After narrowly missing the Cupsogue Pacifc Loon yesterday (minutes!), I decided to stay local and just hit some of the neighborhood spots in the Hamptons.
Started the day well up in Northwest Harbor with the male of our yard-resident pair of SUMMER TANAGERS being quite uncharacteristically visible and vocal. It called loudly from exposed dead branches in the oaks in the yard for a good 10 minutes around 6:30am. As usual though, when it saw me (I picked up my coffee mug too quickly) it dropped down and returned to its more normal skulking routine. Nice to know they are still there though - they seem to stop singing and become really very difficult to see while nesting, or at least that's my experience from the past two years. Not having heard any singing for a couple of weeks, I'm hoping to see this year's young before too long. Both Mecox and Sag Main Beach had high water, greatly reduced flats and a grand total of three shorebirds between them. Mecox did however have a Lesser Black-backed Gull, 9 Black Skimmers and a couple of Roseate Terns. Brief sea-watches at both spots produced nothing more than a few gannets and Common Terns (offshore winds). Having seen last week's North Fork Brown Pelican record, I thought I'd try some of the Peconic Bay spots so ran East from Noyac to Sammy's Beach checking all the jetties, fish-traps and buoys (there are a lot). No pelicans to report but I did plenty of Roseate Terns, an immature BALD EAGLE at Sammy's Beach, some newly hatched Piping Plovers (awwww) and a calling CLAPPER RAIL in the marsh on the harbor-side of Sammy's. There are also breeding Prairie Warblers, Horned Larks, etc. at Sammy's, and the Least Tern colony has greatly expanded this year following the dredging at nearby Three-mile Harbor. Not a bad place to visit if you find yourself in the area. -- 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/ --
