Having not seen a Buff-breasted Sandpiper this season on the sod fields, I decided to try yesteryear's best bet for finding migrating,fall "grass-pipers"...before the advent of sod farms ! If you were looking for Black-bellied or A.Golden Plovers, Whimbrel and Pectoral or Buff-breasted Sandpipers you visited the Sagaponack potato fields. Granted, the birds were harder to find as they moved along the ~ 6-8" rows that remained after the potatoes were dug...but they were there, for the finding ! Likewise, if you were after Hudsonian or Marbled Godwits, White-rumped, Baird's, Western and Stilt Sandpipers, you visited both Mecox Bay and Sagg Pond. Today, I did all 3 locations with nice results, albeit, I'm still without a BBSA !
I started at a closed Mecox Bay, finding: 1 Black-bellied, 2 A.Golden, 1 Piping & 5 Semipalmated Plovers; 2 Greater & 2 Lesser Yellowlegs; 1 Willet; 5 Sanderling; 3 Semipalmated & 1 Least Sandpipers; a few of the 3 common gull species; 61 Foster's & 2 Black Terns - one of which, had some kind of huge growth/object attached to one of its toes, although the bird can still fly. While enroute to Sagg Pond, I next approached Mecox from its eastern side, with the only new species being a very entertaining Belted Kingfisher. Similar to Mecox, Sagg has not been opened to the ocean recently, however, the beach and limited sandbars held a good variety of birds: 2 A.Golden, 2 Piping and 3 Semipalmated Plovers; 7 Killdeers; 8 Sanderling; 1 Pectoral Sandpiper; 2 Laughing, ~ 10 Ring-billed, ~ 35 Herring, 4 Lesser Black-backed,* ~ 40 Great Black-backed Gulls; 2 Royal & 1 Foster's Tern and another B.Kingfisher. * 3 adults, still in full breeding plumage, the 4th, a 2nd winter bird. On the whole, I enjoyed the day's outing, but it came at a price. As I was driving around Sagaponack, on familiar lanes with the names of Daniels, Hedges and Parsonage, I found only one potato field in the condition described above. Rather, most of the potato fields that haven't been turned into massive homes, have been switched into corn ! While this conversion might equate into more geese to peruse later in the year, it certainly short-circuits the shorebird season. The last notable bird of the day (seen as I headed home) was a Cooper's Hawk, in flight, over Bridgehampton. 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/ --
