Things I haven't seen

Almost every time I go out birding, I see things I haven't seen before. Memorial Day weekend was particularly rich.

On Saturday, I went up to Randall's Island for the first time in a couple of months. It wasn't terribly productive, but there was a Killdeer at the salt marsh on the north shore of the island. That's not too unusual, but its behavior was not what I'm used to seeing.

The Kildeers I've seen there are usually transients and quiet; this one was calling constantly, as befits its scientific name (Charadrius vociferus, which is Latin for "loudmouth plover"). The call wasn't the killdeer that given it its common name, but a several long high peeps followed by a descending series of short notes.

And then it flew off the rocks in the saltmarsh to the baseball field, ran several steps, and flung itself in the infield dirt with one wing stretched out.

distraction

A distraction display! I'd never seen one. It must have a nest in the marsh area. I hope that works out OK, but between the starlings, the grackles, and the gulls, I'm a little dubious.

There was also a Laughing Gull, my first of the year, hanging out with some Ring-Billed Gulls on the outfield of another baseball diamond, and giving me a good view.

gull, Laughing and loafing

Sunday was a glorious day to be out in Central Park, but not if you were a starling who got a little too close to this Black-Crowned Night Heron.

nature red in tooth and claw

I've seen herons eat baby birds before, but this was a full-sized adult, and he had a great deal of trouble swallowing it. He eventually got it down, but looked quite saturnine afterward.

Monday I made an excursion to the northern part of Central Park. at the Pool (about 103rd street on the west side), I saw ... um, well. I saw two male Mallards mating.

well, I never!

I see from Teh Google that this is not rare, but I had never seen it before. It was clearly mating behavior, and not fighting, because they did the typical head-bobbing display at each other before one ducked down in the water and the other mounted.

Things were pretty quiet otherwise. Up at the the compost area on The Mount, where sometimes shorebirds stop off to browse in the ditches, there was a family of House Wrens with just-fledged young begging for food.

baby House Wren

Thinking about it, I don't recall ever seeing baby wrens before.

Back downtown in the Ramble, there's a Warbling Vireo nest. It's one of many in the park this year, but it's unusual in being clearly visible from the ground and not too high up. So with luck I'll have several weeks of rare views of Vireos raising their young.

Warbling vireo on nest

The male sings constantly while taking his turn on the nest, by the way. Quite charming. Also, those are spiderwebs all over the outside of the nest--an excellent structural material. Many thanks to Martin Sandler for pointing out the nest. Although it's fairly out in the open, I still would never have spotted it 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.

Favorable winds

Gentle southerly winds overnight brought a few new species into Central Park on Tuesday morning. The big news was a male Cerulean Warbler spotted by Miriam (whose last name I don't know) at the Gill just south of Azalea Pond about 11:30am.  She was sitting on a bench watching birds coem down to bathe, and a Cerulean came down to eye level.

Unfortunately, only a couple of other people got to see the bird before he went back up into the treetops, as a Cerulean does.  I wasn't one of the lucky ones.  I found out about the bird when I got to the Azalea Pond around noon, and stayed  in the area for an hour and a half.  As far as I know, nobody saw the bird again.

Also reported were a pair of Purple Finches and a Northern Waterthrush, but I didn't see them either. Also a Savannah Sparrow at Maintenance meadow--this one I did get:

a very confiding Savannah Sparrow

A very cooperative bird. A group of birders stood off about 25 feet or so, not wanting to disturb it as it went about its lawful sparrow business foraging in the grass. It gradually worked its way closer until it was about 10 or 12 feet away. This is by far the best look I've ever gotten at a Savannah. Charming little bird.

In addition to the new species, a lot of birds from already-present species came in overnight. There were quite a few Yellow-Rumped Warblers (which I saw while looking for the Cerulean), Palm and Pine Warblers, a Blue-headed Vireo, and a number of Hermit Thrush. I did see a warbler, high up, a dull yellow breast with dark streaks; maybe a female Yellow Warbler, but not a good enough view to say for sure.

Most of the recently-seen species were still around, even if not in greater numbers.

Remember how I said in the last post that I didn't have any good photos of House Wrens? That's fixed now:

House Wren in action

While migration is just getting into swing, some resident birds have gotten down to the business of nesting:

Spring!

Wrens cheer me up

I find the sight of a wren immensely cheering, somehow. They're such purposeful and determined little birds: subtle, active, hard to follow. They don't have the sublime obliviousness of kinglets and gnatcatchers, who live at such a pace that to them we are just slightly unstable geological features, of no concern and no threat; they don't have the skittishness of sparrows and warblers, many of which will scatter if you look at them too hard. The wrens have a healthy skepticism about us, but remain determined to go about their lawful wren business.

Migration is still slow here, but there were a few birds out on the Point. Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher, Yellow-Rumped and Pine Warblers, Ruby-Crowned Kinglet.

my best photo of the day: Yellow-Rumped (Myrtle) Warbler

I took a few photographs, and when I was getting ready to leave, I caught motion out of the corner of my eye, a little brown blur in a tree right by the water. It proved to be a House Wren, my first of the year. I enjoyed watching it busily flitting across the ground and up and down shrubs. After some time, it decided that the end of the Point was a bit too noisy, what with all the rowboats going by, and took off, gone like a shot.

I'm not thrilled with this, but it turns out I have no great photos of a House Wren

House Wren is the 104th species of the year for me. The winds look a little better tonight, so I'm hoping that we'll finally get some more warblers tomorrow.