The Northern Nassau Christmas Count was held on Saturday, Dec 19th. The count was actually curtailed by a few hours to allow people safe passage home in anticipation of the coming blizzard, which did not disappoint. Although the snow did not begin until about 1:30 PM, the wind was in full force from dawn on, increasing in the afternoon to the point where there were small breakers on Long Island Sound.
The count totaled 100 species even, a bit below average. The unanimous highlight of the count was the first recorded Common Ravens for a Long Island Christmas count, two count-week birds that have been hanging around the Roslyn Harbor area since early November. Using the Audubon database, I searched all the current counts for Long Island and found no prior records. The closest records came from the Bronx-Westchester count of one bird in 2003 and two birds in 2007. I did not check the myriad older counts listed in the database, but I plan to. Other highlights of the count included Lesser Black-backed Gull, 4 Great Egrets,Green Heron , 4 Wild Turkey, 2 American Woodcock, 7 Cooper's Hawks, Peregrine Falcon, 14 Eastern Screech Owls, House Wren, Eastern Bluebird, 2 Chipping Sparrows, and 25 Snow Buntings. >From a numbers standpoint, Greater Scaup continues its recovery into western >Long Island sound with 20,095 recorded on Saturday. Although this pales in >comparison to last year's 53,000 on the Queens Christmas count, it is still >encouraging and a single flock of 12,000+ birds on the sound off Sands Point >was visually stunning. Also, American Robins made a nice showing, outnumbering Starlings (1925 vs 1559)! Loons, Grebes, and "sea" ducks were low but they were very difficult to spot given the rough surf and frozen eyeballs. Some expected birds were represented by a mere single individual: Double-crested Cormorant, Black-crowned Night Heron, Common Merganser, American Coot, Purple Sandpiper, Fish Crow. And some were missed altogether: Northern Gannet, Lesser Scaup, Black Scoter, Virginia Rail, Ruddy Turnstone, and Canada Goose (just checking to see if you're still reading). Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Glenn Quinn, compiler -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
