Re:[nysbirds-l] Sunken Meadow banded Semipalmated Sandpiper

[John Gluth]

It took only a day for the USGS Bird Banding Lab to get back to me with the 
background of the marked Semipalmated Sandpiper I saw yesterday at Sunken 
Meadow SP. The bird was banded in Heislerville, NJ on May 21 2012 by Dr. David 
Mizrahi. Band # 2571-46477. It was at least a year old at the time. Sex was not 
determined. Hopefully the Semi will survive many more migratory trips and gets 
reported again.

John Gluth

Sent from my iPhone

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[nysbirds-l] Brown Pelicans addendum

[Taylor Sturm]

Just as an addendum to my last post for thoroughness, there were definitely 3 
Brown Pelicans and they were apparently flying southwest. 
Good birding and sorry for the double-post!! 
Taylor Sturm 

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[nysbirds-l] Brown Pelican(s) - Cedar Beach, Long Island

[Taylor Sturm]

Hi all-
I apologize for the vagueness of this report:  
My girlfriend's friend, Bridgette Kistinger, sent us a picture she took of a 
Brown Pelican at Cedar Beach at about 7:30 pm. She said there were 3 of them 
together. I can only attest to one, as she didn't send us a picture of the 
group. 
The birds were ocean-side but I can't say in which direction they were flying. 
Again sorry for the vagueness. 

Good birding -
Taylor Sturm

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[nysbirds-l] Piermont Pier Picnic Table

[Evan Mark]

Piermont Pier in Rockland County is having a continuing good shorebird season on the heels of the recent American Avocet and Hudsonian Godwit (as well as Royal Tern & Cattle Egret).

7 species today included Sanderling, Ruddy Turnstone & Lesser Yellowlegs. Many peeps & Semi Plovs.

The more eyes the merrier.

Evan
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Re: [nysbirds-l] Shorebird hot spots

[Hugh McGuinness]

Argh! Say it ain't so. I didn't know about this sad story, I had just
assumed nobody went in there anymore. That place was fantastic.

Hugh


On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 10:09 AM,  wrote:

> One superb shorebird spot that disappeared in one day was Oak Beach
> Marsh. This was technically-speaking a "seche," a very shallow pan of
> rainwater of maybe an acre in extent that gradually dried and was
> replenished only when it rained again (or perhaps in a  very high
> tide). The bottom was a thin film of mud that was evidently full of
> good things to eat, and is was insulated from all but the very highest
> storm tides.  At high tide in the right season it was covered with
> shorebirds. I had over 30 species of shorebirds there over several
> years In the 1970s, including Ruff, Curlew Sandpiper, Marbled Godwit
> etc.
>  This shallow pool was located on the salt marsh on the bay side
> of the Ocean Parkway opposite what is now called Overlook Beach (on
> the Jones Beach-to-Captree strip on Long Island).
>  It all came to an end one afternoon in the 1980s when the
> mosquito control people, in their wisdom, ditched it and opened it to
> the tides. Now it is just an ordinary stretch of salt march with a
> Least Sandpiper and a Pectoral or two.
> Bob Paxton
>
>
> --
>
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>
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>


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Washington, D.C.

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Re:[nysbirds-l] Shorebird hot spots

[rop1]

One superb shorebird spot that disappeared in one day was Oak Beach  
Marsh. This was technically-speaking a "seche," a very shallow pan of  
rainwater of maybe an acre in extent that gradually dried and was  
replenished only when it rained again (or perhaps in a  very high  
tide). The bottom was a thin film of mud that was evidently full of  
good things to eat, and is was insulated from all but the very highest  
storm tides.  At high tide in the right season it was covered with  
shorebirds. I had over 30 species of shorebirds there over several  
years In the 1970s, including Ruff, Curlew Sandpiper, Marbled Godwit  
etc.
 This shallow pool was located on the salt marsh on the bay side  
of the Ocean Parkway opposite what is now called Overlook Beach (on  
the Jones Beach-to-Captree strip on Long Island).
 It all came to an end one afternoon in the 1980s when the  
mosquito control people, in their wisdom, ditched it and opened it to  
the tides. Now it is just an ordinary stretch of salt march with a  
Least Sandpiper and a Pectoral or two.
Bob Paxton


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Re:[nysbirds-l] Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Shorebirds

[Shaibal Mitra]

Hi Rich and all,

The Line Islands aren't what they used to be. Pat and I visited with John 
Zarudsky from the Town of Hempstead on 29 July 2011 (by the way, somebody ought 
to call Shane Blodgett and ask him if he remembers that day!) and spent some 
very enjoyable time around Egg Island and North Line Island. I haven't yet 
eBirded my notes from that era, but the flats near Egg Island held around 400 
Short-billed Dowitchers and the margins of North Line hosted around 400 
Semipalmated Sandpipers, all adult. We saw no godwits or Whimbrels. According 
to our own impressions and John's experienced testimony, the configuration of 
the flats has changed greatly over several decades since this area's glory days.

This is the same old story for so many coastal shorebird hotspots, which tend 
to show extreme changes in productivity over a variety of time-scales. The West 
Pond at Jamaica Bay was lost overnight, but the critical habitat features of 
many others fade almost imperceptibly over years or decades, as at the Line 
Islands, and also two other pillars of late 20th Century Long Island 
shorebirding: Cedar Beach and Democrat Pt. Very occasionally the coastal 
dynamism manages a feeble bid for symmetry in its impacts, as in our gaining 
productive new habitat at Sunken Meadow. Almost always, however, this is 
impossible, for a variety of more or less perverse reasons. The main one is 
that when a formerly superb site becomes less good: (1) resource managers lose 
the ability to protect it for the special features that used to be there (and 
would, if they could, cycle back there again); (2) various human interests 
swoop in and step on it, hard; (3) five or ten or twenty years later, when if 
left alone it would have cycled back into productivity, it is no longer 
ecologically resilient enough to do so.

Think about the West Pond. This is a once in a generation opportunity to 
subvert the ratchet and make things better!

Shai Mitra
Bay Shore


CSI Represents NY in Nationwide State Rankings. Learn 
more>>>

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[nysbirds-l] Jamaica Bay Avocet - yes

[Robert Taylor]

Hi Everyone,

I saw the Avocet this morning on the East Pond- was feeding and was putting
on a territorial show for a Snowy Egret.  Also saw a Western Sandpiper.
Overall bird numbers were on the lower side when I went but still enough
for a great birding experience.

Good birding,
Rob in Massapequa
http://longislandbirding.blogspot.com/

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[nysbirds-l] NYC area eBird filter re-run (all eBird users please read)

[Doug Gochfeld]

Hello all New York eBird users,

eBird Records for several counties in downstate New York have recently been
re-run through the improved filters. This returned lots of newly flagged
entries which were entered before the filters were updated (and so did not
trip the filter when they were entered).

The downstate New York eBird review team will be working to get through
this new backlog of records as quickly as we can over the next few weeks or
months, so that we can get these records, the vast majority of which are
undoubtedly correct, back into the public data feed.

What this means for you is that if you were lucky enough at any point to
see an unusual bird- be it rare for the region, an early or late date, or
an unusually high count- then you may at some point receive an E-Mail from
a reviewer asking you to confirm the record or supply details, even though
the sighting did not trip the filter when you initially entered it into the
system.

Please bear with us, and do not take any inquiries as personal affronts. We
completely understand if you don't remember the exact details of things
from multiple years ago that aren't exceptionally rare birds (say, for
instance, a Bonaparte's Gull in mid-June at Jamaica Bay from several years
ago that didn't trip the filter when you initially entered it). However,
for things that you DO remember in any way, or have photos of, any
substantive response, will greatly aid us in getting through the load. If
you can enter comments in the species comments field that would be
exceptionally helpful, as many older records of slightly out of season
things have no comments whatsoever, and are therefore very difficult to
evaluate. Because all of us are volunteer reviewers, we cannot devote
inordinate amounts of time to this, so it may be a while before you hear
anything.

A very informative article on how the filters work etc. is on the eBird
site at this link:
http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/1055676-understanding-the-ebird-review-and-data-quality-process

Thanks for your cooperation, and for your continued contributions to the
database, that at this point is very comprehensive for our region, thanks
to the volume of reports that you have all contributed over the years!

Good (e)Birding!
-Doug Gochfeld. Brooklyn, NY.

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Re: [nysbirds-l] Mecox Inlet (Suffolk County), August 3rd

[Hugh McGuinness]

The Red-necked Grebe was still present on Aug 1.

Hugh


On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 11:14 PM, Donna Schulman 
wrote:

> I spent 2.5 hours birding Mecox Inlet (Suffolk County) this gray, drizzly
> morning, and, as Hugh said earlier this week, shorebird numbers have
> increased. I also saw more terns, both in species and numbers than I have
> all summer: Common, Forster's, Least, and one BLACK TERN.
>
> The 11 shorebird species viewed included about 150 Sanderlings, 20 Black
> Skimmers, including one with a silver band (numbers not legible in
> photographs unfortunately), and at least 8 immature Piping Plovers (pretty
> good considering I only saw 2 pairs of adults earlier in the summer; I was
> told by the shorebird monitors that there was an additional breeding pair
> further down the beach).
>
> I did not see the Red-Necked Grebe, which does not mean it was not there.
> One good thing about gray, drizzly mornings--less people taking their boats
> across the bay and parking on the flats. One not so good thing--more people
> walking their dogs off leash, despite the 'no dogs after 9am' sign.
>
> Donna
> *---*
>
>
>
>
> *Donna L. SchulmanForest Hills, NY queensgir...@gmail.com
> *
>
>
> * *
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Hugh McGuinness 
> wrote:
>
>> The cut at Mecox Bay (Suffolk Co.) was opened recently, and even though
>> it has closed again, there is an extensive flat. Shorebird and tern numbers
>> are building. On Monday I saw a WHIMBREL. Today there were two BLACK TERNS.
>> The best find of the day today was a RED-NECKED GREBE sleeping in the
>> middle of the bay a little east of north from the mud flat.
>>
>> For those wishing to visit, hassles will be minimized by leaving before
>> 8:30 am and arriving after 6 pm.
>>
>> BTW, dolphins have been close to shore at this spot all week.
>>
>> Hugh
>>
>>
>> --
>> Hugh McGuinness
>> Washington, D.C.
>>  --
>> *NYSbirds-L List Info:*
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>> Subscribe, Configuration and Leave
>> 
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>> 
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>> *!*
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>
> --
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-- 
Hugh McGuinness
Washington, D.C.

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Re: [nysbirds-l] Mecox Inlet (Suffolk County), August 3rd

[Hugh McGuinness]

The Red-necked Grebe was still present on Aug 1.

Hugh


On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 11:14 PM, Donna Schulman queensgir...@gmail.com
wrote:

 I spent 2.5 hours birding Mecox Inlet (Suffolk County) this gray, drizzly
 morning, and, as Hugh said earlier this week, shorebird numbers have
 increased. I also saw more terns, both in species and numbers than I have
 all summer: Common, Forster's, Least, and one BLACK TERN.

 The 11 shorebird species viewed included about 150 Sanderlings, 20 Black
 Skimmers, including one with a silver band (numbers not legible in
 photographs unfortunately), and at least 8 immature Piping Plovers (pretty
 good considering I only saw 2 pairs of adults earlier in the summer; I was
 told by the shorebird monitors that there was an additional breeding pair
 further down the beach).

 I did not see the Red-Necked Grebe, which does not mean it was not there.
 One good thing about gray, drizzly mornings--less people taking their boats
 across the bay and parking on the flats. One not so good thing--more people
 walking their dogs off leash, despite the 'no dogs after 9am' sign.

 Donna
 *---*




 *Donna L. SchulmanForest Hills, NY queensgir...@gmail.com
 queensgir...@gmail.com*


 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/queensgirl*


 On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Hugh McGuinness hdmcguinn...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 The cut at Mecox Bay (Suffolk Co.) was opened recently, and even though
 it has closed again, there is an extensive flat. Shorebird and tern numbers
 are building. On Monday I saw a WHIMBREL. Today there were two BLACK TERNS.
 The best find of the day today was a RED-NECKED GREBE sleeping in the
 middle of the bay a little east of north from the mud flat.

 For those wishing to visit, hassles will be minimized by leaving before
 8:30 am and arriving after 6 pm.

 BTW, dolphins have been close to shore at this spot all week.

 Hugh


 --
 Hugh McGuinness
 Washington, D.C.
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 *Please submit your observations to **eBird*
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-- 
Hugh McGuinness
Washington, D.C.

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[nysbirds-l] NYC area eBird filter re-run (all eBird users please read)

[Doug Gochfeld]

Hello all New York eBird users,

eBird Records for several counties in downstate New York have recently been
re-run through the improved filters. This returned lots of newly flagged
entries which were entered before the filters were updated (and so did not
trip the filter when they were entered).

The downstate New York eBird review team will be working to get through
this new backlog of records as quickly as we can over the next few weeks or
months, so that we can get these records, the vast majority of which are
undoubtedly correct, back into the public data feed.

What this means for you is that if you were lucky enough at any point to
see an unusual bird- be it rare for the region, an early or late date, or
an unusually high count- then you may at some point receive an E-Mail from
a reviewer asking you to confirm the record or supply details, even though
the sighting did not trip the filter when you initially entered it into the
system.

Please bear with us, and do not take any inquiries as personal affronts. We
completely understand if you don't remember the exact details of things
from multiple years ago that aren't exceptionally rare birds (say, for
instance, a Bonaparte's Gull in mid-June at Jamaica Bay from several years
ago that didn't trip the filter when you initially entered it). However,
for things that you DO remember in any way, or have photos of, any
substantive response, will greatly aid us in getting through the load. If
you can enter comments in the species comments field that would be
exceptionally helpful, as many older records of slightly out of season
things have no comments whatsoever, and are therefore very difficult to
evaluate. Because all of us are volunteer reviewers, we cannot devote
inordinate amounts of time to this, so it may be a while before you hear
anything.

A very informative article on how the filters work etc. is on the eBird
site at this link:
http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/1055676-understanding-the-ebird-review-and-data-quality-process

Thanks for your cooperation, and for your continued contributions to the
database, that at this point is very comprehensive for our region, thanks
to the volume of reports that you have all contributed over the years!

Good (e)Birding!
-Doug Gochfeld. Brooklyn, NY.

--

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Please submit your observations to eBird:
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[nysbirds-l] Jamaica Bay Avocet - yes

[Robert Taylor]

Hi Everyone,

I saw the Avocet this morning on the East Pond- was feeding and was putting
on a territorial show for a Snowy Egret.  Also saw a Western Sandpiper.
Overall bird numbers were on the lower side when I went but still enough
for a great birding experience.

Good birding,
Rob in Massapequa
http://longislandbirding.blogspot.com/

--

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ARCHIVES:
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Please submit your observations to eBird:
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Re:[nysbirds-l] Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Shorebirds

[Shaibal Mitra]

Hi Rich and all,

The Line Islands aren't what they used to be. Pat and I visited with John 
Zarudsky from the Town of Hempstead on 29 July 2011 (by the way, somebody ought 
to call Shane Blodgett and ask him if he remembers that day!) and spent some 
very enjoyable time around Egg Island and North Line Island. I haven't yet 
eBirded my notes from that era, but the flats near Egg Island held around 400 
Short-billed Dowitchers and the margins of North Line hosted around 400 
Semipalmated Sandpipers, all adult. We saw no godwits or Whimbrels. According 
to our own impressions and John's experienced testimony, the configuration of 
the flats has changed greatly over several decades since this area's glory days.

This is the same old story for so many coastal shorebird hotspots, which tend 
to show extreme changes in productivity over a variety of time-scales. The West 
Pond at Jamaica Bay was lost overnight, but the critical habitat features of 
many others fade almost imperceptibly over years or decades, as at the Line 
Islands, and also two other pillars of late 20th Century Long Island 
shorebirding: Cedar Beach and Democrat Pt. Very occasionally the coastal 
dynamism manages a feeble bid for symmetry in its impacts, as in our gaining 
productive new habitat at Sunken Meadow. Almost always, however, this is 
impossible, for a variety of more or less perverse reasons. The main one is 
that when a formerly superb site becomes less good: (1) resource managers lose 
the ability to protect it for the special features that used to be there (and 
would, if they could, cycle back there again); (2) various human interests 
swoop in and step on it, hard; (3) five or ten or twenty years later, when if 
left alone it would have cycled back into productivity, it is no longer 
ecologically resilient enough to do so.

Think about the West Pond. This is a once in a generation opportunity to 
subvert the ratchet and make things better!

Shai Mitra
Bay Shore


CSI Represents NY in Nationwide State Rankings. Learn 
morehttp://csitoday.com/2014/04/csi-represents-ny-in-nationwide-state-rankings/

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Re:[nysbirds-l] Shorebird hot spots

[rop1]

One superb shorebird spot that disappeared in one day was Oak Beach  
Marsh. This was technically-speaking a seche, a very shallow pan of  
rainwater of maybe an acre in extent that gradually dried and was  
replenished only when it rained again (or perhaps in a  very high  
tide). The bottom was a thin film of mud that was evidently full of  
good things to eat, and is was insulated from all but the very highest  
storm tides.  At high tide in the right season it was covered with  
shorebirds. I had over 30 species of shorebirds there over several  
years In the 1970s, including Ruff, Curlew Sandpiper, Marbled Godwit  
etc.
 This shallow pool was located on the salt marsh on the bay side  
of the Ocean Parkway opposite what is now called Overlook Beach (on  
the Jones Beach-to-Captree strip on Long Island).
 It all came to an end one afternoon in the 1980s when the  
mosquito control people, in their wisdom, ditched it and opened it to  
the tides. Now it is just an ordinary stretch of salt march with a  
Least Sandpiper and a Pectoral or two.
Bob Paxton


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Re: [nysbirds-l] Shorebird hot spots

[Hugh McGuinness]

Argh! Say it ain't so. I didn't know about this sad story, I had just
assumed nobody went in there anymore. That place was fantastic.

Hugh


On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 10:09 AM, r...@columbia.edu wrote:

 One superb shorebird spot that disappeared in one day was Oak Beach
 Marsh. This was technically-speaking a seche, a very shallow pan of
 rainwater of maybe an acre in extent that gradually dried and was
 replenished only when it rained again (or perhaps in a  very high
 tide). The bottom was a thin film of mud that was evidently full of
 good things to eat, and is was insulated from all but the very highest
 storm tides.  At high tide in the right season it was covered with
 shorebirds. I had over 30 species of shorebirds there over several
 years In the 1970s, including Ruff, Curlew Sandpiper, Marbled Godwit
 etc.
  This shallow pool was located on the salt marsh on the bay side
 of the Ocean Parkway opposite what is now called Overlook Beach (on
 the Jones Beach-to-Captree strip on Long Island).
  It all came to an end one afternoon in the 1980s when the
 mosquito control people, in their wisdom, ditched it and opened it to
 the tides. Now it is just an ordinary stretch of salt march with a
 Least Sandpiper and a Pectoral or two.
 Bob Paxton


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-- 
Hugh McGuinness
Washington, D.C.

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[nysbirds-l] Piermont Pier Picnic Table

[Evan Mark]

Piermont Pier in Rockland County is having a continuing good shorebird season on the heels of the recent American Avocet and Hudsonian Godwit (as well as Royal Tern  Cattle Egret).

7 species today included Sanderling, Ruddy Turnstone  Lesser Yellowlegs. Many peeps  Semi Plovs.

The more eyes the merrier.

Evan
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[nysbirds-l] Brown Pelican(s) - Cedar Beach, Long Island

[Taylor Sturm]

Hi all-
I apologize for the vagueness of this report:  
My girlfriend's friend, Bridgette Kistinger, sent us a picture she took of a 
Brown Pelican at Cedar Beach at about 7:30 pm. She said there were 3 of them 
together. I can only attest to one, as she didn't send us a picture of the 
group. 
The birds were ocean-side but I can't say in which direction they were flying. 
Again sorry for the vagueness. 

Good birding -
Taylor Sturm

Sent from my iPhone 
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[nysbirds-l] Brown Pelicans addendum

[Taylor Sturm]

Just as an addendum to my last post for thoroughness, there were definitely 3 
Brown Pelicans and they were apparently flying southwest. 
Good birding and sorry for the double-post!! 
Taylor Sturm 

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Re:[nysbirds-l] Sunken Meadow banded Semipalmated Sandpiper

[John Gluth]

It took only a day for the USGS Bird Banding Lab to get back to me with the 
background of the marked Semipalmated Sandpiper I saw yesterday at Sunken 
Meadow SP. The bird was banded in Heislerville, NJ on May 21 2012 by Dr. David 
Mizrahi. Band # 2571-46477. It was at least a year old at the time. Sex was not 
determined. Hopefully the Semi will survive many more migratory trips and gets 
reported again.

John Gluth

Sent from my iPhone

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