During the first hour of light, I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of shorebird activity at Goethals Bridge Pond, northwestern Staten Island.
Highly unusual in my experience was a flock of 16 Semipalmated Sandpipers, a species I very rarely see around here after mid October and have seen only three times ever in November. Counts typically diminish to single digits by the beginning of October, so this morning's flock was surprising, to say the least. I studied them closely to rule out Western Sandpiper and had the opportunity to study them in direct comparison with one White-rumped Sandpiper and 44 Dunlin. I took some grainy photos through the gloom at high ISO, which I will upload later: https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S49617983 If anyone wishes to corroborate this report, or to check for other interesting shorebirds there, the flocks were roving around the area east of the shopping cart and west of where the burnt out car used to be. Shai Mitra 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/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/ --