Sorry for the late report, but I’ve been without cellphone today. This morning was leading my Sunday “Birding in Peace” tour in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery and I am nearly 100% certain we had a Sandhill Crane. At around 8:30am we were coming around the NE corner of the Sylvan Water, the cemetery’s largest body of water. Walking behind a row of mausoleums our view of the water and surrounding grass was partially blocked. I heard a very loud trumpeting-like sound. It seemed so inconcruous that I momentarily thought there was a person at the waters edge making silly noises. People in the group asked what was making the odd sound. I walked towards the water and scanned for a moment, saw nothing, then one of the participants, Heidi Clevins, spotted heading over the trees towards the northeast what she described as a massive, gray bird (“Almost the color of a Little Blue Heron”). I contacted Tom Preston, who was in GWC, and he put out the word. When people asked whether it was a large heron or egret, I said, no, as those species mostly make deep, guttural sounds. Being iPhone-less I asked someone with a smartphone to call up Sandhill Crane and play the vocalizations. It sounded exactly like what we had just heard.
My tour was just ending, so several of us spend a couple more hours scouring the cemetery but came up empty. I haven’t checked online for any nearby reports yet. Good birding, Rob -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm 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://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --