Tuesday, 17 August, 2010
A visit to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (Queens County, N.Y. City) as
the afternoon high tide approached and peaked showed that a good
number of shorebirds remained - not having been there for over a week,
it was not apparent to me how much change, or not, had taken place
in the numbers of shorebirds since last Friday, for example - but
there were certainly more birds than had been some 2 weeks earlier. I
was told of one Peregrine on the East Pond but wasn't even aware of
that one, from the north side of the E. Pond and shorebirds that
spooked seemed to also settle back in easily enough for the hours that
I was there (about noon - 4pm), with one notable exception: one
Whimbrel that flushed off the West Pond near bench 8 - along with
several hundred "peep" (likely mostly Semipalmated & Least Sandpipers,
plus some Semipalmated Plovers & a lesser number of Shoprt-billed
Dowitchers) - the cause of these birds flushing from the W. Pond
shoreline was revealed after a minute or two, a staff worker doing a
bit of maintenance (and of course not intentionally flushing any
birds) who was walking right next to the shoreline as the birds flew
out. I couldn't be sure but it looked as if these birds, perhaps
including the whimbrel may have mostly retreated to the SE or east
side of the West Pond, & after a decent view of the whimbrel going
away with the crowd I did not see it again but also didn't search for
it. The West Pond in total appeared to hold over 1,000 individual
shorebirds at just about peak high tide. The East Pond seemed to have
at least 4 times that if not more and as it usually does, more variety
in shorebirds - although NO godwit in my search of the northern part
of the East Pond (and none reported by the few others at the E. Pond
while I was looking, although a few more birders / photographers may
have been at the s. side and raunt areas in the early afternoon. The
lingering American White Pelican was first noticed on the northern
section of the East Pond but flew down to very near the raunt there,
with barely a glance given it by a couple of the photographers /
birders who likely have had their fill of white pelican observations
recently! In the "uncommon" category (for me) were a couple of Western
Sandpipers, a dozen Long-billed Dowitchers (along with a thousand-plus
Short-billed),, a singleton of Pectoral Sandpiper, and a basic-
plumaged Wilson's Phalarope that I first saw well down the w. side of
the East Pond (from the NW corner) but which possibly moved up to
nearer the NW corner later on. I counted 224 Black-bellied Plovers in
one view at one point, which is a lot more than were there on my last
visit to the Refuge... and seems like a lot period. Notable as well
(to me) were the seeming lack of any Yellow Warblers, obvious (vocal)
Willow Flycatchers and Eastern Kingbirds to mention just 3 land birds
that may have mostly moved out from the Refuge already (?)
I would think a few of the other birders present at the Refuge on
Tuesday afternoon could have some more and/or somewhat different report
[s] for their observations...
Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, N.Y. City has some rain puddles once
again that could be suitable for shorebirds, however there seemed to
be none at all in 2 checks of the area (by me in late afternoon,
actually more like early evening - and a keen birder checking there in
the a.m. (it probably didn't help that a bicycle event of some sort
was setting up, with bikers racing around the runway just next to the
puddled area as I looked...)
Central Park (Manhattan, N.Y. City) had at least a half-dozen warblers
of typical mid-August species (and modest numbers of the more common,
such as American Redstart and N. Waterthush) with a smattering of
other migrants earlier Tuesday morning. Radar loops overnight (Tuesday
night into this Wed. morning) seem to indicate a good migrant movement
overnight into and through a lot of the northeast ... I'll be looking
in Central Park again, at any rate.
Incidentally the first Buff-breasted Sandpiper report (that I've seen)
from east of NYC or Long Island was noted in the RBA for Rhode Island,
as seen on Tuesday, 8/17 - along with a fine variety of other
shorebirds there.
Good birding,
Tom Fiore,
Manhattan
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