Saturday 28 December 2019 was a fine day for the 80th iteration of the Southern Nassau County CBC, with mild temperatures, light winds, and no precipitation. The total of 135 species recorded on count day was above our recent average of about 130. This count has an impressive resume of genuine rarities discovered on count-day, and our participants added to this legacy twice again this year: a Painted Bunting found near the Gatsby restaurant at Jones Beach by Pete Morris and Taylor Sturm, and a Townsend's Warbler found at the Florence Avenue Beach, along the bay shore in Massapequa, by John Gluth. By my calculations, the overall count probably missed three or four species that would otherwise have been found, as a result of effort re-directed to admiring these little green birds.
As usual, there were many other notable species as well: Blue-winged Teal at Bellmore Mill Pond Red-necked Grebe from Jones Beach Clapper Rail from the boat Common Gallinule at Bellmore Mill Pond 12 Red Knots at Point Lookout 36 Purple Sandpipers at and westward from Point Lookout 99 Razorbills along the oceanfront Black-headed Gull at Jones Beach West End American Bittern at Tobay 2 Barn Owls somewhere near water of some kind Short-eared Owl also, curiously, somewhere near water of some kind Northern Saw-whet Owl somewhere 6 Eastern Phoebes at various places in Jones Beach, Hempstead Lake, and Mitchell House Wren in Massapequa 3 Marsh Wrens from Jones Beach and the boat a count-week Grasshopper Sparrow at Point Lookout 3 Eastern Meadowlarks in the Five Towns Nashville Warbler in Baldwin 3 Orange-crowned Warblers from Jones Beach, Tobay, and the Five Towns Common Yellowthroat in the Five Towns Palm Warbler at Jones Beach As often is the case on good-weather days, high counts were recorded for many species: 23 Cooper's Hawk 40 Red-tailed Hawk 213 Blue Jay 130 Carolina Wren 24 Gray Catbird 190 Northern Mockingbird 17 Hermit Thrush 660 Song Sparrow 66 Swamp Sparrow 288 Boat-tailed Grackle (this impressive number being the remainder after careful excision of potential duplicate flocks) 16 Common Ravens (again, after adjustment for possible duplications; meanwhile, Bald Eagle has aged out of being notable!) 7 Chipping Sparrows Only two species were recorded in unusually low numbers: 25 Snow Bunting 2573 Herring Gull And only three more or less regular species were missed: Purple Finch Lapland Longspur Rusty Blackbird --though Snowy Owl should be cued here, too, given their documented presence (and torment) within the circle, both before and right after the CBC. There are many lessons to be learned from these data, but I'd like to take this opportunity to point attention to just two questions. First, it is not by chance that all three of our rarest species (Grasshopper Sparrow, Painted Bunting, and Townsend's Warbler) have shown distinct waves of occurrence in the Northeast this season. Those who dismiss vagrancy as a passive consequence of weather systems ought to ponder why so many other species, present in the same source regions and experiencing the same weather patterns, have NOT been lining up along our shores lately, as these species have. But perhaps even more mysterious is the great Chipping Sparrow flood of 2019. Although our tally of 7 was admittedly smaller than the rounding errors suffered by Hugh McGuinness et al. in Accabonnac, it is still a very large number for urban western Long Island. And all of the counts I know of or participated in this season, from southern New England to Long Island, encountered this species in much higher than usual numbers--close to triple digits in some cases. There are a lot of parallels between Chipping Sparrow and White-crowned Sparrow: both are good CBC species at our latitude, but unlike other half-hardies, both show a preference for inland and rural settings vs. coastal/urban migrant traps. And this December's Chipping Sparrow phenomenon reminds me a lot of last year's large numbers of White-crowned Sparrows on all the CBCs. How does this happen? Many thanks to our 90+ participants and to Otto's Freeport for hosting our compilation. Happy New Year and the best of birding in 2020! Shai Mitra & Patricia Lindsay Bay Shore -- 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/[email protected]/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/ --
