Manhattan, N.Y. City - FRIDAY, February 4th - given the **NO**-show of Slaty-backed (again, on both Thursday & Friday) no rapid update was put forth.
At Carl Schurz Park, the long-staying Western Tanager showed by its favored feeder array, just east of East End Ave., a bit south (& up steps) from the main entrance at E. 86th St. (or, just west of the n.w. gate of the Catbird Playground in the same park) - and, I did not make it over to the West-side (of Manhattan) tanager site to check on that other bird on the rainy-day. At Central Park, far fewer birders (understandably given the not-so-nice weather) were out & about, but some, including myself, were; the reservoir in C.P. held at one point up to 650-700+ gulls, and then by around 1:50 p.m. or so, the adult Bald Eagle came in to scare up at least 80-90% of those gulls, most of which seemed not to return for some hours and probably not at all for the day. Ahead of the eagle’s appearance at least, an Iceland Gull and at least 1 Lesser Black-backed Gull were present on the reservoir, & as usual the vast majority of gulls seen were Ring-billed, with many [American] Herring and a smaller no. of Great Black-backed Gulls. I also took several hundred photos in order to examine again later, but none showed a sneaky-rarer gull lurking in the midst of what is mentioned above. The gull flock when scared up by the eagle flying in (and which sat on the ice near the s. side for some minutes before moving on again) seemed to veer off west, across Central Park West & perhaps over towards the Hudson river… and in that thought, I quite late went to have a look at least at a few portions of the Hudson from near W. 70th on north to 125th St. but the weather was deteriorating more than previously, and I found no high no’s. of gulls, although some small flocks here & there - of the ‘usual 3’. On the C.P. reservoir, a drake Lesser Scaup was present & there are still some of the other various long-lingering species; a hen Green-winged Teal persists at “the Pool” in Central, nearer W. 100-103rd Sts. and there are Hooded Mergansers & (fewer) Wood Ducks in multiple locations as had been previously - a lot of water opened up again & the ice greatly diminished after all the rain and highs in the 50’s [F.] to very early on Friday. A few notes from farther south in Central Park include at least 2 Rusty Blackbirds, one at west side of the Lake and a 2nd lingering in the Ramble; several Gray Catbirds and at least 2 Brown Thrashers, & a couple of Golden-crowned Kinglets with at least one Ruby-crowned as well. I noticed fewer than 10 birders in my (total) 7 hours out walking, a huge diminution from the hundreds who were (mostly) visiting the reservoir of Central Park, thankfully many also finding the rarest bird of that day (and week, etc. & etc.) this past Wednesday. Anyhow bottom-line, there were no reports and I surely found no gulls at all resembling the Slaty-backed, although again, at one point there were enough tightly-clustered gulls showing on the reservoir to make it a slight possibility that a rarer species - beyond the uncommon-rare Iceland & Lesser Black-backed, to have been present lurking in the group. However, and with decent viewing possible for some time, this seemed unlikely, and the bald eagle fly-over also gave a chance to sight any notably-different gull as all that flew up circled around a little, then moved off westward. Gulls may well come in to that reservoir in high numbers again, & it is possible a rarer species may show there again - just as it is also possible that rarest gull has found a new area that it likes. No very uncommon ducks were noted in my walk along the Hudson, but I was slightly more focused in watching any gulls, and then the rains came a bit too hard, that was that. good birding to all, Tom Fiore manhattan -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm 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://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
