The migrant flight at Heckscher State Park (Suffolk Co.) this morning (7-11) was only fair, with Robins making up the bulk of the birds passing overhead between 7:00 and 8:00. Later, Tree Swallows took over as the most numerous species. Other passerines detected by call and/or seen after they dropped into cover included one small flock of BOBOLINKS (flyovers, heard only), Yellow-rumped and Palm warblers, and an Indigo Bunting. Some sparrows had arrived also, including 3 juvenile WHITE-CROWNED. The wet areas in parking lot #7 held only a handful of shorebirds--5 Killdeer, 1 Semipalmated Plover, 2 Semipalmated Sandpipers, and 1 Dunlin. 3 Greater Yellowlegs were seen flying out of the interior marsh across the park road from the lot. On the beach in front of the Field #8 pavilion were 39 Black-bellied Plovers and 2 Sanderlings.
But the highlight of the morning, while also a migrant, was not a passerine or shorebird, but a SHORT-EARED OWL. I accidentally flushed the bird from its roost in the tall grass of the pine savannah-type habitat between parking lots 7 & 8. It was no more than 25 feet away when I first caught sight of it, already airborne and moving away. It circled around and flew east, where, about halfway across lot #8, it was beset by a juvenile male Cooper's Hawk that I'd seen not too much earlier. The Coop dogged the the owl for 5-10 seconds before I lost sight of both. The owl reappeared shortly thereafter though, and was visible intermittently for another 1-2 minutes coursing over the grassy/scrubby area east of lot #8 before finally moving out of sight. The earlier sighting of the aforementioned Cooper's Hawk involved it landing in a tree already occupied by 2 crows. The hawk perched for ~30 seconds, no more than 3-4 away from the corvids, which quite uncharacteristically ignored the raptor. -- 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/ --
