Doug Gochfeld and I started a seawatch from Riis Park in Queens at roughly 10:30 this morning. We were met with almost immediate success in the form of a Great Shearwater coursing back and forth to the west of the main building. A few Parasitic Jaegers were moving east, but the highlight of the morning was a high arcing tubenose the appeared to the southwest and over the next 5-7 minutes slowly worked it's way east eventually revealing itself to be a light morph Northern Fulmar. It was interesting to have the Fulmar and GRSH in view at the same time. The Fulmar was executing explosive, high flying arcs with wings slightly bent at the wrists and would often add short bursts of wingbeats even well above the horizon while the GRSH was doing power glides on long straight wings with very little flapping at all. To echo Shai and Pat's reports from further east, there were a few Lesser Black-backed Gulls (and one hybrid) in the parking lot and two juvenile Ring-billed Gulls among the expected species on the beach. A nice flight of scoters was evident as well and Black and Surf were both viewed moving east. The eBird checklist with some documentation photos can be viewed at the following link.
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S48740229 Good birding, Sean Sime Brooklyn, NY -- 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/ --
