I birded Kissena Park for a couple hours this AM with Jeff Ritter and Bob and Collen Veltri. A bit of stuff must have come in under the radar during the past few days, because it was surprisingly birdy. Most numerous were robins and song sparrows,many of whom were singing on this warm fall morning, but there were more interesting birds as well.
We started at the ballfields. With multiple football games going on, field 9 was the only quiet one. Things were quite active there, with white-crowned, field and Savannah sparrows seen. But the highlight was a trio of vesper sparrows first noted on the chain link backstop, and later on the field where they were joined by an American Pippit. (Of note, when I returned later in the morning the vespers had moved to field 6.). We then headed for the orchard, east of the velodrome, were we saw swamp and song sparrows, a few ruby crowned kinglets, and a brown thrasher. The orchard’s highlight, however, was a delicate, orange-crowned warbler, flitting around the cottony flower seeds. On the way out, we looked into the middle of the velodrome were we saw a bright yellow Eastern Meadowlark amongst all the robins. (It may have been the one Cesar Castillo had found earlier in the week.) What a beauty. Lastly, we headed over to the corridor for a quick once around. In addition to phoebes, hermit thrushes, and blue headed vireos, we finally saw good numbers of finches, including gold, house, and and at least 2 female purple finches. Here is a link to some photos of these birds, and to a video of the meadowlark: https://flic.kr/s/aHskKz9yRt https://vimeo.com/189529619 Happy late fall birding, Peter -- 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/ --
