Green Heron

not the Easter Heron

It was a slow week--mostly northerly winds, not favorable for migratory movements--though I picked up a couple of new species for the year. Northern Rough-Winged Swallows were at Turtle Pond Monday, and a male Common Yellowthroat was under the willow at the Upper Lobe on Wednesday. Those are both normal species for Central Park.

I went up to the Bronx for Easter. I saw on my phone that a Green Heron had been seen in the willow tree at the end of Point in Central Park early in the morning. That's a pretty good bird for the park; I see one or maybe two a year. So although I didn't think it would still be around when I got back to Manhattan late in the afternoon--on a beautiful Easter Sunday, there would be rowboats all over the Lake to disturb it--I needed to at least look.

So it wasn't there. People out on the Point were watching a male Yellow-Rumped Warbler, about the only warbler around the last few days. Nice-looking bird.

I swung around to Willow Rock, and I ran into a birder named Ginny--and she had spotted the Heron in a willow tree there. Perfectly logical place for the bird to wind up, but it was very well-hidden. Very good spotting, that was.

My photos of this bird are uninspiring--it was really well-screened by branches--so I'm showing off a nice photo I took of of a Green Heron at Azalea Pond a few years ago.

The Green Heron is my 103rd species of the year in New York County.

Photo interlude

I didn't go anywhere interesting today. Nothing much came in today that I heard about--maybe a few more Black-and-White Warblers out on the Point--so here's a few recent photos I haven't put on the blog already.

Cedar Waxwings, I love their little pot bellies.

It's easy to overlook what a good-looking bird a White-Throated Sparrow is.

The drab Pine Warbler that spent most of the winter in the Ramble hasn't been seen in a while. I guess that's another story whose ending I'll never know.

We're still seeing the Baltimore Orio;les who overwintered near Evodia, though. I assume this male will have his pick of the best nesting areas, since there won't be any others for another week or two yet.

I wonder if this Ring-Necked drake I saw the other week is the one who was on the Reservoir during the winter. That one liked to pal arounmd with Mallards, too.

The "kwirr!" call of the Red-Bellied Woodpecker is a common sound in the Ramble now.

It's that time of year...

"In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove"

"In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love"

But eventually the poetry of passion gives way to the prose of family life

Surprisingly slow

Sunday and Monday were beautiful days, after nights of steady southerly winds; Tuesday came up gloomy and rainy, but again after a night of good winds.

Rainy Day Robin #12

Despite three nights of favorable winds, few migrating birds came into Central Park. There are still Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers, mostly on the Point.

Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher

Ruby-Crowned Kinglets are also still around; the Golden-Crowneds seem to have mostly moved on. There are Pine and Palm Warblers, and a couple of Yellow-Rumped Warblers, but no others; except one report of a Prairie Warbler near Turtle Pond. But I'm told that one of the birding guides played recordings of Prairie Warbler songs "to bring it in closer" until the stressed bird escaped elsewhere.

Swallows are coming in, however; Tree and Northern Rough-Winged Swallows at Turtle Pond on Monday, and today one Tree Swallow and a very small, fluttery, brown swallow that from the size and flight style might be a Bank Swallow. On the other hand, Bank is highly unusual in the park, and they don't tend to travel singly, so perhaps not. I couldn't get my binoculars on it for more than a tenth of a second, so I didn't get any field marks.

At Evodia on Monday I saw an extremely pretty female Red-Winged Blackbird. The females are usually quite reclusive. Unfortunately, a female Brown-Headed Cowbird was hanging around with it. That's not good news.

Soap opera in progress

Snipe success!

Elena and I were having breakfast and deciding where to go today. We had settled on the Ramble, to look for a Bluebird reported there a couple of hours earlier. I checked the NYNYBirds texts web page on my phone, and saw a very recent report from Karen Fung:

W Snipe in the Loch, found by John Wittenberg

I showed the phone to Elena. "Snipe hunt?" I asked.

She considered briefly. "Snipe hunt!" And so off we went to the North End.

It turned out to be easy. We got to the Loch, and found a group of birders. They described where it was hiding in plain sight near a log across the stream. It took some scanning, but I eventually recognized its stripy back, and then it turned its head and the beady eye came into view.

Then it was just a matter of waiting for it to decide to move out into the (relative) open for a photo opportunity. After a few minutes, a Robin walked close by and it moved out and started to forage.

Sweet mystery of Snipe, at last I've found you!

It was interesting to watch the bird moving forward in a crouch, occasionally pausing and probing the mud deeply with its long beak. The probing movement was very smooth and deliberate; a Woodcock probing into leaves is a bit jerky by comparison, for instance. The Snipe is a life bird for me, my 198th species in New York County (and 99th of the year).

We also got an added bonus, a Blue-Headed Vireo, also a first=of-year bird.

Number 100!

We made our way back to the Ramble to look for the Bluebird. No luck, but there were compensations, such as this very cooperative Palm Warbler at Tupelo meadow.

Almost within reach

In all, a beautiful day for birding.

Incoming

Just a quick note--lots of Palm Warblers at Tupelo Meadow in the Ramble; they seem to have arrived in numbers. Also a few Pine and Yellow-Rumped Warblers around. Friday evening I saw my first Black-and-White warbler of the year, at Willow Rock in the Ramble.

The B&W is a bit early, as are the Blue-Headed Vireos reported by Paul Sweet of the Museum of Natural History (whose morning birding group saw one at the Upper Lobe) and by a pair of young birders from South Carolina (who saw one at the Gill Overlook).

The Snipe was alleged to have been seen again at the eastern side of the Point this morning (that is, Friday morning). A Green Heron was seen in the North Woods.

Lots of Kinglets around, mostly Ruby-Crowned but a few Golden-Crowned as well. Many Flickers and Yellow-Bellied Sapsuckers. There's still at least one Louisisna Waterthrush, around the Point.

Since my last counting update, I've had eight more species, for a total of 98 in New York County: Field Sparrows (which are being seen sporadically in Central Park), Ruby-Crowned Kinglet; Savannah Sparrow, Tree Swallow, and Barn Swallow, all in the northeast part of Randall's Island--Barn Swallows and Northern Rough-Winged Swallows have been seen on Harlem Meer in Central Park as well; the Blue-Grey Gnatcatcher from my Snipe hunt yesterday; and the Palm and Black-and-White warblers from today.

Lots of birds coming in already, and even more coming soon.

Snipe hunt

When you set someone an impossible or fictional task as a prank, that's called a Snipe hunt. There's a reason for that.

At breakfast, I check several web pages--eBird rare birds and "year needs" lists, the NYSBirds-L mailing list, the NYNYBirds text alert page--to see if anything interesting has been seen. Thursday morning, there was a report of a Wilson's Snipe seen about 7am on the Point, a little peninsula in Central Park Lake that gets interesting shorebirds and warblers. Wilson's Snipe is a good bird for New York, and would be a life bird for me, so you can probably guess where I went.

I got into the park a little after 9am, and found other Snipe-obsessed birders. The story was, the bird had been seen and photographed on the east side of the Point, along with a Louisiana Waterthrush, and then both were accidentally flushed by park workers doing maintenance and trash removal. The Snipe flew around the Point and was lost to sight.

The obvious place for such a bird to hide is the Oven, a marshy area at the base of the western side of the Point. You can't (or at least shouldn't) climb down into the Oven, but a number of sharp-eyed people scanned the area from the land above it, and saw nothing. Where had the Snipe gone?

I walked all around the Lake shore. There's some decent places for a shorebird--not as good as the Point or the Oven, but possible--but neither I nor anyone else who explored the area over the course of the day saw anything Snipe-like.

I did see a nice first-of-year bird, a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher feasting in the Cornelian Dogwoods on the western shore. They were just now bursting with little yellow flowers that attracted a lot of insects. The Gnatcatcher is a tiny, fast moving bird, very hard to photograph.

My consolation prize for the Snipe hunt

Eventually I returned to the Oven and the Point. I watched a park worker go down into the oven. He seemed to doing something with a shrub. After a while, a Louisiana Waterthrush flushed--flew out of the Oven a bit down the Lake shore. I watched another twenty minutes as the man completed his work, but no Snipe followed the Waterthrush out.

I went and had a late lunch, and then did another circuit of the Lake. The Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher was still hard at work on in the dogwoods. I finally quit the Snipe hunt just after 5pm.

When I got home, I saw reports that the Snipe had been seen under a willow on the Point, and then in the Oven. Yeah, sure. I wasn't falling for that again.