Monday, 14 January, 2013 A one & 1/2 hour look around Van Cortlandt Park's Parade Ground field, as well as adjacent portions of the golf course greens & a few additional smaller fields failed to turn up the recently lingering Barnacle Goose. A Cackling Goose was present, in with at least 1,000 Canada Geese, out on the parade ground at about noon; this was the maximum number of Canada geese counted in the time I was there, a reduction by hundreds, at least from a week or more ago, in the numbers of Canadas. A single Killdeer was active at the parade ground near Broadway.
On the west slope of Vault Hill (facing the Parade Ground field) were at least 2 Eastern Bluebirds, a nice surprise in mid-January here and very probably part of the small flock seen by the principal counters on the west Bronx portion of the Bronx-Westchester CBC, just over 2 weeks ago. Also good to see today were at least 14 Rusty Blackbirds, all coming to an area that they once were occasionally very numerous around (in winter), near the north end of the VCP marshy part of the lake where a narrow wood footbridge carries a path across from parade ground towards the old Putnam valley railroad path. The Rustys were for the most part very shy and came up out of nearby reeds in the marsh, when a gentleman with bags of birdseed left some along the bridge and the "usual" bird beggars came out; 2 of the Rustys lingered in view a while, the other dozen mainly skulking back into the undergrowth or reeds. Tom Fiore, Manhattan -- 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/[email protected]/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/ --
