I've just gotten back from a week long visit to California, which included a trip down Highway 1 from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Along the way was a stop in Big Sur, and a chance to see some of the California Condors there.
For details about the hawk tagged 51, see www.mycondor.org.
I was keeping an eye out for American Woodcock in Central Park, but was shocked to find one on Randalls Island out in the open next to the Golf Driving Range. It was a fun discovery.
On Sunday, I spent most of the day in the park trying to see a Common Redpoll without success. However, I did have a good time seeing a group of Red-winged Hawks for the first time this year, a very beautiful European Goldfinch (possibly an escapee rather than a wild bird), Owls and the Common Merganser on the Harlem Meer. While I wasn't trying for a long species list, I did end up with a respectable 37.
| 180 | Canada Goose | |
| 3 | Wood Duck | |
| 57 | Mallard | |
| 6 | Bufflehead | |
| 8 | Hooded Merganser | |
| 1 | Common Merganser | |
| 2 | Ruddy Duck | |
| 1 | Pied-billed Grebe | |
| 2 | Double-crested Cormorant | |
| 1 | Cooper's Hawk | |
| 4 | Red-tailed Hawk | |
| 2 | American Coot | |
| 18 | Ring-billed Gull | |
| 1 | Great Black-backed Gull | |
| 4 | Mourning Dove | |
| 2 | Northern Saw-whet Owl | |
| 2 | Red-bellied Woodpecker | |
| 1 | Yellow-bellied Sapsucker | |
| 6 | Downy Woodpecker | |
| 1 | Hairy Woodpecker | |
| 4 | Blue Jay | |
| 8 | Black-capped Chickadee | |
| 33 | Tufted Titmouse | |
| 6 | White-breasted Nuthatch | |
| 1 | Brown Creeper | |
| 74 | American Robin | |
| 2 | European Starling | |
| 1 | Song Sparrow | |
| 23 | White-throated Sparrow | |
| 2 | Dark-eyed Junco | |
| 4 | Northern Cardinal | |
| 7 | Red-winged Blackbird | |
| 20 | Common Grackle | |
| 9 | House Finch | |
| 11 | American Goldfinch | |
| 1 | European Goldfinch | |
| 15 | House Sparrow |
A nice trip to Randalls Island on Sunday yeilded the two resident Peregrine Falcons atop the center building of The Manhattan Psychiatric Center. One was on a corner and the other on a set of communications towers. The bird on the tower was banded but it was too far away to capture any numbers.
The count for the day was fairly good. 35 species with a Common Goldeneye and a Belted Kingfisher as highlights. The day had three raptor species, American Kestrel, Peregrine Falcon and Red-tailed Hawk.
| 620 | Brant |
| 406 | Canada Goose |
| 30 | Gadwall |
| 3 | American Black Duck |
| 28 | Mallard |
| 12 | Bufflehead |
| 1 | Common Goldeneye |
| 14 | Red-breasted Merganser |
| 24 | Ruddy Duck |
| 1 | Red-throated Loon |
| 1 | Double-crested Cormorant |
| 2 | Great Cormorant |
| 1 | Great Blue Heron |
| 2 | Red-tailed Hawk |
| 1 | American Coot |
| 20 | Ring-billed Gull |
| 1 | Herring Gull |
| 4 | Great Black-backed Gull |
| 45 | Rock Pigeon |
| 3 | Mourning Dove |
| 2 | Belted Kingfisher |
| 3 | American Kestrel |
| 2 | Peregrine Falcon |
| 4 | American Crow |
| 4 | Black-capped Chickadee |
| 1 | White-breasted Nuthatch |
| 14 | American Robin |
| 2 | Northern Mockingbird |
| 57 | European Starling |
| 1 | American Tree Sparrow |
| 1 | Song Sparrow |
| 2 | White-throated Sparrow |
| 1 | Dark-eyed Junco |
| 6 | Northern Cardinal |
| 15 | House Sparrow |
A group of Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks were a new species for my life list seen at the Wakodahatchee Wetlands (Delray Beach, Palm Beach County).
I realized on Saturday that I haven't spend a real day birding in a long while. I've been going after specific birds, but not doing a real walk counting birds for a long time.
So, I birded Randalls Island from end to end on Sunday to see what I could find. Boy, did I feel rusty. Looks like I'm going to be spending lots of time this winter doing long walks...
Photographs are of the Red-tailed Hawk pair and their nest just north of the stadium field, an American Kestrel, Brant, Black-capped Chickadee, and Red-breasted Mergansers.
Randalls Island has been discovered this winter by birders in New York City. Easily visited by public transportation, this island between the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens offers an interesting variety of birds.
Today, I visited the island. Thanks to the great birding skills of Ben Cacace, I got to see three American Pipits. This is a new species for my life list.
Florida has lots of great birds in areas around its water treatment/water control ponds. Close to the main entrance to Everglades National Park, are two small hammocks of trees near a Storm Control/Water Management area. The local birders call them the Lucky Hammock and The Annex on ebird.org.
At The Annex there were a pair of Barred Owls. One perched on a powerline just after flyout and I got to watch the owl on two separate evenings for only a minute each night.
Who would have thought it was easier to owl watch in Central Park?
I spent a few days in the Everglades over the Christmas/New Year's break. I managed to got a close up look at a Purple Gallinule, which is a new bird for my life list while on vacation.
The video is very shaky as there were high winds, but it shows the typical Purple Gallinute behavior of wading in Water Lillies. The photographs show the Purple Gallinule climbing a small bush to eat flowers. This was a special treat as it allowed me to see the whole bird including its large feet!
The first rule of owl watching, is don't talk about owl watching! So, I won't say much. It's just really early for a Long-eared Owl in the greater New York City area.
On vacation in Brittany, France, I discovered a wonderful two hour cruise to a nature preserve, off of Pleumeur-Bodou. The cuise visits a set of islands that host breeding puffins and gannets, that this year is celebrating its centenial as a nature preserve.
The puffins had already left for the season, but hundreds of Northern Gannets were still raising young on one of the islands. Other birds and mammals seen on the trip were European Oystercatchers, Herring Gulls, Gray Seals, European Shags and a single Peregrine Falcon.
Over the weekend, I relaxed an hour outside of New York City as a guest of friends with a house on Long Island Sound. They had a wonderfully vocal sparrow that reminded me how the simplest of birds can be fascinating if you take the time to study them.
The Manhattan Owlets, a week later...
(These photographs were taken on April 14th. I wanted to wait until the owlets had fledged before posting these photographs. Owls can attract huge crowds, this family deserved some peace and quiet.)
Manhattan has a nesting pair of Great Horned Owls with two owlets this year. This is wonderful news. The nest is close by a Red-tailed Hawk nest and the two species are managing to live closely together.
(These photographs were taken on April 6th. I wanted to wait until the owlets had fledged before posting these photographs. Owls can attract huge crowds, this family deserved some peace and quiet.)
I took advantage of the warm weather to visit Inwood Hill Park at the northern tip of Manhattan. Both Red-tailed Hawks visited the nest, but they don't appear to have started nesting just yet. They copulated while I was there.
A Great Horned Owl was roosting near the Red-tailed Hawk nest. It will be interesting to see how these birds manage to coexist.
I finally had a chance to make it over to the American Museum of Natural History to see the Rufous Hummingbird that has stayed through the winter. It belongs much further west, so it's been a treat for New York birders all season.
A two hour drive from New York City is the Shawangunk Grasslands NWR, an old airstrip that is now a National Wildlife Refuge. This time of year it is home to a number of Short-Eared Owls that appear about an hour before sunset.
Tonight, I saw six. It was a life bird for me!
(The refuge is currently closed to pedestrians, as they are reseeding. The pictures are a little blurry due to the distance they were taken from.)
More photographs from Florida: Red-Sholdered Hawk, Bald Eagle, Northern Harrier and Florida Scrub-Jay.
At the birding festival, I got a chance to go down to the Viera Wetlands. While there this River Otter took a dust bath.
I attended the 2012 Florida Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festive in Titusville this weekend. It was an extremely well run event and I had a great time. On Saturday morning, I got up at 4:30 a.m. to see a group of three Red-cockaded Woodpeckers.
Due to habitat loss, the population of this bird is about 1% of its original size. The population of this bird is limited to about 6,000 breeding groups, or about 14,000 birds in the Southeast United States.
Happy New Year.
Please be happy hawk watchers!
Hawk watching is great fun but recently there has been a lot of negativity on some hawk watching blogs and chat rooms in New York City. I usually let these things go, but these spats are distracting us from the real raptor issues in New York City -- protecting nest sites, limiting rodenticide usage and supporting local rehabbers.
New York has real issues right now. For example, in Riverside Park the local community is putting pressure on park management to greatly increase rodenticide usage in the park. The park's management would like to control the rodents while protecting the hawks by focusing on improving sanitation rather than putting out poisons. However it doesn't have funding to replace its wire trash cans throughout the park with rodent resistant models. Believe it or not, replacing the trash cans would cost over $100,000!
Is the hawk watching community doing anything to support Riverside Park management? A few are writing letters of support, but that's about it. Instead bloggers and chat room users are arguing about hawk names, tree management policies, bird banding, false I.D.s and making provocative statements.
Please don't squabble over issues that don't matter. It's more than a waste of time and energy. It prevents us from addressing the real issues and reduces our credibility as a lobbying group.
Over the last few months these false issues have included:
So, if you care about hawks, please keep to the real issues which primarily are protecting nest sites, limiting rodenticide usage and supporting local rehabbers!
While Chipmunks are common in the surrounding areas, I had never seen one in Central Park until today. I had heard they had returned a few years ago, but never ran across one until today. It was on the eastern slope of the Great Hill.
The condition of the park was mixed after the very early snow storm. The trees still had leaves and the snow was very wet. While some trees had fallen over, most of the damage seemed to be limited to broken branches. The greatest damage was in the southern section of the park.
Update: 10/31/11 - I've received word that the damage is worse than I estimated from my walk in the north.
The park staff is going to be working very hard to clean up the damage and get ready for the New York City Marathon which is next Sunday.
River Otters are totally off topic for this blog, but whenever I photograph them, I want to share the images of them. Pictures taken at the Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve in Fort Myers.
Although the vacation started a few days late due to a snow related flight cancellation, my trip to Fort Myers turned up some new birds for life list.
A Limpkin was on my list because all of my friends had teased me about this noisy bird. I saw the species on December 31st at Harns Marsh in Lee County. An off the beaten trail place that has lots of Apple Snails.
There were two pairs of Limpkins in easy viewing distance.
The annual Central Park Christmas Bird Count was on Sunday. It's a great event that brings together the Urban Park Rangers, the Parks Department, Audubon NYC and lots of amateur birders to take a census of the birds wintering in the park.
After a series of bad weather counts with snow, rain or bitterly cold temperatures, this count had enjoyable, if chilly weather.
The day before, I looked for the two unusual birds that have been around, the Varied Thrush and a young Red-Headed Woodpecker (which at this age, has yet to get a red head.) Along the way I had nice looks at a Cooper's hawk.
On Sunday, I joined the Northeast team. Highlights for me were a Carolina Wren and young Red-tailed Hawk at Mount Sinai Hospital. After our counting was done, our team saw a Merlin in the Northwest team's area, I saw a young Red-tail being harrased by Pale Male at 63rd and Fifth, and at dusk I watched the park's surviving Eastern Screech-Owl's fly out.
The count had 62 species of birds, including birds from the count week. There are lots of birds in Central Park, even in the winter! The count had 11 Red-tailed Hawks, 9 Cooper's Hawks, 2 Merlins, 1 Sharp-shinned Hawk, 1 Peregrine Falcon, and 1 Eastern Screech-Owl.
