Following up on yesterday's post by Sue Feustel , I arrived at Doctor's Path ~ 1230. After making my first pass of the "Golden Trapezium" (D's P, Sound Ave. Route 105 and Northville Tpke, I was only able to come up with 2 Black-bellied Plovers. Deciding to try D's P again, I came upon a young birding couple, Robin Elman & Paul Stiel, from Queens, who earlier had found a large plover way out in the field, but had not been able to I.D. with just their binoculars. Driving back to where they had seen it, with the aid of a scope, we found a single Golden Plover, 3 Black-bellies, and a Semipalmated Plover. This spot was just a hair n/o of where Sue had her birds - with today's bird feeding in the bare earth beyond the first strip of sod still remaining. Robin & Paul were delighted to get definitive photos of their 1st Golden !
We then headed w/on Sound Ave, checking out all the sod fields up to Osborne Ave, without success. Next, we headed s/on Edwards Ave, where we came upon a fair sized rain puddle, on a partially dug sod field on the w/s, a short distance n/o Riley Ave. We tallied 7 species of shorebirds here: 1 Semipalmated Plover; many Killdeer; 1 Lesser Yellowlegs; 3 Pectoral Sandpipers; 1 Baird's Sandpiper; 3 Semipalmated Sandpipers and 1 Least Sandpiper. After this fruitful stop, we came up short on the Edwards Ave sod fields s/o Route 25, as well as all those located along Route 25 west to Route 25 A. Traveling w/on Route 25A, our good fortune was stoked again as we turned onto Hulse Landing Rd., Wading River. The sod field on the w/s had been dug out already, but still held 1 Semipalmated Sandpiper, a few Killdeer, and 2 Golden Plovers. Our last Sod Farm stop, on the s/s/o Sound Ave, e/o H/L/Rd. was void of any birdlife. We finished the day at the Calverton Grasslands, where the only birds seen were 2 Red-tailed Hawks. Although this part of the afternoon is not usually conducive to finding birds, it seems that many of this area's breeding birds have moved on. It was a pleasure birding with Robin & Paul ! Cheers, Bob -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm 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://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
