This afternoon at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, I was able to find the continuing adult male Barrow's Goldeneye looking northwest into the bay from the West Pond Trail. It was between 1/4 and 1/2 mile out in the bay. Also still present was the nice show of Green-winged Teal plumages, including one apparently pure male 'Eurasian' Green-winged (Common) Teal, and 2 male Eurasian/American Green-winged Teal hybrids. One of the hybrids looks like a Eurasian at first glance but upon closer inspection has a thin and not-very-bold vertical white stripe on its side. This feature is only viewable if the bird is broadside or facing you, it is invisible if the bird is angled with the front away from you. The other one has a bold vertical stripe and a thinner horizontal white stripe that actually appeared to be a bit buffy to me. It's very interesting to have Green-winged Teals across the entire cline from Eurasian to American present to look at together. The Teal were present along the Brooklyn edge of the West Pond and can be very difficult to pick out at times as they hang out in the dense shoreline vegetation. The Teal were first found by Tom Burke and Gail Benson on Sunday I believe.
Afterwards I checked Coney Island Pier and while I didn't find any unusual Grebes I did witness a large local movement of Long-tailed Ducks. Shortly after I arrived they began (or I became aware of them) streaming to the west from the direction of Breezy Point and heading towards the Staten Island coast until they disappeared into the "heat" distortion. I originally thought they were coming from off the ocean, but a quick scan actually found that they were mostly coming from inside Rockaway Inlet and the direction of the Marine Parkway (Gil Hodges Memorial) Bridge. My count of Long-tailed Ducks when I left was ~3,200, and in only about 20 minutes. A quick search of Gravesend Bay for the 'Common' Gull (to try and get two "Common" European forms in one day) was unsuccessful, although this was probably largely due to the lateness of my visit. Good Birding -Doug Gochfeld. Brooklyn, NY. -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/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/ --
