Tuesday, 17 August, 2010 A visit to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (Queens County, N.Y. City) as the afternoon high tide approached and peaked showed that a good number of shorebirds remained - not having been there for over a week, it was not apparent to me how much change, or not, had taken place in the numbers of shorebirds since last Friday, for example - but there were certainly more birds than had been some 2 weeks earlier. I was told of one Peregrine on the East Pond but wasn't even aware of that one, from the north side of the E. Pond and shorebirds that spooked seemed to also settle back in easily enough for the hours that I was there (about noon - 4pm), with one notable exception: one Whimbrel that flushed off the West Pond near bench 8 - along with several hundred "peep" (likely mostly Semipalmated & Least Sandpipers, plus some Semipalmated Plovers & a lesser number of Shoprt-billed Dowitchers) - the cause of these birds flushing from the W. Pond shoreline was revealed after a minute or two, a staff worker doing a bit of maintenance (and of course not intentionally flushing any birds) who was walking right next to the shoreline as the birds flew out. I couldn't be sure but it looked as if these birds, perhaps including the whimbrel may have mostly retreated to the SE or east side of the West Pond, & after a decent view of the whimbrel going away with the crowd I did not see it again but also didn't search for it. The West Pond in total appeared to hold over 1,000 individual shorebirds at just about peak high tide. The East Pond seemed to have at least 4 times that if not more and as it usually does, more variety in shorebirds - although NO godwit in my search of the northern part of the East Pond (and none reported by the few others at the E. Pond while I was looking, although a few more birders / photographers may have been at the s. side and raunt areas in the early afternoon. The lingering American White Pelican was first noticed on the northern section of the East Pond but flew down to very near the raunt there, with barely a glance given it by a couple of the photographers / birders who likely have had their fill of white pelican observations recently! In the "uncommon" category (for me) were a couple of Western Sandpipers, a dozen Long-billed Dowitchers (along with a thousand-plus Short-billed),, a singleton of Pectoral Sandpiper, and a basic- plumaged Wilson's Phalarope that I first saw well down the w. side of the East Pond (from the NW corner) but which possibly moved up to nearer the NW corner later on. I counted 224 Black-bellied Plovers in one view at one point, which is a lot more than were there on my last visit to the Refuge... and seems like a lot period. Notable as well (to me) were the seeming lack of any Yellow Warblers, obvious (vocal) Willow Flycatchers and Eastern Kingbirds to mention just 3 land birds that may have mostly moved out from the Refuge already (?)
I would think a few of the other birders present at the Refuge on Tuesday afternoon could have some more and/or somewhat different report [s] for their observations... Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, N.Y. City has some rain puddles once again that could be suitable for shorebirds, however there seemed to be none at all in 2 checks of the area (by me in late afternoon, actually more like early evening - and a keen birder checking there in the a.m. (it probably didn't help that a bicycle event of some sort was setting up, with bikers racing around the runway just next to the puddled area as I looked...) Central Park (Manhattan, N.Y. City) had at least a half-dozen warblers of typical mid-August species (and modest numbers of the more common, such as American Redstart and N. Waterthush) with a smattering of other migrants earlier Tuesday morning. Radar loops overnight (Tuesday night into this Wed. morning) seem to indicate a good migrant movement overnight into and through a lot of the northeast ... I'll be looking in Central Park again, at any rate. Incidentally the first Buff-breasted Sandpiper report (that I've seen) from east of NYC or Long Island was noted in the RBA for Rhode Island, as seen on Tuesday, 8/17 - along with a fine variety of other shorebirds there. Good birding, Tom Fiore, Manhattan -- 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 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
