We started our morning at Alley Pond Park (APP) where we quickly found a Hooded Warbler, perhaps the same bird that has been there for the last week in the dry gullies on the west side of the Park. A Worm-eating Warbler was singing in the tops of the oaks just north of the athletic fields. We recorded our first Eastern Wood Pewee of the year calling in the same location as the Hooded Warbler. A singing Blackpoll Warbler conjured up the familiar "migration is ending" sensation. We totaled seventeen species of warblers for the park and four species of thrushes - Wood, Hermit, Swainson's and Veery. We received a call that things were jumping at Hempstead Lake State Park and proceeded to the parking lot, where we were informed that a Tennessee Warbler was singing along the bridal path. It took a while to find it, but the bird started to vocalize again and we got some fairly good looks at it. Along the stream west of the picnic area we encountered a singing Louisiana Waterthrush, although all the other waterthrushes we saw at HLSP were Northerns. One of us had a very brief look at a singing Cape May Warbler found by birders earlier in the picnic area west of the restrooms. We added three species of warblers to our list from APP, Tennessee, Louisiana Waterthrush, and Magnolia Warbler, making twenty species for the day (we did not count the Cape May).
We had noticed fairly good numbers of White-throated Sparrows at the first two locations we visited, so it was not surprising when we arrived at West End and observed a total of 130 WTSP along the shoulders and median of the parkway. A single adult White-crowned Sparrow was with them. On the sandbar at the West End Marina was a Gull-billed Tern. Not having time to bird the median, we did not determine if West End experienced a migration similar to inland locales. Ken & Sue Feustel -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
