Sue and I had been away for three weeks so we embarked on a trip to try to find the various shorebird species that we have missed so far this year. Out trip started at Heckscher State Park, where our first molting adult American Golden Plover was in the puddles at the Field 7 parking lot. A second Golden, an immature bird, was at Field 8 with Black-bellied Plovers. Our next stop was the County Road Route 51 sod farm, where the highlights were two Hudsonian Godwits feeding in the recently tilled portion of the field. The Riverbed farm fields were a bust so we headed east to Mecox Inlet. The outlet is now closed off but there is still some sandbars available for shorebird feeding. We found another Hudsonian Godwit feeding in the shallows, along with two American Golden Plovers, White-rumped (1), and Western Sandpipers (1), as well as five species of terns, including two CaspianTerns. An additional bonus were two near-shore Cory’s Shearwaters, and three Parasitic Jaegers triple-teaming a hapless tern that quickly dropped its fish, which terminated the jaeger’s cooperation with each other and commenced a free-for-all. Although a good day, no Baird’s or Buff-breasted Sandpipers were encountered.
Ken & Sue Feustel -- 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/ --