of Canada Warblers

O, Canada!

and more Swainson's Thrushes than I can recall seeing in one day before.

When you look at the Swainson's Thrush, the Swainson's Thrush also looks back at you.

Besides the Kentucky Warbler, the other notable rarities in the Park on Wednesday were Mourning Warblers reported in several locations (and I couldn't find any of them, darn skulky birdies), and a Bicknell's Thrush found by David Barrett at Strawberry fields.

Bicknell's Thrush winters in a few isolated spots in the Caribbean and breeds only on a few mountaintops in upper New York State, New England, and Ontario. It is not distinguishable from the Gray-Cheeked Thrush except by song--and I've listened to recordings of both, and I can't distinguish them that way either. So I decided not to chase a bird I can't ID.

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The Kentucky Warbler was my 161st species of the year in New York County It was also my 202nd life-list species in the county according to eBird--number 200 was the Summer Tanager--but that list includes a couple of obvious escaped birds (Budgerigar and Yellow-fronted Canary), so the Kentucky is my "real" 200th life bird here.

(The list also includes European Goldfinch, but that bird was flocking with House Finches the whole winter of 2012-2013 after first being seen in spring 2012, and I don't see why it couldn't have been a true accidental. So I'm counting it.)

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Thursday had more reports of Mourning Warblers, and a lot of Empidonax flycatchers (including Acadian and Yellow-Bellied). I'll write about them later.

Slowdown

The last few days of migration have been much slower. Wednesday I was up in the north end of the park; a tree at the south end of Harlem Meer had nine species of warbler (Magnolia, Yellow, Wilson's, Chestnut-Sided, Black-Throated Blue, Black-Throated Green, Yellow-Rumped, and Blackpoll Warblers, and American Redstart), but that was the busiest spot of the week by a long way. Up at the compost area on the Mount the Solitary Sandpipers were gone, bit I had a nice view of a Lincoln's Sparrow up in a tree.

The find of the day was a female Mourning Warbler near the north end of the Loch. She came hopping out of the vegetation on the east side of the stream and came down to the water's edge, long enough for me to see the complete hood extending onto the breast, bright yellow underparts, and very thin eyering; and then as I tried to get my camera focused, a group of schoolkids came noisily along and the bird flushed to the west side of the stream, well back in the bushes, and I never picked it up again. Neither did anyone else, as far as I know.

A nice bird, but I found it very frustrating. I hate being the only person to see a good bird. I especially hate it when I don't even get a photo. I think I have a good reputation for being a reliable reporter, so when I report something that turns out unfindable and I don't have documentation, it eats at me. You know what they say: "oh, well".

Thursday, I went out a little too early and got rather damp. But there was a White-Crowned Sparrow right on the path at the north end of the meadow north of the King Jagiello ("Poland") monument at the east end of Turtle Pond. Best view of that bird I've ever had.

totally worth getting soaked for

My only new bird of the day was a Bay-Breasted Warbler, up in the big beech tree by Greywacke Arch (which is the underpass under the East Drive at the bottom of that same meadow). That's a fairly hard-to-get bird as well, but at least I have some crappy photos of it. The crappy photos were frankly needed to even ID the bird--it was a terrible view, high in the tree and backlit all to hell and back by the bright overcast sky after the rain stopped.

In the Ramble, an Indigo Bunting sang briefly at Evodia, and a Common Yellowthroat there gave a longer concert.

Common Yellowthroat, tearin' up the stage

and several warblers and a Lincoln's Sparrow were on the Point. One Chestnut-Sided Warbler was especially confiding:

why couldn't I get a shot like this of the Mourning Warbler?

Friday was very slow. I had expected a lot of birds to arrive ahead of the rain, but that didn't happen. We'll see whether good things happen after the storm.