Thanks to Tom Lambertson, a long-time birder who happens to live very near the above, for letting me know, that while I was right re: the Rt.24/Rt.105 nest, I was wrong about the Peconic River nest. According to Tom, a pair nested there in 2009 and fledged 3 young. I know Tom and certainly accept his observations, and can only wonder about my own. In past years, I have viewed that nest by car over the bridge, by playing the golf course which adjoines the river, and by kayaking the river. Although I didn't persue the 2 latter venues last year, the fact that I never noticed an Osprey near the island/nest, as I crossed the bridge approx. 25 to 30 times from March through September, can only make me wonder if I was either driving too fast, my eyesight let me down, or I had bad Karma!
Thanks also to Tom for making me aware that the island in question is called "Colonials Island", and that despite being less than 1/8th mile apart from each other, the 2 nests produced a total of 5 new flying Ospreys. What a wonderful tribute to our own, now deceased, Dennis Puleston and the other founding EDF members! Cheers, Bob P.S. On Thursday, 3/18, before meeting up with John McNeil, Carl Starace and I birded Smith Point Park's "Burma Road". It was a glorious day to be out hiking the barrier beach, and while it was a quiet day for birds, we did have one individual "cause us pause"! The bird cooperated by sticking around for about 30 seconds, at the end of which we deceided it was probably in the "Savannah Complex". It had the larger size of an "Ipswitch", but it's plummage appeared to be somewhere between the typical Savannah Sparrow and the lighter Ipswitch. What made it further puzzling, was when the bird flew, it showed a good amount of white outer tail feathers. Sibley's guide shows an adult western bird of this species having this feature, which he describes as "some Western populations have obvious pale outer tail feathers". I welcome any comments. Cheers, Bob -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
