This posting is a day old but I think it's still relevant. On friday afternoon and Saturday Morning I visited a patch of the Pine Barrens at the terminus of Wading River Hollow Road near WLNY-TV in Ridge (north of Rt. 25, east of Artists Lake). There's a small pond in the woods - not sure what the name of it is but it was virtually dry due to the drought we have been experiencing. The trail along the LIPA easement though had lots of singing Prairie Warblers and I was able to find a few to photograph as well. The dominant vegetation in the area is bayberry which makes it easy to view the birds. A blog post with a few photos can be found here: http://birdsoflongisland.blogspot.com/2012/05/prairie-warblers-abound.html
This afternoon I stopped at Quogue Wildlife Refuge and found a nesting Blue Jay just off the boardwalk trail on the south side neatly tucked behind some vegetation. That was the only bird of note there - but to the South, along the east side of Meeting House Road is a newly constructed osprey nest in the top of a tree. This is interesting as natural nests (not constructed on platforms) are quite rare on the Island and it seems that they were forced to construct it due to an Owl taking over their nearby platform nest. -- - Luke Ormand, East Patchogue www.birdsoflongisland.blogspot.com www.wildlongisland.blogspot.com -- 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/ --
