Central Park, May 4th

On the second of what was eventually four consecutive days birding the park, the numbers in the Ramble were almost as high as the previous day (Thursday).  The highlight of the day was a Grasshopper Sparrow which had been found on the croquet courts the previous day, and which I happened to find first on adjacent Falconer's Hill early in the morning.  This is my third species of Ammodramus sparrow in Central Park - the others being Saltmarsh Sparrow (twice!) and Nelson's Sparrow.  My park list is now 196 although getting to 200 would be quite a challenge.  Also on Falconer's were the colorful duo of male Indigo Bunting and two male Scarlet Tanager.

A close second in the celebrity stakes was a male Cerulean Warbler, initially silent but finally singing, making it easier to find in its traditional canopy top habits.  The area it was found in (the small hillock now called the "Captain's Bench" is approximately the same as that of last year, and might reflect the Cerulean's habitat preference of sycamores associated with nearby water, at least based on where I find them in NJ and NY.  Many Baltimore Orioles were nearby, particularly fond of the flowering Tulip Trees.

Other good birds included Veery, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Yellow-throated Vireos, Blackburnian Warblers and a Least Flycatcher that actually vocalized in addition to a silent Empidonax seen later.  The light was still challenging, with significant overcast, which made identifications frequently a challenge.  Before returning to Falconer's Hill to watch the Grasshopper Sparrow again in the early afternoon I saw quite an unlikely event: a Solitary Sandpiper flying through the Ramble at eye level headed through the trees toward the Lake.

16 species of warbler, down a little from the previous day but covering reduced territory.

Solitary Sandpiper                     
Ruby-throated Hummingbird              
Least Flycatcher                       
Empidonax sp. (Least-ish)                    
Great Crested Flycatcher               
Yellow-throated Vireo                  
Blue-headed Vireo                      
Warbling Vireo                         
House Wren                             
Ruby-crowned Kinglet                   
Veery                                  
Hermit Thrush                          
Wood Thrush                            
Brown Thrasher                         
Ovenbird                               
Northern Waterthrush                   
Black-and-white Warbler                
Nashville Warbler                      
Common Yellowthroat                    
American Redstart                      
Cerulean Warbler                       
Northern Parula                        
Magnolia Warbler                       
Blackburnian Warbler                   
Yellow Warbler                         
Chestnut-sided Warbler                 
Black-throated Blue Warbler            
Yellow-rumped Warbler                  
Prairie Warbler                        
Black-throated Green Warbler           
Eastern Towhee                         
Chipping Sparrow                       
Grasshopper Sparrow                    
Swamp Sparrow                          
Scarlet Tanager                        
Rose-breasted Grosbeak                 
Indigo Bunting                         

Migration wave, Central Park, May 3rd

It is approaching the peak season of  May 5th-12th, and today's birding showed that despite challenging viewing conditions with dark overcast.  I left the camera at home - a rarity for me - and ranged further afield, starting at the North End which already had interesting reports by the time I reached the park.  I found one of these birds - a Tennessee Warbler - fairly quickly.  The Tennessee was literally belting its song out, although it was a lot easier to hear than see and I only got mediocre views.  For quite a while it was singing semi-continuously.  There were also a lot of other singing birds, particularly Nashvilles and Yellows.  I found Yellow-throated Vireo by song, and saw at least two up there.  Blue-headed Vireo was especially numerous.  I also found Blackburnian by song, and finally tracked down a Blue-winged when I was searching for the elusive "Lawrence's" (Blue-winged x Golden-winged).  I also had a fleeting glimpse of a tantalizing bird - something that by size and particularly color was either a female Summer Tanager or a female Blue Grosbeak, but which was extremely uncooperative and I had to leave that unidentified.  I didn't even wander off the Great Hill, such was the activity.  There was also a Least-ish Empidonax flycatcher hunting low on the south slope of Great Hill, but did not sing for confirmation.

Eventually I headed south toward the Ramble.  I found Prairie Warbler near the Tennis Courts, American Redstart at the nw corner of the Reservoir, and about 100 yards south I stopped to listen to something that sounded somewhere in the range Hooded-Magnolia Warbler song.  It wasn't full-fledged Hooded and I suspected Magnolia for a while because a second bird was answering it.  The west side of the Reservoir is not really Hooded Warbler territory being mainly trees with little understory.  A  surprise, then, when this second bird turned out to be a male Hooded Warbler, and the first male Hooded showed itself after they'd taken a break from singing at each other.

Nothing was happening at the Upper Lobe at the Ramble, despite Bay-breasted being reported there earlier, but I did pick up Hermit Thrush and my first Wood Thrush nearby.  Toward Azalea Pond there was a good mix of warblers present, with two Magnolias and  Black-throated Blue Warbler also being new for the year.  Down at the Gill there was Northern Waterthrush, Northern Parula (one of many heard all day) and another year-first: Canada Warbler.

On my way out of the park I picked up two Great Crested Flycatchers and a single Veery, bringing my new-for-the-year additions to a grand total of twelve and a total of twenty warbler species for the day, with Tennessee and Hooded the best of those.

American Kestrel
Empidonax sp.
Great Crested Flycatcher
Yellow-throated Vireo
Blue-headed Vireo  (many)
Warbling Vireo
House Wren
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Veery
Hermit Thrush
Wood Thrush
Gray Catbird
Ovenbird
Northern Waterthrush
Blue-winged Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler (many)
Tennessee Warbler
Nashville Warbler (several)
Common Yellowthroat
Hooded Warbler
American Redstart
Northern Parula
Magnolia Warbler
Blackburnian Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Palm Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Prairie Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Canada Warbler
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Baltimore Oriole (several)

Princeton, post-deluge, May 1st

South-east winds are not outstanding for migrants but I suspected that the morning's storm front would dump some migrants locally.  There were quite a few warblers in Princeton Institute Woods, most of which were Yellow-rumped.  Unfortunately the low light and gray skies made for some difficult tree-top birding.  As with Central Park the previous weekend, lots of migrants were heard and not seen in 30 minutes birding before work.  The biggest one to get away was a Yellow-throated Vireo that I could follow through the canopy by ear but could not get on it before it left the scene.  House Wrens were also putting in a strong showing - perhaps migrants had swelled the numbers of birds already attempting to hold territory and I heard my first Wood Thrush of the year (not pursued in the very wet woods)

Yellow-throated Vireo
House Wren
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Wood Thrush
Ovenbird
Black-and-white Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
American Redstart  (first of year)
Northern Parula
Yellow-rumped Warbler  (many)
Eastern Towhee 

Possible heard-only: Blackburnian Warbler

Central Park, April 28th

In one week numbers have dropped because of indifferent migration weather, but diversity has exploded.  Somehow - and many of these were heard-only - I racked up 15 species of warbler in a morning while spending chunks of it looking for a Kentucky Warbler.

The Kentucky had been seen the previous day and stuck around the same place in Shakespeare Garden on the Saturday.  I was told it had not been seen in an hour, but Kentucky's often make regular circuits of the same terrain and vanish for quite some time between appearances.  I first saw it - a ventral view - scooting into a tree and dropping onto the ground whence it did a very Kentucky thing and vanished entirely.  Subsequently found by others it eventually ante'd up by perching on the fence and the semi-exposed rock.  Right on time, that Kentucky, in the last few days of April.

Also right on time was the Nashville in Strawberry Fields, the singing Prairie Warbler in the Upper Lobe and the Blue-winged singing on top of Shakespeare Garden.  Two of these were heard-only, but at least I found a Northern Parula near Belvedere Castle while being taunted by an elusive Black-throated Green.  Challenging Kentucky for the best bird of the day was a singing Orange-crowned Warbler in the big oak still standing in Maintenance Field.  Another decent bird was a Chestnut-sided Warbler also in the Maintenance Field.  Despite a warm winter and prematurely warm March the migrant timing is pretty much as expected - some early appearances but most of them are clamped by the need to fly a couple of thousand miles during spring.  Kind of tough to speed that up.  This is still a transitional stage in spring migration, as evidenced by more early spring species like Blue-headed Vireo and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, and Hermit Thrush as the only Catharus.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Blue-headed Vireo
Barn Swallow
House Wren
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Hermit Thrush
Gray Catbird
Ovenbird
Northern Waterthrush
Blue-winged Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
Orange-crowned Warbler
Nashville Warbler
Kentucky Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Northern Parula
Yellow Warbler
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Palm Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Prairie Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Eastern Towhee

Negri-Nepote, pre-deluge, Apr 22nd

Yellow Warbler was singing from the neighborhood when I was getting ready to depart for Negri-Nepote despite threatening weather and a day's worth of rain headed up on the southerly winds.  It didn't quite make it to my yard list or my year list, since I never saw it and it didn't come quite close enough.

Instead, in heavy cloud and beginning drizzle I headed out to Negri-Nepote Grasslands (Franklin Twp) to check for shorebirds in the small pond there.  Field Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow, Eastern Towhee, House Wren and Common Yellowthroat were all singing.  Along with four Mallard males in the pond were four breeding plumage Greater Yellowlegs, a nice find, and the real prize was a Pectoral Sandpiper at the back of the pond.  No Wilson's Snipe, recently reported here, but I don't usually see Pectoral until the fall.  As the rain started to fall I retreated to snag my first seen Common Yellowthroat for spring migration, close to the parking lot.

Central Park, Apr 21st

Apparently getting a little slow in my old age, I missed the 0612 train into Manhattan by 1 minute and spent 45 minutes at Princeton Institute Woods while waiting for the next one, which was if anything more productive than Central Park: heard but not seen Common Yellowthroats; singing Rose-breasted Grosbeak; singing Black-and-white Warbler; singing Gray Catbird; singing House Wren.  It was a little cool so activity only started to pick up while I was there.

The Ramble in Central Park was not having its best day, even allowing for the fact I got there an hour later than intended.  Strawberry Fields was quiet, there was a Northern Waterthrush feeding and singing in the small stream that flows under Balcony Bridge, but many areas in the Ramble were slow enough that I only spent about three hours there.  Yellow-rumped and Palm Warblers were still around, Black-and-white Warbler was a new addition for this migration, but it was notably slower than the previous weekend.  The woods at the North End was rather more productive, judging from reports (Worm-eating, Prothonotary).

Central Park, April 14th/15th

In a series of days with strong south-westerly wind components I did a rare mid-April "double" weekend, traveling by train into Manhattan on both Saturday and Sunday. Usually in mid April there's not enough volume of diversity to pull me in on both days.

While diversity was lacking, there was a lot of volume on both days. Warblers dominated Saturday but sparrows put in a good showing on Sunday. Multiple Louisiana Waterthrushes on both days, year firsts like Brown Creeper and Winter Wren, my House Wren early date for the north east, and Brown Thrasher my earliest date for the park by about 10 days. The aggregate list did not contain anything remarkable, but the number of birds for the middle of April was surely one of the best migration movements for that date I'd seen in years.

Also of note was a leucistic White-throated Sparrow that I saw in Strawberry Fields on both days (photos obtained on Sunday) which had a striking mostly-white head.

Double-crested Cormorant
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Northern Flicker
Blue-headed Vireo
House Wren
Winter Wren
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Hermit Thrush
Brown Thrasher
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Pine Warbler
Palm Warbler
Louisiana Waterthrush
Chipping Sparrow
Field Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Brown-headed Cowbird
American Goldfinch

A slice of spring at Princeton Institute Woods

An overcast day with north-westerlies led me to cancel a prospective trip into Central Park and stay locally, birding Princeton's Institute Woods. Activity levels were relatively low, but there were some signs of spring: singing male Pine Warbler; male Eastern Towhee; singing Eastern Phoebe; male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker; a pair of Wood Ducks. The Tree Swallows have moved into the pond in small numbers after it was refilled this week - the pump that maintains it was broken for a while and it had almost totally dried out. Some frogs have survived, but it remains to be seen if it can reach the traditionally deafening levels of frog singing that you can encounter on warm spring evenings.

Early migration at Plainsboro Preserve, March 24th

By far the best bird of the day was a breeding plumage adult eastern/yellow Palm Warbler seen relatively close to the visitor center as the main gravel trail walks back along the south edge of the old gravel pit. The other main evidence of spring was the return of Tree Swallows. Otherwise the preserve was relatively quiet - all the migrant geese have left, leaving just a few breeding Canadas and there was one Belted Kingfisher along the shoreline. The woods were predictably quiet, mainly Dark-eyed Juncos and White-throated Sparrows, with the diversity enlivened a bit by Northern Flicker and Eastern Bluebird.

Notable also were at least two Mourning Cloaks sunning themselves along sheltered parts of the main trail.