Rough-legged Hawk at Griggstown

As part of my Failure to Find Photogenic Fall Foliage loop trip up the D&R canal on Oct 30th I stopped in at Griggstown Preserve and birded from the parking lot - because I was unwilling to strap on orange to avoid some hunter shooting me. The terrestrial birds around the parking lot were: Eastern Bluebird, Palm Warbler, Song Sparrow. The fly-bys were far more interesting:

• Multiple flocks of American Pipits, of which the first one was 60++ birds
• Palm Warblers, seen apparently moving as diurnal migrants
• Yellow-rumped Warblers, probably just local boys flying around
• The expected local raptors/vultures: Red-tailed, Black V and Turkey V
• Rough-legged Hawk, pale morph

I was more than a little surprised at the latter. Although they sometimes do winter at Pole Farm (Lawrenceville) which is probably no more than 20 miles to the south-west, I don't encounter many uncommon raptors away from the hawk watches. The D&R canal is a modest raptor corridor as they follow the river for a little while on their way south, but the terrain is flat and not given to generating uplift like the hillier environment of (say) the Delaware River to the west. There was also a small falcon with it, even further west of me, so small that although I thought it was Kestrel I couldn't rule out Merlin.

When I say tame, I mean ABSURDLY tame - Prothonotary on my camera bag

On Thursday a.m. I took the opportunity of a relatively warm and sunny morning to revisit Bryant Park and the Prothonotary. This bird was just as tame as before. At one point I had stored a sliced banana on top of my camera bag and the Prothonotary hopped on top to investigate. What's more, I was too close to my bag so I stepped away to get this bird within my minimum focus distance. The bird didn't care. In fact the bird didn't care much for the banana either - it preferred a piece of pastry offered by a non-birder, and I watched it consume it with great enthusiasm. Somewhat ironic, since I had placed a few slices of banana around to try and get it to eat that instead of being a carbohydrate crack addict. (Ben noted that croissant, which is what this pastry might have been, is loaded with fat too).

I once had a Prothonotary Warbler (the Raritan River bird) fly inside my lens hood on the glimpse of its reflection in my objective lens - it had been singing endlessly for weeks and was a very tweaked male, that one. This PRWA is the Big Lebowski variant of Prothonotary. Next thing it will be smoking weed and eating french fries.

No reports of this PRWA on the morning of a strong northerly wind (Oct 29th) and even stronger migration flight (mostly sparrows, robins) in NJ and NY. Please God let this bird have got a clue and gone south while it still can. Update: no subsequent reports suggest that it left during the night of Oct 28th/29th on the first of a series of good flight days of late fall migrants.

Unofficial NY City bird checklist

Faced with someone asking me for a NYC bird checklist, and failing once again to find any trace of one, I decided to construct my own at:
http://www.philjeffrey.net/NYC_unofficial_list.html

Which of course brings up the thorny subject of "what is a valid sighting". So I started with the NYC Audubon list, added in species that I knew were seen in recent years, and then added in yet more species from the NYSARC reports (1977 and later). This pushed the initial list of 344 up to 355, which is pretty close to the total I'd originally guessed.

Update: more work needs to be done - for example mining old Kingbird records - but the list total is now up to 367 (Nov 11th 2010).

Prothonotary Warbler impersonates House Sparrow

No, these aren't Photoshop composites, that really is a Prothonotary Warbler scavenging for food underneath and on top of trash cans and tables in Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan. This bird was discovered by Matthew Rymkiewicz on October 21st but conversations with locals suggest that it's been around for at least 2 weeks prior to that. It's feeding on crumbs and other bits of food just like a House Sparrow and will often follow the flocks around for just that purpose.

This is the eastern edge of Bryant Park along 5th Avenue and right in front of the NY Public Library. There are some trees, a few bushes and a fine display of chrysanthemums but otherwise is totally urban and about the last thing that resembles a southern swamp.

Based on feather shape the bird is a first fall immature, and by coloration and extent of white on the tail it's a male. There are pretty much never any fall records of Prothonotary Warbler in NYC for one good reason: there's no breeding population north of us. It seems likely that this immature bird is has a confused sense of direction. Unfortunately this also means that it might not reset and head south when the weather turns colder. But at least for the next week the weather looks good for its survival.

Context really alters bird behavior - not only is this Prothonotary very tame indeed, so are the White-throated Sparrows, Hermit Thrushes and in particular the Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers that were spending time in this small space. There were 4 sapsuckers working the trees along the two city blocks (40th-42nd) along 5th avenue, often at eye level and extremely approachable. There was also one Black-capped Chickadee, reflecting the invasion year that we're having. The Prothonotary hasn't started using the sapsucker holes yet, a behavior we've seen with other birds that have stayed into the winter (Cape May Warbler in Riverside Park, Western Tanager in Central Park, and possibly the Scott's Oriole).

This bird last seen on Thursday, Oct 28th.

Age and sex ID based on molt, part 2

First fall immature Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Central Park, NYC, October 8th

Click on the image to get a larger view of this bird (and ignore the fact that the © statement is floating in mid-air). This is a pretty classical example of retrix (tail) and primary (wing) feather shape in a first fall immature - the feathers are somewhat pointed and in fact in this bird the feathers come to a sharp point. Adults have blunt and rounded ends to their feathers. At this time of year, when both adults and immatures have relatively recently molted their flight feathers as well as their body feathers, all of the plumages look pretty fresh. If I ever get an adult Kinglet to pose for me - these are especially frenetic birds - I shall put one up for comparison.

I'm not sure there's any meaningful plumage difference between sexes at this stage, so I'm not even going to try.

Yard birding Oct 17, 18th

In the yard in Ewing on Sunday morning there was evidence of migration, with my Red Oak full of Yellow-rumped Warblers, White-throated Sparrows and Chipping Sparrows in small flocks around the yard, and a fly-over Purple Finch. The other resident species were milling around, perhaps attracted by the flocks: White-breasted Nuthatch, Carolina Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Downy Woodpecker and Red-bellied Woodpecker.

On Sunday PM just one Yellow-rumped Warbler was still lurking around.

On Monday morning at least one Yellow-rumped was sounding off, and there was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet passing through.

Griggstown, Oct 17th

Despite Franklin Twps best attempts to degrade the habitat by mowing it to death, I went to check out Griggstown Preserve on Sunday morning. There was relatively low activity around the parking lot initially, nor in the sections of recently mown fields that used to be full of sparrows (Savannah mostly, but several species at this time of year). I did track down a Palm Warbler in the unmown section of the far south-west corner. A single American Kestrel was hunting the fields.

I checked out the maintenance section (I've nicknamed it the Trash Heap but it's cleaner now) at the southern end of the preserve and this was the best area for sparrows: Song, Swamp, Savannah, White-throated and an adult White-crowned. Several flocks of Purple Finches passed over while I was there, although only one or two were seen perched.

Back at the parking lot a group of Eastern Bluebird was hanging around the fence line, there was a small flock of House Finches and a single Chipping Sparrow. There wasn't much sign of a hawk flight although three Red-tailed Hawks passed overhead and an immature Bald Eagle was seen heading north at some distance to the east. A Sharp-shinned Hawk was hunting another corner, and this looked like an opportunistic migrant rather than a resident bird.

Migration winds down (Oct 16th)

Not so much necessarily numbers, although the park was relatively quiet on Saturday, but the diversity. Gone are the multiple warbler species, the numerous sapsuckers etc. Now it's mainly sparrows and the Yellow-rumped Warbler. Exemplifying that: time spent at Tanner's Spring on Saturday came up with 7 species of bird, and there were only singles of the Black-capped Chickadee, Eastern Towhee and Gray Catbird in contrast to the large numbers of the other species (Grackle, American Robin, House Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow). Hermit Thrushes were numerous but I saw no other Catharus.

What there was a small burst of was sparrows at Hernshead, with two immature White-crowned, two Swamp, and in addition a few Indigo Buntings.

Cooper's Hawk
Eastern Phoebe
Black-capped Chickadee
White-breasted Nuthatch
Carolina Wren
Winter Wren
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Hermit Thrush
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Pine Warbler
Eastern Towhee
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Indigo Bunting
American Goldfinch

Sunday - sparrows -

Lacking a hoped-for large migration movement this weekend - it seemed to be concentrated on other sites like Sandy Hook in NJ - I ended up late into the (Central) park on Sunday and saw relatively little.  By far the most interesting venue was the Maintenance Field, where there was a fine collection of sparrows:

Eastern Towhee
Chipping Sparrow
Field Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
American Goldfinch  (yes, OK, this one's a finch)


 in conjunction with other birds like a couple of bill-snapping Eastern Phoebes and several Hermit Thrushes.  Warblers were few and far between.  The rest of the list:


Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Eastern Phoebe
Carolina Wren
Winter Wren
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Hermit Thrush
Gray Catbird
Magnolia Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Palm Warbler
American Redstart

Friday - not quite

As a presage to a weekend that promises a decent migration on Sunday, Friday looked to have potential. Potential that wasn't quite borne out - there were migrants, mostly sparrows, but numbers were not especially high. Most were one or two of a species, with more numerous individuals being Yellow-rumped Warbler, Sapsucker, Flicker and Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Purple Finch and White-crowned Sparrow again put in an appearance.

Northern Harrier
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Northern Flicker
Eastern Phoebe
Black-capped Chickadee
White-breasted Nuthatch
Brown Creeper
Carolina Wren
House Wren
Winter Wren
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Swainson's Thrush
Hermit Thrush
Wood Thrush
Gray Catbird
Brown Thrasher
Northern Parula
Magnolia Warbler
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Blackpoll Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart
Common Yellowthroat
Eastern Towhee
Song Sparrow
Lincoln's Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Purple Finch

Sunday - slower

Although I'd hoped that the weekend's migration might peak on the 2nd day, it was not the case - it was markedly slower in Strawberry Fields and elsewhere in the park.  In contrast to the "5 Magnolia's in a tree" morning of Saturday I saw precisely NO Magnolias on Sunday.  The migrants had left on the strong northerly breeze.  But the Chickadee movement continued and there were new additions: White-crowned Sparrow and my first Purple Finch for the entire year.

Later in the day I went up to check out State Line hawk watch and found the flight winding down for the day, but nevertheless a few raptors came by (Cooper's and Sharp-shinned, Osprey, two Ravens, Bald Eagles, Red-tailed Hawk, two Kestrels and multiple Turkey Vultures).

Osprey
Bald Eagle
Northern Harrier
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
American Kestrel
Chimney Swift
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Northern Flicker
Eastern Phoebe
Blue-headed Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Black-capped Chickadee
Red-breasted Nuthatch
White-breasted Nuthatch
Brown Creeper
Carolina Wren
House Wren
Winter Wren
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Swainson's Thrush
Hermit Thrush
Wood Thrush
Gray Catbird
Cedar Waxwing
Northern Parula
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Pine Warbler
Palm Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart
Common Yellowthroat
Scarlet Tanager
Eastern Towhee
Field Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Purple Finch

Oct 2nd: Better morning

Strawberry Fields was loaded with migrants at 6:50am, although nothing actually rare amongst them.  A small flock of Chickadees was the first invasion migrants I'd seen in a while.  A relatively subtle Bay-breasted Warbler was the best of the bunch.  In the rest of the park - or at least the parts of it I visited - there were some birds but not in anywhere near as great numbers.  Nevertheless it finally added up to 16 warblers with the assistance of a Yellow-breasted Chat that was shy even by Chat standards - I saw only it's head.  A Rusty Blackbird in the Maintenance Field was a nice find in a place you don't normally find them.

Double-crested Cormorant (two V-flocks flyover)
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (many)
Northern Flicker
Eastern Wood-Pewee (1)
Eastern Phoebe
Blue-headed Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Black-capped Chickadee (a few groups)
Red-breasted Nuthatch
White-breasted Nuthatch
Brown Creeper
Carolina Wren
House Wren
Winter Wren
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Swainson's Thrush
Hermit Thrush
Wood Thrush
Gray Catbird
Brown Thrasher
Nashville Warbler
Northern Parula
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Pine Warbler
Palm Warbler
Bay-breasted Warbler
Blackpoll Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart
Ovenbird
Common Yellowthroat
Yellow-breasted Chat
Scarlet Tanager
Eastern Towhee
Song Sparrow
Lincoln's Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Rusty Blackbird (Maintenance Field)