This evening I went to Edgewood DEC preserve in Deer Park hoping to find displaying Woodcocks. My usual woodcock location had let me down on four previous visits this spring and I thought Edgewood had appropriate enough habitat that some birds might be there. Well, 8 o'clock came and went without a single "peent" heard. But as I dejectedly made my way back to my car I was surprised to hear the unmistakable calls of a single WHIP-POOR-WILL coming from the Pitch Pine woods a couple hundred yards away. It only called for around a minute, stopping before I was able to reach the spot the calls seemed to come from. I wasn't surprised that a Whip-poor-will was present because I'd heard a few there late last May, but the date sure seemed early, at least from my limited experience with the species. But according to Bull's there are at least 2 Long Island records from earlier in April (2nd and 8th). I was going to wait until late May to try for the species at Edgewood, but now I may not wait that long.
Several hours spent birding earlier in the day (8:30-2:15) at several other locations in southwest Suffolk including Southard's Pond/Belmont Lake Greenbelt, Cedar Beach, Gardiner County Park and Heckscher State Park, was relatively fruitless regarding new migrant arrivals. The best find Was one LAUGHING GULL, a still mostly basic-plumaged adult, found in the McDonald's parking lot adjacent to Orowoc Lake in Islip. -- 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/ --
