Spring Migration 2014, part 1: Good Looks

Another catchup post.

I joined several birding trips with the Hudson River Audubon for early looks at the spring migration. The first trip was in New Rochelle, in the Nature Study Woods. Expectations were high: the American Birding Association list for New York, and many of the local birding blogs around NYC, had been reporting waves upon waves of spring migrants.

Nature Study Woods, in New Rochelle, is less of a proper 'park' than a series of trails through a densely wooded area in the midst of suburban Westchester. I got there about ten minutes late, and the group was still no further than 20 yards into the park: a good sign when the entire group were stock-still and binoculars out. I missed a warbling vireo but there were many other good birds to come.

The stand-out was a great look at an Eastern screech owl:

Perched in a hollow tree about fifteen feet up, quite clear to the naked eye, he responded quite readily to recorded screech owl calls from a smartphone, his little chest vibrating while he returned calls. He looked like a drowsy little cat. After a while, it seemed he realized there was no other owl, but a bunch of tricky humans. He looked quite indignant, and in doing so, became quite a bit more owl-like:

You talkin' to me?

Other good looks were a black-throated green warbler, northern parulas, a scarlet tanager, a rose-breasted grosbeak, more yellow-rumped warblers than you could shake a stick at, a few blue-gray gnatcatchers, a black-and-white warbler, an osprey, and a wood duck.

The blue-gray gnatcatchers were too elusive for a really good picture. The wood duck, like most of the wilder birds, was shy, but I managed to approach from behind cover and ambush it for a good picture. We also saw a thrush, but I forget if it was a Hermit or a Swainson's; at any rate was too far away and too well-camoflauged in the leaf litter for a good shot.

At any rate, it was fantastically productive day for a scant three hours, with several life birds, notably the screech-owl, black-throated green warbler, rose-breasted grosbeak and scarlet tanager. But that would be nothing, nothing compared to the Central Park walk the next weekend...

Delaware Expedition

Catch-up post. Last month, in late April, I joined the Hudson River Audubon Society for a birding trip to the Delaware shoreline. The trip was led by Michael Bochnik. This was the first time I've ever gone on a trip exclusively for birding, by the way. It took three and a half hours by the New Jersey Turnpike down to Smyrna, DE, and the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge.

One of the first sights was a set of purple martin houses, teeming with occupants.

Getting past the co-op board is tough

Purple martens are the largest swallow in North America. They've declined a great deal in the last century, mainly due to reduction in habitat and especially competition from invasive European starlings. In the last few decades, conservationists have put up many Purple Marten condos, which has slowed their decline somewhat.

The Bombay NWR, along the Delaware shoreline, was a good stopover for birds in the spring migration, and of course a good place to pick up birds that favor marshland and shore. There was a very well-maintained boardwalk and trail through several of the marshlands. Several dead trees stood over the reeds throughout the marsh, and among them was several colonies of tree swallows.

There were several of the usual suspects for shoreline and marshland: great blue herons, snowy egrets, great egrets, green herons. A few ospreys were soaring over the waters and diving for fish. There were quite a few life birds for me as well: a green-winged teal, blue-winged teal, a willet, a greater yellowlegs, and a few American coots. Common enough for most birders, but new to me at any rate.

Blue-Winged Teal

Greater Yellowlegs; the beak ~1.5x the size of the head

Willet

Swamp sparrows, a marsh wren, and even a bobwhite quail were heard, but not seen.

A watchtower allowed us a good look, through binoculars and spotting scopes, at one of the target birds for the trip: a black-necked stilt. I did have a good look through binoculars, but it was too far away for the 250mm lens, and digiscoping didn't turn out very well either.

We were disappointed looking for an American Avocet, but that would come later in the summer.

Carolina, Carolina

This past weekend, my wife had a business trip down in Baltimore. While she was holding HR exercises for the feds, I spent a morning in the parks of Maryland.

I have lived in DC many years ago, but this was a new area as a birder, so I checked out the web page of the Baltimore Bird Club. Two birding sites were highlighted: Lake Roland and the Cylburn Arboretum.

After a slight mixup in driving directions, I got to the park rather late, around 9:30. Nothing remarkable (cardinals, nuthatches, mallards) at first. Although there were some tantalizing glimpses of a warbler, very very high in the trees, it was too far away by cloud-diffused light for an ID.

I spent a lot of time at Lake Roland following this guy around:

Black-capped chickadees and Carolina chickadees are virtually identical in every visible way. In behavior, black-capped are little less shy of humans, but that's not a good test in the middle of a park. The one way they can be identified in the field is by song. Black-capped chickadees, as seen all over the northeast from New Jersey on up, have a two-note song: fee-beeee. Carolina chickadees range along the eastern seaboard, south of New Jersey, and have a four-note song: fee-bee-bee-beeee.
 
The wind was roaring that day, and the chickadees apparently didn't feel like talking much. The geographic location alone might have been good enough, but it's not exactly the Deep South in Maryland, and I didn't want to take the chance. Luckily, there are some grand old houses on the border of Lake Roland, and there were some bird feeders one of the backyards.

Oh, okay. If they've got a decent food source, then I wasn't going to feel bad about a trick. The iBird app, in addition to being a handy field guide, also has bird calls. In general, it's not a good idea to use recorded calls to bring a bird out into the open: it wastes the bird's energy, which can be quite vital for a wild creature trying to forage or mate. But since there was a good food source nearby, it wasn't placing them at risk. I played feee-bee-bee-beeeeee, and two chickadees promptly popped up over the garden hedge and replied in kind.


Cylburn Arboretum is a beautiful area: a nineteenth-century mansion, well-tended arbors and gazebos and gardens. There was another mixup, having misread the posted map: I had thought it said aviary, instead I found myself between two ominously humming boxes, and belatedly realized this was the apiary. Good thing I didn't lean on them! Otherwise, nothing was out except some robins, white-breasted nuthatches, lingering dark-eyed juncos, a cardinal or two. Turkey vultures wheeled around the far edge of the forest, and on the back end of the trails, the familiar teakettle-teakettle-teakettle led me to a good look at a Carolina wren.

The Carolina chickadee is a tick on the life list. Odd to think that I ended the trip with good looks at the only two extant North American birds with "Carolina" in their names.

The Great Snipe Hunt (part 1)

For the month of April, I've set out on a snipe hunt. Wilson's Snipe, an elusive shorebird, with camouflage so effective and cryptic that they're practically impossible to spot. There's more than one reason for the old jokes about snipe hunts: one can very well end up with a big weight or a long stand.

My first stop this weekend was at Van Cortlandt Park, on a morning bird walk by Nadir Souirgi. I was hoping the recent rains would make the park into a welcoming environment for snipe, but no such luck. There were the usual spring harbingers: robins everywhere, red-winged blackbirds making a racket in the marshes, white-throated sparrows popping in and out of the undergrowth, and by the bridge leading to the Old Putnam trail, a small flock (20 or so) of rusty blackbirds:

After that, I headed over to the New York Botanical Garden. Debbie Becker has been leading bird walks at NYBG for about 20 years. She had mentioned spotting a Wilson's Snipe during the previous week's walk, the first one she had ever seen at that location.

Well, no luck there either. Debbie was extraordinarily patient and methodical in using her binoculars to scan the marshes and wetlands at NYBG, but the snipe was either lying low or had simply moved on. The wind was roaring that day, though, so he might've been simply keeping under cover. Debbie was on the hunt for more than just the snipe, though: she went through a pine grove and came back with several fresh owl pellets, and after checking several pine groves and oak stands, we came across this great look:

A Great Horned Owl, male. Unfortunately some of the group got rather over-excited, and came right up to the owl, yammering away and taking cell phone pics. Eventually the owl flushed, and then, ominously, another raptor was flushed out of the valley where the owl had fled: a red-tailed hawk. That was it. Debbie shooed everyone out of the area, not wanting to precipitate a hawk/owl duel, which could very well lead to the exhaustion and death of both birds.

Other notable birds seen were a female hooded merganser and a belted kingfisher, both in the far distance. In keeping with all the other times I've seen a kingfisher, it's a truly wild bird, and it took off as soon as people came within fifty yards.

A nice coda to the weekend was a walk with my wife, Jess, through the Loch and the Ravine of Central Park. It was late Sunday afternoon, a beautiful spring day. I had the camera along, and it just so happened that a very obliging bird came right up to me, at eye-level no less, and let me tick another bird off the picture list, a yellow-bellied sapsucker.

Spring, at Last

I got up before 7am for the early-morning alternate-side-parking shuffle. On the way out, my wife said sleepily, "Are you going out birding?"

I wasn't going to, but I grabbed the camera anyway. Doesn't hurt to take a quick look around Inwood Hill Park.

Dark-eyed juncos foraging on the ground; song sparrows and red-winged blackbirds singing in the marsh grass by the soccer field. A pair of blue jays, yammering at some unseen raptor way up on the ridge. And an eastern phoebe: one of the first migrants to arrive in the spring, a little gray bird, buff yellow breast, pumping its tail, flying up and down from ground to branch.

If anything, these pictures show the limitations of the camera. Or my ignorance of some of the camera settings. I have a 250mm lens, f5.6, and a more knowledgeable friend, a professional photographer, said that f-number means that it doesn't let much light in. Lower f-numbers (focal length?) are better. Even on a moderately overcast morning, there was a distinctly long shutter click for these pictures, which means that even though the focus was tight, the slightest incidental motion of the camera gives the pictures a slight blur. The second picture simply happened to be taken in better light.

Well, I don't have the means to shell out for a top-of-the-line 400mm lens. That's ten grand! Yikes! I have bought cars for less. I'll have to compromise with a bargain-basement 400mm and a monopod.

Spring, at last?

Finally, the last gasp of the polar vortex has come and gone. It may be still a good 20 degrees below normal, but there are no below-freezing temperatures in the forecast for the next ten days, the crocuses are out, and Isham Park is mobbed with dozens of robins. Good enough for me.

I'm on the hunt this year, so to speak. My life list is at 187/174: 187 actually seen, worldwide, with 174 pictures. I'm aiming to reach 240 by the end of the year, and update some of the mediocre pics along the way, and put 'em all in a good online album.

End of the Long Winter

The official first day of spring has come and gone, but this long winter just won't let go. March 23rd and possible snow on Tuesday night, with temperatures in the high 30's. It's entirely unreasonable for this time of the year.

There's a silver lining to this, though: some of the wintering birds have a reason to hang around a bit longer. In my neighborhood, there has been a white-winged scoter that's lingered quite late in Inwood Hill Park, which obliged me by swimming into the inlet early last Sunday morning:

But the upcoming weekend is supposed to warm right back up again, thank goodness. In the meantime I'm gonna see if I can catch any late winter stragglers before this (hopefully final) cold snap goes away.

First Post

Welcome to the CoffeeBird blog! I am an amateur birder in New York City.

I began birding in summer 2011. I'm going to migrate (ha) my birding photos to this site over the next few weeks, as well as update with continuing experiences in birding and nature in general.