Mother's Day Fallout

Prairie Warbler

One thing you will hear birders talk about is "fallout". This doesn't have anything to do with nuclear weapons--it's about bird migration. Sometimes during the spring migration, when conditions are just right--southerly winds at night, then rain a little before dawn and heavier storms just to the north--you wake up in the morning to find that migrating birds have descended on local parks and green spaces in huge numbers. They've been forced to fly low by the rain, and some have had to turn back from the storms in the north, and they all fall out of the sky after a long night's flight to frantically feed and then rest for the next night's flight.

On Mother's Day, May 8, New York City had an epic fallout event. By noon, according to one experienced birder's compilation of observations over a hundred species of bird had been seen in Central Park, including two dozen kind of warbler.

American Bittern

In the Ramble, three very unusual migrants were within a hundred yards of each other. In the area called the Oven, and American Bittern spent the day hunting in the tall reeds. It's bulbous form was clearly visible from the rocks overlooking the Oven from the west ("Willow Rock").

After the early rain, it turned into a beautiful day, and many people rented rowboats on the Central Park Lake. When they approached the Oven, birders would call to the rowers to turn back so as not to disturb the Bittern by coming too close.

Chuck-Will's-Widow

Fifty yards to the northeast, a Chuck-Will's-Widow roosted very close to a path. Chuck-Will's-Widow (named for its call) is a nighttime hunter of insects. By the time it was discovered in the mid-morning, it had eaten its fill and was quietly waiting for evening, relying on its cryptic coloration to hide it from the large mammals only a few yards away.

Let me digress here. On twitter, I saw a drawing by Alan Messer of the Chuck and environs. It's a great example of how drawing can sometimes be much truer than photography. The detail and depth-of-field of the drawing were simply not possible in a photo under the dim lighting.

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron

Fifty yards in the other direction from the Bittern, a Yellow-Crowned Night Heron hid out at the end of the Point, red eye glaring balefully out of the depths of a willow tree. So, three birds, all rare visitors to Central Park, sen within about ten minutes.

Veery

Of course, there were a lot of more expected migrants. All the brown thrushes were in, like the Veery above. On the south slope of Summit Rock, right by Central Park West, Tom Fiore had sixty thrushes in an area about 40x50 feet, including Hermit Thrush, Veery, Swainson's Thrush, Wood Thrush and Gray-Cheeked Thrush at least.

Cape May Warbler

Maybe the biggest story was the warblers. According to Tom Fiore's end-of-day roundup of sightings, people saw at least 28 species of warbler in the park (among 115 or more total species) by day's end.

Hooded Warbler

Considering that there are only 35 or 36 species of warbler that move through the area in migration, and three of them are normally done migrating before May, 28 in a day is really impressive. (I had only twelve that day, myself, and 48 total species, but a big chunk of my day was spent on social obligations.)

Red-Bellied Woodpecker

And of course, the full complement of permanent resident birds were on hand. Here's a Red-Bellied Woodpecker portrait to finish up.

I like to see Seaside Sparrows by the seaside, by the beautiful sea!

I like to be beside sparrows by the seaside
See Seaside Sparrows by the seaside
by the beautiful sea!

One very rare visitor in New York County is the Seaside Sparrow. It's a marsh bird, like the Nelson's and Saltmarsh sparrows, and Manhattan has relatively little marshland anymore. But on the late afternoon of May 5th there was a report of three in a small green area called Clinton Cove, on the west side along the Hudson River about 55th Street, and of course the area was inundated with birders.

That isn't all the area was inundated with. When the birds were found by Adrian Burke, it was gloomy and threatening weather, and then they were refound the next morning in pouring rain. People found there way to the spot all day. The birds fed mostly in a median between the Hudson Greenway bike path and a pedestrian path. A fourth was spotted, and then one was carried off by a Kestrel.

Lucky for me, three were still there when I finally got there late on May 6. The birds did not seem bothered by people at all. The habitat seemed very poor to me, but there they were--stocky, largish sparrows, extremely drab, with a bit of yellow in front of and over the eye, and a whitish throat. Very unprepossessing birds.

Also, still another Seaside Sparrow was spotted about a half-mile north of Clinton Cove, also on the Hudson River Greenway. It never rains but it pours, I guess.

The birds lingered until at least Tuesday, although at least one more disappeared. Hopefully it flew out rather than becoming a Kestrel's dinner.

As so often happens, once birders are on-site, they start spotting other interesting birds around. Veery, Green Heron, Swamp, Savannah, Song, and Chipping Sparrows, Peregrine Falcon, Hermit Thrush, Orchard and Baltimore Orioles, Ruby Crowned Kinglet, Warbling Vireo, and at least eight species of warbler (Common Yellowthroat, Ovenbird, and Yellow, Yellow-Rumped, Black-and-White, Black-Throated Green, Black-Throated Blue, and Palm Warblers)--a minor demonstration of the famous "Patagonia Picnic Table Effect".

Wanderings

I'm going to continue catching up in reporting my early-Spring birding, but first a couple of notes about the state of the Spring migration. It's shaping up to be really strong, at least for variety. Some people have had 20-warbler days in Central Park in late April, which is impressive, and even I have managed double-digits (and 19 warblers before May 1, which is a great total for me). If you have any chance at all to get out, do it--there are a lot of birds to see.

Backtracking a few weeks, I went to various places to spice up the March doldrums. A trip to the NY Botanical Garden wasn't too productive, though it did get e my first Pine Warbler of the year, in addition to the curious Chickadee at the top of this post.

Our friend Barbara took us out to Jamaica Bay NWR for an afternoon, our first time there. There were some nice birds about, like Ospreys and American Oystercatchers, but they were mostly too far away for good photos.

There was a big flock of Boat-Tailed Grackles (part of which was in the tree in the photo above). I hadn't realized they were so well-established in the New York area. I saw one at the NY Botanical Garden a few years ago and it was a startlingly rare sighting.

This female Cowbird was roosting in a tree outside the visitors' center, directly above a nest box, which is bad news for some nesting bird.

On a trip out to Roseland NJ for a business meeting, I took a walk at lunchtime around the industrial park we were in. I heard a lot of birds tooting and peeping nearby. I went around a building and found a culvert and a gathering of Killdeers, feeding and flying about. They were all calling constantly, justifying their Latin name of Charadrius vociferus, which loosely translates as "loudmouthed Plover".

As always, look for birds and you'll find birds.

Swainson's Warbler!

Thursday morning, I checked Twitter while finishing breakfast. What? Don't look at me like that. It's Spring Migration, and some people are out birding at six in the morning. And some of them will let the world know what they're seeing.

This morning, Alice Deutsch was one of them: "#birdcp swainsons warbler imagine mosaic". It was 7:22 AM.

Well, that was interesting. Swainson's Warbler? Do they even come this far north?

Another birder quickly replied, "Swainson's WHAT? Confirm, please."

"confirming and it's singing"

I tossed the cereal bowl in the sink, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door. Outside, I did something I've never done before: hailed a taxi to take me to a bird sighting. God, I love New York. "72nd and Central Park West", I told the driver. The Imagine mosaic is there, at Strawberry Fields. I resisted the urge to add, "and step on it!"

Traffic was maddening, but I was on the scene by ten to eight. There were twenty or so birders on the park drive, staring into the low bushes separating the road from the pedestrian path. Some were lying on the ground for a better view. (The New York Post story about the bird has a nice photo of the scene.) I got down with them. The bird was singing in the bush--a ringing, jazzy little phrase of six or seven notes, reminiscent of a Fox Sparrow's song. After a few minutes, I saw something walking around down there (Swainson's are walkers), and that got me on the bird.

Over the next forty minuets or so, the bird moved around quite a bit, all under the bushes, all in an area of perhaps 15 feet long by 5 feet wide. The growing crowd followed him around. Every few minutes he sang. He came out into a relatively clear area once or twice, and then there was a flurry of clicking from the bird paparazzi. Eventually, I headed off to work--I wasn't even late. Much.

I kept seeing online report about the bird all day. he just stayed in the same little area. It is estimated that over two hundred people saw him, all in all.

Why all the fuss? Well, it's like this: Swainson's Warbler doesn't really belong this far north,and isn't very common even in its normal range. They breed in the southeast, mostly no further north than South Carolina, except for a population that breeds in the Appalachians as far north as West Virginia. We get one in this part of the country only when it overshoots by a considerable distance during its northern migration, which happens...rarely. Deb Allen did some research and apparently this is the first sighting in Central Park since May of 2000, and the fifth since 1973.

I saw some posts that implied that people were getting into fights while jockeying for position. I am sorry to have to remind you all, there are rules. You are required to maintain an icy civility until your seconds make the arrangements. Brawling in the street is simply infra dig. Tsk.

Anyway, if you're in New York and didn't see the bird, it might still be there Friday. It was still around in the late afternoon, and the weather overnight might not be conducive to it flying...wherever it's going next. What do migratory overshoots do, anyway? Do they figure out they're too far north and go back? Do they wander around until it's time to migrate south again? Anyone know?

Return of the Timberdoodles, and other stories

So I've been letting the blog slide lately. Most of that was life getting in the way. Anyway, migrants are starting to come in, and before they become a flood, I'm going to try to catch up with tales of the late winter and early spring.

Late winter is the doldrums--not that much of birdiness in late February and March. In December and January, you have vagrants and too-late migrants showing up and often settling in around feeders or other winter food sources. But the late winter is kind of static--just waiting for the early migrants to show up.

The Killdeer above I found on the northeast shore of Randalls Island at the end of February. It seems to be teh first one seen in New York county this year, and a nice-looking bird. Last year, a pair tried to nest inthe wetlands area on Randall's Island. I wonder if this is one of them.

In a post late last year, I talked about the birds at the plaza of the old International Paper building in midtown. Some of them--two Thrashers, a towhee, a Swamp Sparrow--were still there in mid-January, and at least one was still there in early March.

The thing with unusual overwintering birds is that they tend to stay around whatever food sources they can find until the weather starts warming up around the beginning of March. Then they start moving around, maybe trying to figure out where the heck they're supposed to go in the spring. So if a vagrant or overwintering bird disappears in January or early February, that's a bad sign. For example, the Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker I saw a lot in the Midtown East area in December and January, I last saw around January 18, so it probably died. But birds that make it to the end of February and then disappear, may well be OK. Anyway, I was glad to see that this Thrasher made it.

So by now you're probably wondering why this post is called "return of the Timberdoodles". Well, I'll tell you. Timberdoodles are American Woodcock, a football shaped bird with eyes set well back on its head and more nicknames than you can shake a stick at. Timberdoodle, bogsucker, Night Partridge, Labrador twister, hokumpoke, mudsnipe. They come north very early--late January through March--and have an awful time navigating through cities because they don't see very well straight ahead of themselves. As a result, they often get stuck in small urban parks, so it wasn't a shock when two of them showed up in Bryant Park at the same time.

I'm glad I saw these two there, because I didn't see any in Central Park this winter. Woodcocks like places with a lot of underbrush to hide in, and last year, for example, I saw a dozen of so in the Ramble over the course of the late winter and spring. This winter, the Central Park Conservancy in its wisdom decided to clear out almost all the brush and low shrubs in the Ramble, so no good habitat for the Timberdoodles. Because life wasn't tough enough for them on migration already.

The Conservancy's no-brush idea also means it's probably going to be a rotten spring to see migrants in the Ramble. You heard it here first.

Among the full-time residents, the Cardinals started singing in mid-January, and are still going strong. One interesting thing is that there have been several sightings of leucistic males singing, like the one above. (Leucism is a genetic condition of partial loss of feather pigment; in cardinals it makes a normally bright red male loot a lot like the mostly gray-brown female.) It's startling to see what at first appears to be a female Cardinal start belting out a song.

Florida close-ups

To return to Florida once more, the best thing about the Green Cay wetlands park is that the birds were often right up close to the boardwalk--sometimes even on it, like this Tricolored Heron.

And also the territorial Limpkin I mentioned in my first Florida post:

Those birds had no real fear of people.

We made two trips to Green Cay. On Presidents' Day we had wanted to see the nearby Wakodahatchee park, another man-made wetlands area somewhat older than Green Cay, but it has very little parking (Probably better to try it on a non-holiday weekday). Since rain was threatening, we decided not to wait and headed back to the more capacious Green Cay.

The rains did come while we were there, sometimes quite heavily, though many of the birds weren't bothered much by it, especially the waders. You can see some rain in the Tricolored Heron photos.

Smaller birds avoided the rain more, but even some of the Grackles stayed out in the open.

When the rain stopped, they all came back out. Here's a tree full of Grackles in the clearing storm:

There were some very visible large nests near the boardwalks, including this Great Blue Heron nest:

And a coupel of trees right next to that had several Anhinga nests.

There were a lot of Anhingas. I didn't see any come up on the boardwalks, but they got pretty close. I like this subadult, who looked very punk.

Their feet are pretty amazing:

I still can't believe how close the American Bitterns got to the boardwalk.

Aren't they supposed to be really skittish?

The Spoonbills were a bit more standoffish, but still pretty close.

And here's one more Tricolored Heron portrait to finish off:

And that's it for Florida. I'll be back soon with Spring's early arrivals here in New York City.

Ambigugoose

Taking a short break from the Florida posts to talk about a goose that turned up on the Central Park Reservoir in Mid-February, and is still there. It was found by Peter Post, who identified it as a Cackling Goose, and then later reviewed his photos and thought it might be a Lesser Canada Goose, and then things went down.

[] Goose

So, Canada Geese used to be easy. Big brown goose, black neck and head, white cheek patch--you know, Canada Goose. Branta canadensis, in the scientific lingo. There were a bunch of subspecies--more-or-less isolated populations, the ones who bred in the far north generally smaller--but those were pretty esoteric for most birders.

About a decade ago, the ornithologists decided that some of those smaller northerly subspecies were in fact a separate species, the Cackling Goose. (Branta hutchinsii, for those of you keeping score at home.) So now there's two species, each with several subspecies, and it's quite hard to tell which is which. So now if a birder is looking at a small white-cheeked goose, they have a problem.

Anyway, Cackling Goose is a fairly unusual visitor in this area--there was some excitement about the one that showed up in Flushing Meadow Park in January--but a Lesser Canada is almost unheard of. In fact, some prominent voices on the NY State Birds mailing list said there was "zero percent chance" of it being a Lesser Canada. Apparently, the Lesser Canada Goose _never_ shows up this far East. And we know his because it never has before. And we know that because any similar goose that does come around here isn't a Lesser Canada, but some other goose, because Lesser Canada Geese never occur here. See?

The email exchanges went on,some in the stiffly polite manner that the scientifically-inclined use when they're losing their tempers. So a couple of days later I went to see the goose. It took a while to find it, just because i had to walk most of the way around the Reservoir before I ran into the particular flock of Canada Geese it was hanging around with, but when I found them, it stood out a mile.

picking him out of a lineup

Much smaller than the somewhat smallish Canadas it was with, maybe 2/3 their size or less. Small head, small beak, very short neck, didn't associate closely with the bigger geese--even when it was in the middle of the flock, there was usually a good twenty feet separating it from the nearest other goose. Kind of dark on the "white" areas.

closest approach to a regular Canada Goose

I don't know. It looks like a Cackling Goose to me. But what do I know?

our suspect with a Shoveler, a pretty small duck

...and with a Ruddy Duck, a very small duck

I see on the mailing lists today that the goose is still around, and has been joined on the Reservoir by another very small goose, who is not so brown. So there's excellent opportunities for further dispute.

Branta somethingorother

And on twitter, I see a report that the British Ornithologists' Union has added the Lesser Canada Goose to its list of species that have been seen in Britain. Except that what they're calling "Lesser Canada Goose" is B. hutchinsii, what we over on this continent, where they come from, call Cackling Goose. Because why not?