Nancy O'Keefe and I (John Laver), drove the Jones Beach West End loop on Sunday morning. We'd read somewhere a dearth of Brown Thrashers for the region. Well, we saw six from the car without really trying. Don't know if that's a lot or not.
John Laver & Nancy O'Keefe Manhattan On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 11:11 AM Shaibal Mitra <shaibal.mi...@csi.cuny.edu> wrote: > Judging from many, many recent conversations with fellow birders, it seems > that people are having a tough time of it during these June doldrums. From > independent sources over the past week, I've heard: "crushing > disappointment;" "why is it so bad?;" "is it going to get better?" > "something could show up, right?;" "didn't birding used to be good?;" "this > place used to be good, I think" and more. And this has mostly been in the > context of ordinary, local birding, not directly related to the more > ominous big-picture concerns expressed by Chris recently. > > My usual response, admittedly slightly sadistic, is that birding > excitement has always been relative. We modern observers can't begin to > imagine how bad it was before the legal protection of birds was implemented > a century ago, and yet the observers of that time still found birdwatching > exciting--and were motivated enough to achieve protective legislation in > the face of forces as ruthless and malevolent as those confronting us now. > Imagine the excitement experienced by Harry Hathaway, the father of Rhode > Island ornithology, when in 1894 he saw his first Great Blue Heron, after > ten years of field work! It was Hathaway's ongoing work that eventually > revealed that a unique, seemingly outlying, 19th Century winter record of > White-throated Sparrow in RI was not an accident. He documented two more > winter records and lived long enough to see RI's plundered and deforested > landscape recover sufficiently to harbor the lisping flocks of > White-throats we now take for granted on the CBCs. > > On Long Island, Ludlow Griscom scolded over-exuberant birders who tossed > off sight records of Ring-billed Gulls in winter and summer, citing a > countable number of such specimens as the gold standard of documentation > for that species in that context. Chafing at this discipline, Cruickshank > and Peterson figured out how to find and identify Ring-billed Gulls better > then their predecessors--proving again the eternal pleasure of purposeful > birdwatching. > > Yesterday I saw my first adult Ring-billed Gulls of the season at Robert > Moses SP, Suffolk County. I'm not sure of the date for my last spring > adult, but I did manage to record that none were present by 17 April: > > https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S55097294 > > And I am able to pull up the date of the late-June return of adults in at > least one other year: > > https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S17210602 > > [note to eBird: please enable sorting of checklists by Julian date!] > > A little sleuthing subsequently revealed that two of my colleagues beat me > to it this year, documenting an adult Ring-bill at Cupsogue two days before > my exciting find (though it required some follow-up work to obtain their > photos and a definitive age): > > https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S57623401 > > Hypothesis: Ring-billed Gulls whose breeding efforts fail after early June > abandon the colonies and disperse, some reaching the coast. > > Shai Mitra > Bay Shore > -- > > 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/ > > -- > > -- *John L* *You could not step twice into the same river.* *Heraclitus of Ephesus* -- 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/ --
