gmr044@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregg Recer) (09/13/89)
Hi all,
Speaking of vagrants and rarities, our bird club visited Jamaica
Bay Wildlife Refuge on Saturday (9/9) and found a few good ones.
Eurasian Widgeon and Buff-breasted Sandpiper were at the top of the
rarities list. We also saw Lesser Golden Plover and Wilson's
Phalarope. Several Hudsonian Godwits were seen but no Marbled,
unfortunately. The total species count for the day was 80. Not too
bad with the New York skyline prominently displayed all along the
horizon and the Concorde taking off over our heads!!
Gregg
*******************************************************************************
"In future you should delete the words crunchy frog and
replace them with the legend crunchy raw unboned real
dead frog!!"
-- Inspector Bradshaw, The Hygiene Division
*******************************************************************************grp@unify.uucp (Greg Pasquariello) (08/08/90)
I have been told by a friend of mine that the sea-gate on the east pond of Jamaica Bay is, once again, broken. This happened about three years ago, and the result was that the water in the pond could not escape, becoming much higher than usual, and destroying the fall migration. This is too bad, 'cuz in my opinion, this is one of the premier shorebirding spots on the east coast. If you go there, make sure you bring your high boots! -- -Greg Pasquariello grp@unify.com
gmr044@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregg Recer) (09/11/90)
Howdy,
Cathy and I made a day trip down to Queens last Sunday, not, like
everyone else, to see the US Open men's final, but to go to Jamaica
Bay Wildlife Refuge. The times I've been there the refuge has never
been disappointing but I would say that the variety of species was
definitely greater last year at roughly the same time than it was on
Sunday. Waterfowl consisted almost entirely of puddle ducks -- mallard,
black duck, blue- and green-winged teal, N. shovelers and A. wigeons
-- along with lots of ruddy ducks and a couple of pied-billed grebes.
Shorebirds were fairly ordinary, compared to last year when we
found wilson's phalarope and buff-breasted sandpiper. Pretty much all
the usuals were there -- hudsonian godwits, A. oystercatchers, semi.
and western sandpipers, black-bellied and semi. plovers, short-billed
dowitchers, both yellow-legs, killdeer, dunlin, ruddy turnstone --
however, the water level in east pond was very high and so numbers and
activity were limited.
We probably had the best day in terms of herons and egrets we've
ever had outside of Louisiana. Loads of great and snowy egrets were
accompanied by great-blue, little-blue (5 or 6 immatures and one
adult), green-backed herons, a cattle egret and adult and juvenile
black-crowned night herons. Another pair of juvenile night-herons
flew overhead at one point but I didn't get a sufficiently good look
to see if the tarsi were fully exposed behind the tail. The feet
_seemed_ (that jizz thing again) very prominent though, so at least
yellow-crowns with a question-mark seemed a reasonable conclusion (or
so I tried to rationalize). Also plenty of glossy ibis were around.
One other interesting observation was the large flock of
black skimmers we saw there. When we've skimmers before they've
generally just sat on the beach. Alas, we've never actually gotten a
look at them in foraging mode. On Sunday the flock at the refuge was
in continual motion, not feeding but just circling around the ponds.
At Monomoy 2 weeks ago the Mass Audubon trip leader described hearing
skimmers for the first time as sounding like "flying chihuahua's".
Well, we got to hear the skimmers at Jamaica Bay calling and damn if
he wasn't exactly right. Like a pack of little yappy dogs!!
Anyway, migration reports are finally starting to pile up here
at home. Little-green-jobs are the item on this week's agenda.
Gregg
*******************************************************************************
"In future you should delete the words crunchy frog and
replace them with the legend crunchy raw unboned real
dead frog!!"
-- Inspector Bradshaw, The Hygiene Division
*******************************************************************************