This morning ~7:45 AM there was a juvenile Buff-breasted Sandpiper in the swale south of the Building at the West End 2 Parking Lot, in Jones Beach State Park, Nassau County. I viewed it twice, although when I tried to re-locate it later with Ken and Sue Feustel we came up empty. Hopefully it returned after I left.
Other notables there included 27 Western Willets on the bar opposite the Coast Guard Station (also 3 juvenile Eastern Willets), a flyover Bobolink, and a Merlin coursing around the median terrorrizing the (very) few Passerines that were around. My aggregate count of Black-bellied Plovers for Jones was 70, and Semipalmated Plovers was ~335. As a side-note on JBWR, and encouraged by Tom Fiore to post my recent sightings from there, I have had a slightly different experience there recently than he has. I've found that Long-billed Dowitchers have been very scant, and there has been another recent transition of the adult Short-billed Dowitchers: a large proportion of them are now of the Hendersoni subspecies which can look very similar to Long-billeds. Also Western Sandpipers have been almost non-existent for the last couple of weeks, with 1 or 2 individuals being the highest I've had, although I've come up with 0 a couple of times as well. The day of the shorebird festival there was only a single Western Sandpiper seen by only two people, despite over 100 observers being present on the East Pond. With all of the plumage variation within the adult Semipalmated Sandpipers (many of them having bill sizes that overlap with Western) now, as well as the aforementioned influx of Hendersoni SBDOs it is very difficult to pick out their rarer cousins without decent scope views. Also I observed no less than 35 White-rumped Sandpipers on 8/17, and the number had been similar to that since around the 13th or 14th, and seemed the same on 8/18. Their calls have become ubiquitous on the East Pond. The last time I saw a Wilson's Phalarope was on 8/17, and judging from the lack of reports of this usually obvious species I would venture to guess those 3 long-staying individuals have moved out and any ones seen from here on out will be new. Good Birding -Doug Gochfeld. Brooklyn, NY. -- 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 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
