I spent over 5 hours at Jones Beach today with Brendan Fogarty, hoping that last night's winds would bring new birds. When I first arrived it was still rainy, foggy, cold, and seemingly devoid of landbird activity. We had a fairly successful stakeout at the boat basin with a good range of shorebirds, the highlights being a flyover Whimbrel and a large flock of Red Knots. Least and Common Terns are back in small numbers, and cormorants were moving constantly. As the rain died down, we witnessed a decent fallout and began to explore the area for migrants. It turned out to be a very lively day with good activity spread throughout the area. We tallied 15 warblers: Cape May (including a trio of males moving together), Blackpoll, Magnolia, Chestnut-sided (heard only), Black-throated Blue, Black-throated Green, Prairie, Palm, Parula, Ovenbird, N. Waterthrush, Black-and-white, Yellowthroat, Yellow, and Yellow-rumped. The Rumps, along with kinglets and gnatcatchers, made up the bulk of the flight. Other birds of note included Purple Martins, Bank Swallow, Indigo Buntings, Purple Finch, Glossy Ibises, RT Hummingbirds, RB Grosbeaks, late Merlins and Sharp-shin, thrushes, orioles, vireos, and a female Scarlet Tanager. We saw a possible adult male Summer Tanager fly from the coast guard hedgerow, seemingly touching down in trees near the gazebo/sandbar area, but we could not relocate it. Brendan snagged a few photos of the bird flying away, which are open for scrutiny and comments. The pics can be found in the full checklist can be found below. All told, we managed to just barely crack the triple digits for species observed. What a morning!
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S29488363 Cheers! -Tim H -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
