My brother Rich and I took a Sunday trip to Long Island with visions of good birds in our heads. We started out at Cold Spring Harbor, where we found the previously reported Tufted Duck, with a great lesson seeing Tufted and Ring-billeds side-by-side, just like in the field guides. The 3 Redheads in the pond were getting very little attention. That's how you know a good day is brewing.
We then continued on to the south shore, for a few hours at Jones Beach. A walk along the median pines turned up one of our targets...a pair of Red Crossbills at point-blank range in the morning light. Then it got even better when we spotted a clean-as-freshly-fallen Snow-y Owl. I thought it might be the same bird that was recently spotted at Jamaica Bay, but our bird was nearly spotless. Greg Prelich -- 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/ --
