Midtown Birding (2)

In November I started a new job, which moved me away from the pocket park I wrote about before. By the way, recent reports from there say that some Swamp Sparrows, a Towhee, at least one Catbird, and two Brown Thrashers are all still there.

My new location, around Park and 51st, is unfortunately not so interesting, but there have been some birds.

office plaza bird

The first day, I spotted a Common Yellowthroat on the plaza outside the building. I saw that same bird around for several weeks, and other Yellowthroats in the churchyard of St. Bartholomew's Church across the street, and even hanging around a coffee cart near Lexington Avenue.

St. Bart's visitor

Most of the interesting birds were in the tiny St. Bartholomew's yards. A good part of the reason is that they had a water trickle running in the southern part of the yard, in a reasonably protected spot. That combined with a couple of trees and some shrubs, is enough to attract some birds.

just passing through

A few migrants appeared in the churchyard. Besides the Yellowthroats, there were Juncos, Song Sparrows, a Hermit Thrush, and one morning even a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet. There are also the usual city residents--pigeons, starlings, House Sparrows--and the winter-ubiquitous White Throated Sparrows.

in town for the winter

There was a Gray Catbird around, but I haven't seen it since the trickle was shut off in mid-December. That's also when the last of the Yellowthroats departed.

like many New Yorkers, street food keeps the Catbird going

Finally, there's a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker who has been working trees all up and down 51st and 52nd Streets (at least), and also the tree in the St. Batholomew's southern yard.

street scene, St. Bartholomew's Chruch

Since he seems to be teh only Sapsucker in this part of town, he's got a large number of trees to work on, which he does quite diligently. Hopefully, that will be enough to keep him going all winter.

diligent driller of holes

Four lifers

Since my new job's location doesn't let me cross Central Park on my way to work, I expect to see a lot fewer species in Manhattan than in the last few years. So this year, I've decided to go around the City on some weekends looking for life birds. The other week it was Prospect Park and the Black-Headed Gull, and this Saturday it was Flushing Meadow Corona Park. There had been recent reports of four species I'd never seen there.

yes, even the Snow Goose was a life bird. Don't judge me.

After getting off the 7 train at Willet's Point--and I can't stop thinking of the stop as "Shea Stadium", I entered the old World's Fair grounds and set off looking for something called the "Garden of Meditation" where there was supposed to be a flock of Juncos with a couple of exotic sparrows mixed in.

On the way, I spotted a small concrete-ringed body of water with a lot of geese on it. Since the other two species I was looking for were geese, I diverted over there. I believe it's called the "Pool of Industry". I love the feature names from the World's Fair; they are so very Space Age.

Anyway, on the lawn next to the Pool I spotted a large white goose hanging with a big flock of Canadas. It proved to be a (very cooperative) Snow Goose. Lifer number one!

With the help of a friendly photographer who had arrived at the Pool, I scanned for the two Cackling Geese that had been reported. They're very small geese with the same pattern as Canada Geese. The small size should jump out at you. No luck. He said that he'd just come from Meadow Lake (across the highway) where the Cacklings had usually been, and they weren't there either. We went off in search of sparrows.

The Meditation Garden held no birds of any kind. The area in front of the New York State Pavilion (where the target Junco flock had also been seen) was almost as empty, except a large flock of Starlings came down nearby. After a while, the photographer packed it in--the light was crappy and it was threatening rain. I decided to walk around the New York State Pavilion.

For reference, the NYS Pavilion is the thing with the big sci-fi-looking towers featured in Men In Black. It's in poor repair, though some restoration is being done. On the path behind the Pavilion, I spotted Juncos. With them, a couple of Pine Warblers.

extra attraction

The Juncos were spead out loosely between the path and a highway (there are highways running all around and through Flushing Meadow Park, thank you Robert Moses). I spotted a stripy-headed sparrow with them, but it proved to be just a White-Throated Sparrow. Then I spotted a very dull light-brown bird with a grey neck and a brown rump--the Clay Colored Sparrow. Lifer number two! He vanished quickly--Clay-Colored Sparrows are very good at vanishing--but then I spotted the boldly-patterned Lark Sparrow.

boldface

Lifer number three! He was at some distance, but shortly afterward there was a brief rain shower. The flock went up into the trees and I caught the Lark Sparrow posing. When it flew to a different tree, I noticed that it passed another brown sparrow.

cryptic sparrow

That is not really an identifiable view of a Clay-Colored Sparrow but it was the best photo I got of it.

Next I crossed over the highway to Meadow Lake in the southern part of the park. It was immediately apparent that the lake was mostly frozen over, and that there were no geese of any description on it. A smart man would have gone back. I decided to walk around the lake.

Considering that the terrain is quite flat, the walking was difficult. Very muddy in spots. Lots of Mallards and gulls on the lake shore, and some coots in the few open-water stretches, but not much else. A couple of Song Sparrows in the phragmites.

The south end of the lake seemed to recede as I walked on. Stubbornly I pushed on. At length I reached a playground and sat down at a picnic table to contemplate the bad life choices that had led me to this place.

Well, it seemed it was farther to go back then to continue around, so continue I did. I watched a rather dark Red-Tailed Hawk take off from a tree. after rounding the tip of the lake, I realized that the path ahead was fenced off. It would have been nice of the Parks Department to have signs up early on saying that the path around the lake wasn't passable.

Being tired and stubborn, I went on. I wound up walking along the highway off-ramp for a considerable distance, great fun. At length I completed the circuit and returned to the northern part of the park.

There I found birders in front of the NYS Pavilion, mostly from the Brooklyn Bird Club. The Junco flock was on the grass there, and they were tracking the special sparrows, which was not easy in the late-afternoon light.

where's Waldo?

But I did get looks at both the Clay-Colored and the Lark Sparrow again. Then I moved on, back to the Pool of Industry--for some reason I really want to put that in all-caps, but I'll resist--and another look for the Cackling Geese.

I have never seen so many geese in such a small area. They had all left the lawn. The Pool of Industry is an oval, maybe 120 feet long, and there were easily 500 Canada Geese in it, and the back end of it wasn't even full, just a few gulls there. So the geese were all crowded into, I don't know, a tenth of an acre? A few hundred square yards. It was Grand Central Station in there. I did not see any notably small geese.

The Brooklyn crew arrived. They didn't have any luck either. ("That one seems small" "Maybe? A little." [a minute later] "I can't find it in the crowd anymore." "That's not a good sign.")

Geese began to fly out in tens and twenties and thirties. That should make oddities easier to spot...

where's Waldo, part two. This was a bit later, with even fewer birds, so it's easy.

And then I saw them. "Hey, how about those? That group of four, the ones in the front look very small."

Boom! There it is.

And so they were. Lifer number four!

I watched the for a while--they hung out, mostly pretty close together. I think they found the larger Canadas a bit intimidating.

intimidating goose

All in all, six and a half hours in Flushing Meadow, six miles walked, four life birds. A good day.

New Year birding, and the last of the Painted Bunting

As is my habit, I spent the first couple of days of the New Year birding Central Park and Randall's Island. Mostly I was trying to clean up as many usual species as possible--eBird's "Year Needs" list can get pretty unwieldy in January if I don't.

Sunday I went out to Prospect Park in Brooklyn to look for the Black-Headed Gull I had dipped on in December. But of course I had to look in on the Painted Bunting before circling the Lake to scan the gulls.

He was near the northeast wall of the Lefrak Center, very near where he was in early December when I visited last. Having paid my regards, I went off to the Lake. The gulls mostly like the west end of the Lake, and I was starting on the east end, but it wasn't a dull walk.

In Central Park, you mostly see waterbirds like this Ruddy Duck from a greater distance or from above (when you circle the Reservoir, you're always looking down on the water) or most often both. Prospect Park Lake is nice because you can see them come in close to share and you're right down on the ground for a good low view.

Anyway, eventually I came upon a photographer at the west edge of the Lake who was packing up, and he pointed out the Black-Headed Gull to me. I watched it for a while, then it took off suddenly.

It flew past me, and I had the impression it hadn't gone too far, so I continued along the shore until I found a family feeding the ducks. And the swans, and the gulls. That explained the sudden take-off.

I was able to pass on the favor the photographer had done me to a couple of passing birders, so I wasn't the only one to get the Black-Headed Gull as a life bird that day.

On my way out of the park, I passed the Lefrak Center again. I saw the Painted Bunting get flushed by some idiot walking through the shrubbery--not a birder of photographer as far as I could see.

Anyway, the bird didn't go far, and actually spent some time in a more open area in better light, and so I got the nice pictures you see here. Eventually the Bunting returned to the denser shrubs along the wall.

That appears to have been the last day the Painted Bunting was seen. There were only a couple of eBird reports from Prospect Park on Monday, and they don't have it, and there were several on Tuesday again with no result.

If the bird was gone on Monday, that's actually fairly hopeful. Monday night wasn't too bad, so it might mean that he felt the cold coming in that evening and finally decided to fly south. If he was around Monday and people just missed him, that could be bad; most likely that would be because he was hunkered down against the cold and wind we had Monday--a bird actively feeding before flying out would have been easier to spot. Monday night was bitter, down into the single digits (F), possibly colder than any member of that species had ever experienced. That might have killed him. Either way, we'll almost certainly never know.

Christmas Count

It's that time of year again--Christmas Count season! The 116th running of the Central Park Christmas Count went off on Sunday December 20th, in unseasonably warm weather. It was fun but, a bit slow. As always, a large group of people met at the south pumphouse of the Reservoir and divided into seven teams--covering the Northeast, Northwest, Reservoir, Great Lawn, Ramble, Southeast, and Southwest areas of the Park--and, accompanied by Urban Park Rangers, attempted to count every single bird in Central Park.

It was a little slow. The Park totals were 4264 individual birds representing 55 species. That's a little sparse--two years ago in terrible sloppy weather, for example, we had 62 species and 5414 individuals--and some types of birds, like native sparrows, had very low numbers. On the other hand , there were three late warblers--Wilson's, Black-and-White, and Orange-Crowned.

The best bird in the Park, for me, was the Orange-Crowned Warbler at the top of this post. It was found by the Great lawn group during the count, next to the "Three Bears" playground at 79th and Fifth Avenue. After the collation meeting, I went to look for it, and found a number of birders watching it some small distance away, along the 79th Street Transverse just south of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, foraging with a couple of Ruby-Crowned Kinglets.

It was a very active little bird, hard to get my camera on, though it gave some excellent (though brief) views. The photo above is the best one I got, but if you want to see what a better and more patient photographer was able to get, you should check out this photo at Jean Shum's website. You should scroll around for other great views as well.

This year, I was in the Ramble group. It was really too large a group, over 20 people, and a big chunk of the Ramble is currently fenced off for maintenance of the paths (which doesn't seem to me actually happening, but that's another matter). Our best bird was the Great-Horned Owl who's been hanging around for almost two months now.

Near the owl's roost, the bird feeders were quite active. Here's a Chickadee coming in for a landing next to a House Finch.

So, that wraps up my posting for 2015. I hope to update this a little more regularly next year.

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.

Everybody's heard about the bird

If you live in New York, even if you're not a birder, you may have seen the story about the Painted Bunting which showed up in Brooklyn's Prospect Park a week ago and has attracted a gaggle of bird paparazzi and a bunch of ordinary people. he's quite a charismatic little fellow. A male Painted Bunting has more color for his size than any other North American bird. Blue head, neon green back, deep red underside--think of a largish sparrow that's been used to clean paintbrushes.

This bunting has been in the Post, he's been in the Times, he's got the obligatory twitter feed, he's been on a selection of the finest websites and blogs (there's a nice roundup by David Ringer), there's so many great pictures you wouldn't believe. There isn't a lot to add, but I'm going to anyway.

Elena grew up around Prospect Park, so we took off Saturday morning for her old haunts. The bird was easy to find: we entered the park in the southeast corner and immediately spotted a crowd of about a hundred people with binoculars and huge camera lenses staring into a bit of shrubbery. Ah, my people!

he was tricky to see in the undergrowth--it always amazes me how even very colorful birds can disappear when they aren't moving--but after a few minutes he flew up into a tree with a Cardinal. That was the highest we'd see him.

He flew off to the greenroof of the skating rink building (the Lefrak Center), where he chowed down in dense native grasses. A little patience was rewarded with some good looks when he came out in the clear for a minute.

After that, Elena and I went off for a stroll around the park--there was an American Wigeon on the lake, and a large number of Coots, and a famikly of Mute Swans--and then went to the zoo. I decided to come back on Sunday and see if I could get a better photo.

Sunday, the bunting spent the whole day in a little patch of grasses and shrubs. He was pretty well visible, but the best vantages to see him had him quite backlit. still I'm pretty happy with a couple of my snaps.

Now, this bird is pretty lost. They breed in Texas and Louisiana, and along the Carolina coast, and they winter in Florida, Cuba, and Central America. Usually a vagrant bird like that who shows up in the northeast is in serious trouble, but in this case I have some hope he'll survive. from all accounts He's been eating continuously from dawn to dusk every day, and appears to be getting pretty plump. That sounds to me like the behavior of a bird getting ready to migrate, so maybe he'll take off south. Even if not, a good fat reserve could help him through the winter, if it's mild.

I got in some more birding around the lake on Sunday. There was a Black-Headed Gull reported, but I did not consciously see it. I'm not sure I could pick one out of a police lineup (which, as it happens, is a fairly common venue for gulls).

Specific-hope Flycatcher

Rarity season continues: a week or so ago, some experienced birders spotted a small flycatcher in Central Park's Ramble, near the Boathouse cafe. The bird was a member of the genus Empidonax, which all have eyerings and wingbars, and are notoriously hard to identify as specific species with certainty. It had a yellow wash on the breast and belly, and they identified it as a Yellow-Bellied Flycatcher.

Some days later, other birders re-found the bird. They say that it had a very large eyering, and the eyering was kind of teardrop-shaped, and then the game was on. By Friday, the area was flooded with birders--because, you see, that kind of eyering is a hallmark of a "Western Flycatcher", and so the bird was thousands of miles out of its normal range, a screaming rarity that everyone list-making birder wanted to see, the second (or maybe first) record of this kind of bird in New York State.

Cool! Elena and I were planning to meet some friends for a walk in the Ramble on Saturday. Our friends aren't really birders, but they're interested, and we got to show them three excellent species. We easily found the continuing Great Horned Owl, and the Red-headed Woodpecker who is settled in for the winter. Then we joined the mob of bird paparazzi looking for the flycatcher.

We got a couple of nice, though brief, looks at it--little greenish-backed bird with messy plumage, distinctive eyering, feathers on the crown very spiky, basically rather rumpled from its wild journey across the country. And all the mobbing birders also got good looks at the scruffy little vagrant, and many photos were taken. Excellent.

There's just one problem. "Western Flycatcher" isn't a species. It's officially two species, Pacific-Slope Flycatcher and Cordilleran Flycatcher, and--remember I called the Empidonax flycatchers notoriously hard to identify? These two are almost completely impossible to separate, except by the region they nest in. Which in this case is no help. Until the late 1980s, they were considered one species, and a lot of people think that the split is poorly-founded. Even if you have a bird of each species in your hand, the are simply no physical characteristics to tell them apart.

This could not stand. Birders, list-making birders, especially rarity-chasing birders ("twitchers") want--no, need--a species ID.

So the crowd watched and watched, on into Sunday. More photos were taken. The bird wasn't vocalizing--the call is usually a good way to separate empid species. In this case the calls are almost identical, but if they got a recording, a sonogram might tell which kind we had. Eventually, it called, and they recorded it. And a careful observer saw the bird poop and collected the output; maybe they can analyze its DNA from that. I'll let you know if I hear any results.

I slept poorly Sunday night and was up early, so I went to the park before work. I ran into Corey Finger of the 10,000 Birds blog, and we watched the little bird for a while. It was fairly cooperative--I was finally able to get some photos (my view on Saturday was too brief).

For myself, I'm happy to just call it "Western Flycatcher". But who knows, it might turn back into a species, if the American Ornithological Union ever has second thoughts about the split.