Birding all day with no camera (left at home) and no cell phone (battery died early), I noticed how good it felt to be liberated from these distractions. Then things got complicated.
It began raining lightly and Patricia decided not to come out on the flats with me at Cupsogue, just east of Moriches Inlet, Suffolk County. I asked her to check on me periodically as she birded from the roadway, in case I found something really good, in which case I would flail about to catch her attention. My first round of gesturing came not long after we split up, as I attempted to indicate the presence of a Whimbrel on the western edge of the flats. Little did I know that Patricia was at that time looking at a Hudsonian Godwit on a bar even farther west (a sandy bar that pelicans have been known to roost on, visible from a cut in the dune about a quarter of a mile west of the Cupsogue parking lot), and she of course could not see me at all from there (even if she were inclined to do some flailing of her own). Proceeding with my birding, I was pleased to see (and hear) eight Lesser Yellowlegs in a shallow panne--always a good sign of active migration at this salty/sandy site that tends not to hold species like LEYE and Stilt Sandpiper. Then I found a beautiful near-adult Arctic Tern. I alternated bouts of waving at the dune-line with close study of the tern (it deviated from a full breeding adult only in its dusky lesser coverts and only moderately long tail streamers, reaching just beyond the wingtips at rest). As the tide came up, it flew toward me showing its translucent primaries and distinctive buoyant flight to good effect, and it landed not ten meters from me. At this point I started to have serious misgivings about the virtues of being unencumbered by cameras.... Eventually my gesturing (which was now subdued, so as to alarm only savvy primates as opposed to naive birds) seemed to produce a result, as I saw Patricia making her way out onto the flats. Leaving my scope trained on the tern on the deserted flats, I raced a quarter of a mile to meet her half-way. That's when she told me about the godwit. It's also when it started to rain again. And, back to the north, this is also when some boaters began moving toward the tern flock. I left Pat to try to locate her godwit, took her phone, and set off as fast as I could in a desperate bid to phone-scope the tern before it was flushed. I failed. Most of the terns settled back in eventually, but the Arctic was not among them. Pat failed to find the godwit, too, but with only one phone, I had to cross the flats once more to learn this. She had had enough and headed in. I stayed out stubbornly as the tide came up, hoping that either the tern or the godwit would return. The tern did not, but as I re-checked my flock of roosting Willets (50+ adult eastern, no juvs yet, and one first summer Western), there was the Hudwit! I phone-scoped it, checked the terns one more time, then slogged back across the flats for the sixth time in two hours. Other notable birds out there included single Roseate and Royal Terns, and at least three hendersoni SB Dows among at least 100 griseus. When I got to the Beach Hut, Pat had picked up two Greater and one Cory’s Shearwaters over the ocean; another 45 minutes of scoping yielded five more Cory's Shearwaters and about ten Gannets. This exciting (but at times frustrating day) began with a nice group of shorebirds at Mecox Bay, where there was a yearling Lesser Black-backed Gull, the first juvenile Ring-billed Gull we've seen this year, and where 18 Lesser Yellowlegs and 15 SB Dows had us hoping that one of Delaware's two Ruffs might have been tempted over to us. Mecox looks great and ought to be checked thoroughly over the next few days. Sagaponack had flats but few birds, and Montauk Pt. was socked in with fog. Things brightened up for us at Big Reed Pond in Montauk, where we saw lots of newly fledged passerines and a fresh juvenile Bald Eagle (probably a wanderer from down south). If people check for the Hudwit and Arctic Tern tomorrow, I would suggest checking Pikes Beach as well as Cupsogue for the former, and, with regard to the latter, keeping in mind that many of our Common Terns have completely red bills at this time of year. Cheers, Shai Mitra Bay Shore Think green before you print this email. -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
