This morning at Floyd Bennett Field I came across a rather interesting flock of ~450 Brant on the mudflats at the boat ramp parking lot. This flock contained a "Black" Brant, and a hybrid Snow Goose x Brant. While I had never run across one of the latter, it is apparently a reasonably well-known hybrid, and one has spent recent winters in the Belmar, NJ area. Paul Guris seems to be the one who coined the name: "Bro Goose" for this mutt combo, which I rather like. All the Brant flew off in a couple of waves staggered over the course of a few minutes, most of them headed south.
Photos of both are at this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29840397@N08/ ----------------------------------------- I continued east to Point Lookout, where upon my arrival I ran into several birders leaving the Grace's Warbler spot who had been there all morning and seen nothing. As the sun had just recently came out, I was still hopeful that it would show, but I stayed in the area searching from 11:30 to ~1:20 with no success on that front. The wind built up a bunch during my time there, and while there weren't quite the gusts that this area experienced from Sunday night through Tuesday, it was becoming less hospitable for a small songbird to feed out in the open. When I left there were 0 people still looking for the bird, although I believe Gary Chapin and Jeanne Skelly stayed in the area and may have tried again, and if so apparently to no avail. I heard that earlier a Merlin made a pass over the trees, and while I was there an adult Sharp-shinned Hawk came over the stand of pines looking down into them at low altitude. At nearby Norman J. Levy Preserve I could not pick out anything unusual from the horde of gulls hanging around the garbage felicity. Indeed among the 1,200+ Herring Gulls and several Great Black-backed Gulls (<20) I could not even find a single Ring-billed Gull. The place still seems ripe for a vagrant large gull though. ---------------------------------------- On my way back I stopped in again at Floyd Bennett Field and saw an American Kestrel engaging in an interesting behavior I have not seen for such an extended period of time before. It was running and hopping along a small area of overgrown runway, apparently foraging, although I'm not sure of that. There should be a working video of this at the following link very shortly: http://vimeo.com/34642111 There also seems to have been a noticeable influx of Canada Geese into the south coastal/Jamaica Bay area over the last three days, starting with the strong cold front that came through. Several hundred were on the Marine Park Golf Course when I drove by it in late morning today, and coupled with almost 400 at Floyd Bennett Field, this is seemingly many more CAGO than have been around the area. Good Birding -Doug Gochfeld. Brooklyn, NY. -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES 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://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
