Hooded Crow, Staten Island

This bird is an Old World species of crow, the Hooded Crow, at Crooke's Point of Great Kills Park (part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, just as Jamaica Bay WR is). Back when I still lived in Britain it was a subspecies of the Carrion Crow (Corvus corone) but subsequently was elevated to full species status as C. cornix. Hooded Crow is somewhat of a predator, and the local several pairs of Northern Mockingbirds instinctively know this - they're mobbing the crow quite hard whenever it pops into the parking lot, and often on the beach too. So although the above photo looks like they're companions, nothing could be further from the truth.

This is a pretty significant vagrant, or at least would be if they had much of a migratory habit - Hooded Crows show shorter range migration in winter as a reaction to hard weather (rather like Blue Jays) but like all the crows that I'm familiar with are mostly sedentary. Given the location it's rather tempting to think this was a ship-assisted bird. It could also be an escapee, but there's no obvious feather wear from a cage and the bird is fairly wary. Strongly suggestive of wild origin but I doubt it flew trans-Atlantic under its own power.

Also at Great Kills: Brown-headed Cowbirds incl juveniles (why can't the Mockingbirds harass these ?); Yellow Warbler; Willow Flycatcher; Gray Catbird; Common Tern; Osprey; the usual suspect on the Gull front.

Update: the Hooded Crow moved off Staten Island not long after I saw it, but was found again hanging out on Long Beach Island in New Jersey (this is south of Barnegat Light, so it's traveled a fair distance). As of August 5th it's still present.

Wild Goose Chase - Jan 4th

Barnacle Goose and Pink-footed Goose were in NJ and NYC respectively, which was enough of a lure to make me chase them.

But first I started out locally, visiting Pole Farm briefly to check on the pale phase Rough-legged Hawk which was hunting over the field off the Federal City Rd entrance, but too distant for photos. Then up to northern NJ and DeKorte Park in the Meadowlands to look for the Snowy Owl that seemed pretty reproducible there. About all it took to find it was to walk up to the other birders that were already there at 10am. Northern Harrier and Rough-legged Hawk were also present in this area. Thank God - at this rate I was going to miss all the Snowys during an invasion year, perhaps the best one in quite some time.

Feeling optimistic I skipped across Staten Island quickly, along the Belt and into Flushing Meadows Corona Park where I started scanning Canada Goose flocks to no avail. And driving the wrong way on roadways that were extremely badly signed. Mea culpa. I checked both north and south of the Long Island Expressway and found a few Canada Goose flocks and no Pink-foot. After a while, I gave up on this first version of the wild goose chase and headed back down the Belt. I decided to stop at Floyd Bennett Field to scope for water birds in Jamaica Bay, coming up with the usual suspects: Common Loon, Red-throated Loon, Horned Grebe, Red-breasted Merganser, Bufflehead and Common Goldeneye. I didn't find a Great Cormorant, however, often quite regular there in winter.

After that, I decided to try for the Western Grebe on the south shore of Staten Island. Thankfully this was a lot more cooperative, being seen well in NY waters from the pier just to the east of Mount Loretto. Also present were several Long-tailed Duck.

Then out of Staten Island by way of the Goethals Bridge and back north to DeKorte Park to see if the Snowy Owl was any closer - in fact it was further away but there were still birders there looking at it. There probably was a slow trickle of coming and going all day.

The light was waning, so I gave up on staking out Northern Shrike at Great Swamp NWR and decided to try for the Barnacle Goose at Califon in NJ towards sunset. Predictably for my karma on Sunday the bird did not come into roost while I was there - I've seen that bird twice in ~8 visits, but there's always more time to look for it and the Canada X Barnacle hybrid that I'm particularly interested in before it leaves in spring.

My year list sits at a modest 43 species, but it's early days yet.