Dune Road Beaches and Heckscher SP 8 Sep Joe Giunta Debbie Martin and I (Sy Schiff) birded the bay side mud flats off Dune Road this afternoon at dead low tide. The Summer crowds were gone and there were no tolls to park. We birded looking north at the bay islands and sand bars as seen from the shore. In all we saw numerous Cormorants, Egrets, 9 expected species of Shorebirds, the 4 expected Gull species and 4 species of Terns.
Our first stop was at Pikes Beach, the only spot that we saw resting terns, namely 9 Royal including young, several Roseate, numerous Common and several Forster's. At Cupsogue we saw most of the shorebirds but no rarities. We did not wade across to the bay island and took the long way round through the camping area to get to the bay shore. My impression was that there has been sand loss on the bay side as a result of the recent storms. At high tide the sand bars where the birds were resting would all be under water. We stopped by Heckscher SP on the way home stopping at fields 1 and 4 to look for nighthawks, but without success. Sy -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES Temporary archive: http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --