Hi Rob and all,
That's a really neat find, and in my mind, it's a good indication that
other oddities are likely lurking in the weeds around here.
As Cattle Egrets have vanished as breeding birds in NYS and New England,
November has become a relatively good time for seeing them here. The species has
lingered into mid December at least twice on eastern LI, including one at
Deep Hollow on the Montauk CBC, on 21 Dec 1996.
When two Cattle Egrets popped up near Mecox Bay on 17 November 2007, I
remember dashing off a note to Hugh McGuinness, volunteering a cockamamie
theory of
correlated vagrancy of November Grasshopper Sparrows with Cattle Egrets
(based on a personal sample size of maybe two!). Although the
Grassgroper Hypothesis remains in limbo, chasing down those Cattle Egrets
the next day and later certainly revealed how rich and unexpected November
birding can be ("Patagonia Picnic in Montauk" Kingbird 58: 2-12).
Last year, there was a Cattle Egret at Fresh Kills, Staten Island in November,
and one appeared at Mecox again, persisting into December, up to the eve of the
Sagaponack CBC.
Shai Mitra
Bay Shore
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Jett citybir...@earthlink.net
Sent 11/19/2009 4:56:13 PM
To: NYSBirds-L@cornell.edu
Subject: [nysbirds-l] Cattle Egret at Floyd Bennett
This afternoon at around 12:45pm, Heydi Lopes and I found a Cattle Egret
at Floyd Bennett Field. It was feeding fairly close to the road within
Field "B". It didn't seem too concerned about cars driving by, but did
move a short distance when a loud motorcycle blasted down the road. Here's
a link to a map with a placemark noting the location:
http://tinyurl.com/y9edqsh
While this seems like a very late date for Cattle Egret it is actually a
few weeks shy of the 12 December extreme coastal date noted in "Bull's
Birds".
Good birding,
Rob
The City Birder Weblog
http://citybirder.blogspot.com
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