All, I had the good fortunate of leading a shorebird walk around Tschache Pool between 7 am and noon this morning, Saturday May 19th. This is part of Montezuma's Guided Shorebird Walk program of which they are allowing access to the trail along Tschache Pool. This allowed for close views of migrating shorebirds. It was windy and pouring rain at times but I still had 7 people including some top-notch birders who were a big help in finding many shorebird species.
We had the following shorebirds collectively as a group... LEAST SANDPIPER estimated at least 1000 DUNLIN (most in breeding plumage) estimated around 150 SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER estimated around 50 WHITE-RUMPED SANDPIPER 4-6 birds. SPOTTED SANDPIPER several SOLITARY SANDPIPER 1 seen by Jay McGowan. GREATER YELLOWLEGS 1 LESSER YELLOWLEGS estimated up to 20. KILLDEER several SEMIPALMATED PLOVER estimated up to 20. AMERICAN AVOCET!! The bird flew into Tschache briefly and then flew out (presumably back to Benning) BLACK-BELLIED PLOVER- about 12-14 birds. AMERICAN GOLDEN-PLOVER 2 birds seen distant by Jay McGowan and Tim Lenz STILT SANDPIPER- 1 bird seen by Jay / Tim again. Possible SANDERLING seen by Tim Lenz. That's 14 species of shorebirds and we estimated up to 2000 birds and possibly more. Many of the birds were fairly close and made for good comparisons of least vs semipalmated sandpipers, and white-rumped sandpipers vs the other peeps. It was a great learning experience. Here is Jay McGowan's and Tim Lenz's ebird checklist which captures all of what many of us saw and/or heard collectively. https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S45830396 As a reminder, *next Saturday May 26th at 7 am* we are going to do this again. Meet at the *Montezuma Visitor's Center 7 am* and we may quickly do wildlife drive and then walk the trail around part of Tschache Pool like today. Given that shorebird migration is picking up next weekend could have even more. Let's hope so! I would like to extend much thanks to Andrea Van Beusichem and all the fine folks at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge for allowing this excellent opportunity to see our migrating spring shorebirds! Hope to see many of you next weekend! Best, Dave Nicosia -- 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/ --
