Regarding ongoing sightings & reports of a VEERY in Manhattan (New York City) at Bryant Park, one city block east of famed Times Square, this extraordinarily late and long-lingering straggler now present there at least 2 months, with sightings continuing through - & now, beyond - the first week of January 2020 - this is remarkable -
and yet, despite the vast majority of migrant Veery moving as far south in the months between October and March or even April as southern Amazonia, where relatively little-studied even now - there are, nonetheless, a FEW records for the species in the northeast of N. America including eastern Canada, well into the winter period.
One such, very remarkable, is for a VEERY photographed on 10 February, 2001, at Bristol, New Hampshire with photos ‘on file’ with that state’s birds records committee. This may stand as a unique February record.... but let us see what happens with the unfortunate bedraggled urban straggler of Bryant Park, in Manhattan.
There are additional winter-period documented Veery records for northeastern N. America. One of these, also remarkable, is of a Veery photographed & seen by multiple observers after initial discovery by J. Dunn and P. Lehman, at Greenwich Point, Connecticut, that individual seen through at least 8 January, 1980.
Other very remarkable Veery sightings documented include one from Webster Park, Monroe County, NY, in December 2005 and reported still surviving there through at least 7 January, 2006 (originally found by A. Guthrie, & S. Daniel) and reported in the NY state journal of ornithology, “The Kingbird”.
As well, a few records from the eastern province of Quebec, Canada in winter stand out -
VEERY photographed at Memphremagog, Quebec, on 30 December, 2015....
And, a Veery video’d at La Baie, Saguenay, Quebec on 4 December, 2016. These 2 latter records available in the eBird database.
The addendum and ‘caution’ to all of this is that Veery in winter anywhere in NORTH AMERICA after about mid-November and at least through March are very, very scarce, especially as pertains to well-documented sightings. And (thus), all Catharus [genus] thrush sightings in winter in the northeast of N. America are, by ‘default’, Hermit Thrush unless otherwise proven to be different. The latter is the only Thrush of the genus Catharus which is regular and nearly ‘expected’ in winter as a potential lingerer and survivor of northern winters.
Thank you to all the amigas and amigos who gave reports on these and many other birds recently, and previously. We shall have more on some recent sightings, for another post to this list.
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"I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good."
― Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.Good winter birding to all,
Tom Fiore
Manhattan - & points far beyond
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