By all accounts, it wasn't a great shorebird season on the East Pond, with a lot of disappointing days. Part of that was due to the barrage of cold fronts, which cause shorebirds to move on. Now when I need a cold front to go hawk watching, I can't get it. So there I was back on the East Pond. I did everything wrong for East Pond shorebird success. It's past peak now, I went at low tide, and I only did the extreme south end. Yet somehow it was one of my most pleasing outings of the year. Heck, even the Peregrine pass turned beneficial, seemingly sending birds from other parts of the pond down to the south end. And what I thought would be a quick check of the pond turned into a 3 and 1/2 hour stay, with lots of great photo ops. Well maybe I did one thing right - I was able to do my shorebirding many days after the last cold front.
The result was 13 species of shorebirds - better than I did most days in the peak of the season. A nice assemblage of Calidris included 29 Stilt, 2 Pectoral, 2 Western, 8 White-rumped, 3 Dunlin (strange to say, but that's a lot for the East Pond), and 2 Red Knot (seen flying out with Black-bellied Plovers). One interesting peep, almost certainly a Semipalmated, showed yellowish-orange coloration from the forehead to the base of the upper mandible. 3 juvenile Short-billed Dowitchers included a still orange-y hendersonii. A Caspian Tern paid a visit too. Steve Walter Bayside, NY -- 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/ --
