A few interesting birds on a warm November day included a red-necked grebe scoped on Great South Bay from the fishing pier at Captree State Park, Suffolk County, and a very late yellow warbler, also at Captree. The warbler was in the brush on the north edge of the parking lot where an asphalt path leads to the middle of the fishing pier. "Bull's Birds of New York State" (1998) lists the extreme fall date for yellow warbler as 24 Oct, though I think there are some more recent late records in NY State and there are records into December and January in other northeastern states. The bird was bright yellow below with a faint diffuse orange on the breast, and bright greenish- yellow above including the crown. According to "Peterson's Field Guides - Warblers", by Dunn and Garrett, birds at this late date would be D. p. amnicola, or another of the northerly breeding sub-species, though this bird seemed very brightly colored, more like the coloration described for the locally breeding subspecies, D.p. aestiva.
Waterfowling in Suffolk was slow. A female common goldeneye was at Connetquot River State Park. It took an Internet search for me to identify a male cape shelduck, which was at Belmont Lake State Park. Seth Ausubel Forest Hills, NY -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
