I decided to pursue the Yellow-breasted Chat at Bryant Park in the city on Sunday morning, staying clear of Central Park because of the NYC marathon. The main body of Bryant Park is full of pop-up micro stores hoping to make it big for the holiday season and an ice-skating rink sponsored by Citibank, which makes it all the more remarkable that the park was loaded with White-throated Sparrows. Also there: one American Robin, one Ovenbird (my new late date for Ovenbird), a few Hermit Thrushes, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. I finally found the not-especially-tame Yellow-breasted Chat out front of the library at the same location as the previous year's Prothonotary Warbler. But it did not pose for pictures like the Prothonotary did and was singularly obsessed with hunting down food. This has been an outstanding year for the normally rare Yellow-breasted Chat in NYC but it's also interesting that Bryant Park hosted another Chat in 2002 which put it on the map for birders.
Unfortunate footnote to this trip was finding three dead Red-winged Blackbirds - all males - on the sidewalk just west of Bryant Park. Probably window strikes.
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A rare Yellow-breasted Chat in Bryant Park -- well of course he'd like to people watch in Herald Square as much as the rest of us! I hope you got a little audio if you caught his call, we hear it's quite unique :) Happy birding.
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