Winter Is Coming

The days grow short, and it's getting cold. Ducks are coming in to stay at the Reservoir, and now the Juncos are here, so Fall migration is basically over.

I hadn't been seeing too many Juncos this Fall, but a couple of days ago I found a flock of about 60 on a path behind Tupelo Meadow in Central Park, and more scattered south of there in the Ramble. White-Throated Sparrows are still in relatively short supply.

Meanwhile, on Cedar Hill, I've been watching a female Downy Woodpecker excavating a roost hole. When they feel winter coming on, many woodpeckers dig holes in trees to roost in at night, which is what's happening here in this video clip. (By the way, if anyone can recommend simple video-editing tools for Windows, I'd like to hear about them. Doesn't have to be free, but does have to be really easy. Mostly I'd be looking for something to do stabilization better than the YouTube tool.)

Woodpeckers don't reuse their nest holes for winter roosting, which makes perfect sense when you think about what a nest cavity must look and smell like by the time the young have fledged.

She appears to have finished her roost hole now. Hopefully she can defend it from Starlings and House Sparrows.

Happy Thanksgiving! You stay warm, too.

More street birding

I work across the street from St Bartholomew's Church, which is in midtown Manhattan on Park Avenue. It has a tiny garden which attracts a number of migrants (and which I've written about once before). Recently I saw a couple of new species in the park--rather late in the afternoon both times, so I didn't get any usable photos; I;m going to use that as an excuse to post some old ones.

I saw a dark shape walking by the wall of the church. It was too large for an Ovenbird (which I've seen there once or twice this Fall), but I couldn't imagine a pigeon skulking in the shrubs like that. I went around to the church steps, where you can look down into the garden, and found a Woodcock sitting under an evergreen shrub.

It was an interesting vantage point. The bird was facing straight away from me--I was behind and above it, but it's eyes are so placed that it was staring right up at me. It's a startling thing to see up close. They really do have eyes in the back of their head.

There were a pair of Gray Catbirds in the garden for a while. Last year, one catbird overwintered. However a couple of weeks back, I spotted a Brown Thrasher in the garden at dusk, and both it and the catbirds seemed agitated--the Thrasher was flitting in and out of the shrubs, and the catbirds were sitting in the tree above them and calling loudly. The next day, they had all gone. It's a mystery.

Pelican!

large flying things

I was at Jamaica Bay a few weeks ago looking for the American Avocet that spent a long time at the East Pond. I didn't find it that day, but near sunset, I took a last look from the overlook near Big John's Pond. There was nothing exciting on the water, but when I looked overhead, I saw a huge white bird flying south.

It was already past me when I spotted it, but I got my binoculars up and say it was an American White Pelican. I thought I wouldn't be able to get a decent photo, but luckily it turned at the south end of the pond and flew back toward the north, and I got some good flight shots of it.

The American White Pelican is mostly a western bird, though some winter in Florida. We get occasional vagrants; there was even a pair that overwintered at Jamaica Bay in 2015-16. It's probably the best bird I've seen that I didn't know was there beforehand.

I'm glad I went for the bins first, by the way. I don't think I would have gotten an identifiable photo if I had grabbed then camera first. The view in the binoculars was good enough that even if the Pelican had kept on going, I would have had an ID. People who say "pics or it didn't happen" can bite me--it just doesn't work that way, not always.

The Pelican was still around the next morning, and several people got to see it. Then it was gone. I finally saw the Avocet a couple of weeks later--a terrible view through the scope, but at least I saw it. (For that matter, it was way out of range for my camera, and I can't seem to get the hang of digiscoping, so I don't have proof that I saw it; see above.)

Kingbird vs Hawk

Earlier in the summer, soon after the young Red-Tailed Hawks from Pale Male's brood had fledged, I spotted one of them in a tree along the 79th Street Transverse. It called occasionally, a creaky version of an adult hawk's scream. As I drew nearer, I realized that the young hawk was being mobbed by a single Eastern Kingbird, who I knew was nesting nearby.

This is the only time I've seen the red crown on a Kingbird. It's usually hidden, but this was one angry bird.

The Kingbird made pass after pass at the hawk, sometimes going away for a few minutes then returning again. On every close approach, teh hawk would screech.

The Kingbird was actually striking the hawk occasionally, though I didn't manage the catch that in camera.

The hawk eventually decided he'd has enough, and flew off. The Kingbird's young fledged a couple of weeks later, and you'd see the parents feeding them around Turtle Pond.

Nesting season (part 2)

A well-known location for nesting Piping Plovers is at the tip of Breezy Point, which is as far west on the Rockaways as you can go. It's a pain in the neck to get to--I don't drive and even if I did, Breezy Point is a private community with no parking for non-residents. To get there, you have to go to Fort Tiden and then hike along the beach for a couple or three miles, except it's not clear that you can do that because the community claims beach is also residents-only (and how that can be legal is beyond me). The books an websites about birding the area suggest wither walking the beach anyway, or taking an ATV path from the fisherman's parking lot. Anyway, it's a hassle, but Piping Plovers.

It turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. As soon as I reached the beach at Fort Tilden, I started seeing American Oystercatchers. They nest in the dunes there, and sometimes right on the beach, and there's ropes indicating where you shouldn't go.

As I started walking west, I spotted some juveniles, and also some pairs who appeared to be doing courtship--making scrapes on the sand, moving side by side in sync, and so on.

As I was photographing the Oystercatchers, I became aware that the section of beach I was passing seemed to be clothing-optional. You might think that would be important enough to mention in the websites about birding the area (or for that matter the books about NY area birding), but you would be wrong.

After a spirited discussion with a couple of beachgoers about the uses and virtues of telephoto lenses, I continued west, but I hadn't gone fifty yards before I spotted something very small moving in the beach grass.

Oooh! Piping Plovers! I had't expected them at all in this area. The dunes here weren't even roped off; one or two people were sitting in the dunes. I actually saw the chicks first:

There were about four chicks, I think, and two adults nearby.

Having seen the Piping Plovers I didn't feel a need to go all the way to the Breeze Point tip. I went as far as the fisherman's parking lot (permit only) and the "Surf Club". The club certainly does their best to make it look uninviting to walk past it own the beach, and I didn't see anything looking like a path leading west from the parking lot. I did walk from the lot up to Rockaway Point Boulevard. Lots of songbirds singing, especially Towhees and Song Sparrows, and some Red-Winged Blackbirds who did their best to convince me I should be elsewhere. I did find them a little more alarming than the sunbathers.

On the way back up the beach, I spotted more Piping Plover adults in the roped-off areas.

And more OysterCatchers.

It was a nice visit. Highly recommended.

Nesting season (part 1)

The Heron Is In

It's nesting season! Out on Governors Island, the Yellow-Crowned Night Herons have returned. The nest they used last year was destroyed somehow during the winter, so they relocated to near the Harbor School. These photos were taken near the end of June I wonder if they've got hatchlings yet.

time for a stretch and a scratch

The Common Terns seemed to be doing well; their nest colony isn't in plain view at their new location (their half of Yankee Pier collapsed during the winter and they're now on Tango Pier, which is entirely closed to people) but I could see one fledgling on the pier. Too far for a decent photo, though.

Some birds have fledged their young already (at least their first round, many will renest). Here's a baby Cardinal from Central Park:

the dark beak is a sign of youth in a Cardinal

and a recently fledged Blue Jay:

yelling for food

and the Common Grackles have had a good year so far:

time to feed the baby

kids are so demanding

More soon.

Surf Scoter, Governor's Island

One thing about birding is, you never know what's going to turn up.

Saturday I went out to Governor's Island. I wanted to look for this year's Yellow-Crowned Night Heron nest, which I had a heck of a time finding, and check on how the Common Tern colony was doing, and see what else might be around.

I found a nest up a tree sort of in the area the Heron was supposed to be, and watched it for a half-hour or so. It turned out to be the wrong nest. Oh well. Since I was close to the west edge of the island, I took a break to see what might be on the water. I spotted some terns and Laughing Gulls down the shore and decided to stroll over there and try to get some photos of the birds fishing. I was interrupted by a couple who wanted me to take their picture.

It pays to be polite. It was only after I had finished that that I spotted an odd black duck swimming south maybe twenty yards out. I might have missed it if I had gone trotting off towards the gulls. It turned out to be a Scoter, which is unusual in this area in June--they should all be up around Hudson's Bay--and almost unheard of in New York County at any time. Almost all of the eBird sightings are from right after Hurricane Sandy--water birds often get blown great distances in storm systems.

This bird is a Surf Scoter, I believe--the bill is quite distinctive, though Surf Scoter males usually have big white patches on the forehead and nape of the neck (fishermen call them "skunk coots"). However, I think young males can show this all-dark plumage, and that black spot at the base of the bill really doesn't occur in other Scoters. This appears to be the first sighting of a Surf Scoter at Governor's Island. It's also probably the coolest bird I've ever found myself.

I eventually found the Yellow-Crowned Night Heron nest. I'll talk about that some other time, though.