Thursday, 8 June, 2017 Central Park, Manhattan, N.Y. City A late-spring surprise after a fairly quiet morning walk in the Ramble was the finding of a singing male Kentucky Warbler, near the park’s East Drive, directly across from the (west side of) the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in the rather confined, but densely shrubby cover on the NE, east, & SE sides of the very tall monolithic stone 'Cleopatra’s Needle', which is very prominent in that area & has a single walkway to its base. I heard, & very briefly saw, the Kentucky work its way in the thickest part on the southeast slope-side, while it sang about 15 times from around 6:30 - 6:50 this morning. Adding to the initial confusion from this, a male Mourning Warbler piped up from the nearby trees, & seemed to be circling around, though I last saw & heard the Mourning go to the east side of the park roadway (closer to the Met. Museum)… the Kentucky sang more often than did the Mouring, while I was there. There seemed to be few other migrants in the Ramble section at least in very early morning, and one would expect a majority of healthy migrants to have moved on, given the excellent conditions for doing so, Wed. night into this a.m.
Perhaps another try later on, but it won’t be too surprising should any warblers be fairly quiet as the morning & the day go along. Best chances might be in late afternoon or even early evening. And then there might also be a skimmer-watch, as that species has fairly regularly turned up in Central (oddly) in early summer foraging session, mainly seen in evening hours, although on some past occasions also in early mornings, & much more rarely in full day-times. Referring to Black Skimmer, of course… - - - - "Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?” - Rachel Carson (1907-1964; marine biologist, conservationist, author whose books include ‘Silent Spring’. Sir David Attenborough has remarked that that book may have had an effect on science second only to Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”.) good -and ethical- birding, Tom Fiore manhattan -- 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/ --