RSS for birding

Yahoo's Pipes site is obviously not the only way to handle RSS feeds for birding sites. Google's Reader is another one, and has the advantage of useful interfaces on smart-phones. So here are the RSS/Atom/XML links that I'm using for both Yahoo and Google:

eBirdsNYC: http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/ebirdsnyc/rss
SINaturaList: http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/SINaturaList/rss
BTBlue: http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/btblue/rss
NYSBirds-L: http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.xml
NJBirds: https://lists.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/wa?RSS&L=NJBirds&v=ATOM1.0
JerseyBirds: https://lists.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/wa?RSS&L=JerseyBi&v=ATOM1.0

Lots of programs can read RSS feeds, including browsers like Firefox. Yahoo groups offer RSS feeds by default. Princeton's LISTSERV-based RSS feeds seem to have problems with Yahoo's Pipes but work ok in Google's Reader. Other non-Yahoo lists may or may not offer RSS feeds and the HTML aggregate at birdingonthe.net doesn't either - so the coverage cannot be comprehensive.

Because of the issues with Princeton's RSS feed and Yahoo pipes I am using Google's Reader and the RSS feeds above to check lists "in the field".

NYC bird list postings aggregator

Experimenting with the Yahoo Pipes site I created an RSS aggregator based on the message archives of four NYC area birding lists (eBirdsNYC, SINaturaList, BTBlue, NYSBirds-L)

http://pipes.yahoo.com/philjeffrey/nycbirds1

Which, in a certain amount of duplication, also contains this blog (disabled for now until I can filter it more effectively).

Oct 12th, Central Park

Lured in by the prospect of an even better migration day than the previous one, I found I'd predicted the movement wrong and there was less volume than Oct 11th. However spending quite a time at Tanner's Spring did produce a slow trickle of warblers and a late-ish Red-eyed Vireo:

Wood Duck
Eastern Phoebe
Red-eyed Vireo
House Wren
Winter Wren
Hermit Thrush
Brown Thrasher
Northern Parula
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Palm Warbler
Blackpoll Warbler
American Redstart
Scarlet Tanager
Eastern Towhee
Chipping Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow

Oct 11th, Central Park

I was up at the North End of Central Park on Sunday looking for the Sedge Wren reported the previous day. There was a decent movement of late fall migrants, including many Yellow-rumped Warblers. One brief reported sighting of the Sedge Wren and then nothing else, so I left after a while. The Ramble was not that active, but of note was a tagged Monarch Butterfly (see pic) in the Maintenance Field. Other than that, a better than average fall migration day

American Kestrel
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Northern Flicker
Eastern Phoebe
Blue-headed Vireo
Brown Creeper
Winter Wren
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Swainson's Thrush
Hermit Thrush
Gray Catbird
Brown Thrasher
Cedar Waxwing
Nashville Warbler
Northern Parula
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Yellow-throated Warbler
Palm Warbler
Eastern Towhee
Chipping Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Lincoln's Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco

Central Park, Oct 6th

Not quite an epic day, but the best fall migration day for me of 2009 with good numbers of birds at Strawberry Fields at dawn (the benefit of getting the 0535 out of Princeton Jct) and birds continuing to drop in for at least another hour or more. Sparrows, woodpeckers, phoebe and kinglets dominated, with an unspectacular warbler diversity but I managed to eke out 13 warbler species (not bad for fall) but nearly all in the single digits for individuals. Species mix was mid-late fall, with both Swainson's and Wood Thrushes outnumbering the single Hermit Thrush and Red-eyed rather than Blue-headed Vireos.


Great Blue Heron
Gadwall (still 25+ at Turtle Pond)
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (several)
Northern Flicker (many)
Eastern Phoebe (several)
Red-eyed Vireo (3)
Winter Wren (3)
Golden-crowned Kinglet (many)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Swainson's Thrush
Hermit Thrush
Wood Thrush
Gray Catbird
Brown Thrasher
Cedar Waxwing
Northern Parula
Magnolia Warbler
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Pine Warbler (Turtle Pond)
Palm Warbler
Blackpoll Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart
Ovenbird
Northern Waterthrush
Common Yellowthroat
Scarlet Tanager
Eastern Towhee (several)
Song Sparrow
Lincoln's Sparrow (Maintenance Field)
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Indigo Bunting (Maint Field, Strawberry Fields)
Baltimore Oriole (1)

Griggstown Preserve, October 5th

There's been a bit of a mowing frenzy at Griggstown, which has mowed the best fall sparrow habitat down to the stubble, and also mowed the existing Grasshopper Sparrow sites. Although they're probably trying to reverse the succession from grassland to scrubland the aggressive mowing does make me wonder about next spring.

In the meanwhile, the place somewhat sucks for sparrows in fall, with substantially lower numbers and diversity compared to last fall. Highlights were two fly-over Broad-winged Hawks and a small flock of American Pipits that dropped in as I left, but generally a fairly disappointing visit.

Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Broad-winged Hawk
American Kestrel
Northern Flicker
Carolina Wren
Gray Catbird
American Pipit
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Palm Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Eastern Towhee
Chipping Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Indigo Bunting
American Goldfinch